Baby Naming Rules in the United States

🇺🇸 Baby Naming Rules in the United States

There is no American naming law. Birth certificates are issued by the states, and what constrains a name is usually not a rule about names at all but a rule about which characters the state's form accepts.

Legal basis: State law. There is no federal naming statute
Authority: State and local vital records offices
Deadline: Set by each state
How many names: Set by each state
Sex of the name: Not required
Approved list: None

Looking for the names themselves? See the official baby name ranking for United States.

Fifty systems, not one

Birth certificates in the United States are issued by state and local vital records offices rather than by any federal agency, and each state sets its own rules for what may appear on the form. There is no national list, no national deadline and no national restriction on what a child may be called.

This means American naming questions have to be asked state by state. Guidance written about one state can be simply wrong about the one next to it.

The real constraint is the character set

The restriction most parents actually run into is typographic rather than legal. Many states record only the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, in some cases with hyphens and apostrophes. That excludes numerals, symbols such as @ or #, and pictographs, without any rule about names as such being involved.

It also excludes accented letters. A name spelled José or Ñoña may be recorded on the certificate as Jose or Nona, not because the name was rejected but because the register has no way to store the mark.

The practical consequence is that the same name can be recorded differently depending on where the child is born. Since compilations of state-by-state rules go out of date quickly, the reliable step is to ask the vital records office of the specific state what its system accepts.

California: the reform that did not happen

California is the most documented example, because an attempt to change its practice left a public record. Assembly Bill 2156 of the 2023 to 2024 session would have required the State Registrar to record diacritical marks on English letters on birth, fetal death and death certificates and on marriage licences, commencing 1 January 2027.

The bill's own existence is the clearest evidence of what the practice was: California records were confined to unaccented English letters, in a state where a large share of names carry diacritics.

The bill did not become law. Its legislative history ends on 30 November 2024 with the entry that it came from committee without further action, after being held under submission in the appropriations committee that May. The restriction it was meant to lift therefore still stands.

California did not legalise accents on birth certificates

A large number of pages report that California passed AB 2156 in 2024 and that diacritical marks will appear on its vital records from 1 January 2027. The date is real, because it is in the bill. The passage is not.

The official legislative history shows the bill was referred to the appropriations committee, held under submission on 16 May 2024, and returned from committee without further action on 30 November 2024. It was never chaptered and never signed.

If you are planning around this, plan on the current rule instead.

Sources

Every statement on this page is taken from an official or judicial source. The links below go to the originals so you can check them yourself.

Last reviewed: August 2026. This page explains the rules in general terms and is not legal advice. Where a decision matters to you, ask the authority that will register the name.