German
In the past, German law required parents to give their child a gender-specific name. This is no longer true, since the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany held in 2008 that there is no obligation that a name has to be gender-specific, even if it is the only one. The custom to add a second name which matches the child's legal gender is no longer required. Still unisex names of German origin are rare, most of them being nicknames rather than formal names. Examples for unisex names derived from French: Pascal (sometimes as Pascale) or Simone (pronounced like Simon in German).
Read more about this topic: Unisex Name
Famous quotes containing the word german:
“The German Reich is a Republic, and whoever doesn’t believe it gets one in the neck.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)
“Frankly, I do not like the idea of conversations to define the term “unconditional surrender.” ... The German people can have dinned into their ears what I said in my Christmas Eve speech—in effect, that we have no thought of destroying the German people and that we want them to live through the generations like other European peoples on condition, of course, that they get rid of their present philosophy of conquest.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)