Is it legal to not have a surname in Wisconsin?
<p>Is it legal to not have a surname in Wisconsin? Note that I am not American and have no clue where to start looking for the answer. I met someone who claims she doesn't have a surname (her parents and siblings all have surnames, her story is that her parents made an exception for her and didn't give her a surname).</p>

<p>It is technically legal, but enforcement of such legality would face insurmountable difficulties without a compelling commercial interest.</p>
<h1>Legality</h1>
<p>A <a href="https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/80-1-Larson.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">George Washington Law Review article</a>  states that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An influential 1979 law review
article concluded that when parents agree, they “should <strong>have the freedom to give their children any reasonable surname</strong>.” Courts could
disallow “<strong>a surname chosen for a child by his parents if it were so
outrageous or obscene that it was clearly not in the <em>child’s best interests</em></strong> to bear the surname.” But terms like “reasonable” and “outrageous” are highly subjective and give little guidance to courts on what
factors to take into account.</p>
<p>The most relevant bodies of constitutional doctrine are substantive due process jurisprudence under the Fourteenth Amendment and
free speech jurisprudence under the First Amendment. This Part develops the arguments for a parental naming right under both bodies of
law, and concludes that strict scrutiny is the relevant standard for analyzing restrictions on that right. It further concludes that current laws
prohibiting certain surnames and laws prohibiting diacritical marks
are unconstitutional, as they are not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. Laws against obscenities, ideograms and
pictograms, and certain length restrictions pass strict scrutiny, as do
requirements that the child receive at least two names.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meaning that in the absence of a state law prohibiting a certain naming convention, anything goes.  But states have the power to pass laws to narrowly define what kinds of names are contrary to &quot;compelling state interest.&quot;</p>
<p>A <a href="https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&amp;httpsredir=1&amp;article=1374&amp;context=mulr" rel="nofollow noreferrer">review of relevant history and laws</a>, applicable to change of surname in a divorce in Wisconsin, concluded that, because of <em>Jocius v Jocius</em>, &quot;child's best interest&quot; is not a standard available to Wisconsin courts to empower the courts to force a change of a child's name contrary to parents' wishes.  <strong>Such legislation can be passed, but it hasn't been.</strong></p>
<h1>Impracticality</h1>
<p>However, some of costs associated with having a blank last name would be:</p>
<ul>
<li>obtaining insurance</li>
<li>having any medical procedures</li>
<li>registering for school</li>
<li>getting a library card</li>
</ul>
<p>and many, many more.  In fact, the last two are currently technically impossible because Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction <a href="https://dpi.wi.gov/wise/data-elements/student-name" rel="nofollow noreferrer">demands</a> that &quot;first and last name are required.&quot;</p>
<p>It is likely that overcoming the confusion resulting from not having a last name would turn most daily life activities into something that would require a letter from an attorney, or even a court order.  Without a substantial commercial gain from this arrangement, this would be an experiment with an unjustified prohibitive cost.</p>
<h1>Lighter side</h1>
<p>The day-to-day difficulties resulting from the absurdities of such an experiment could be easily developed into a plot for a comedy.  Personally, I was imagining a few potential South Park plot lines while trying to think through the implications of this arrangement.</p>
<p>The likely outcome, of not having a real last name, would be that many clerks would end up simply making them up for such an individual, in order to accommodate their computer systems.  And hilarity would undoubtedly ensue.</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong>  while I appreciate the &quot;+1&quot;-for-the-effort gesture of the upvotes, I am actually surprised that this answer has gotten as many upvotes as it has.  I would gladly delete it if a better referenced answer, with more specific information, came along.  I wrote this mostly to list the references which I found.  The conclusion which I draw here is what I personally have been able to deduce from those references.  So, please, stop upvoting.  This is not a high-quality answer.  And the fact that the answer is looking like it may very well be &quot;yes&quot; makes this an interesting question, that deserves a better answer.</p>

<h2>in <a href="/questions/tagged/germany" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;germany&#39;" rel="tag">germany</a> this is impossible (for german citizens)</h2>
<ul>
<li>The child <strong>automatically</strong> gains the married surname of the married parents, or one of the two surnames for non-married people, or whatever is the surname of a single parent due to adoption, unknown or death (<a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1616.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">§ 1616 BGB</a>, <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1617.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">§ 1617</a> and <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1617a.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">$ 1617a</a>). After $ 1617 (2), if the unmarried parents do not take it into their own hands to choose one of their surnames as the child's surname, the Family court has to assign one of those two to decide, and if no decision is made within a reasonable time, that parent's surname is chosen automatically. There's a possibility for single parents to get the surname of the missing partner under some conditions in $ 1617a.</li>
<li>There is no provision to remove your surname.</li>
<li>In fact, under german law, the name attached to you <strong>is not your to tinker with</strong> and you need special reasons to be allowed to change any part of your name. As such an example, you are allowed to request a change of your surname in case that would be <em>Hitler</em>, as that surname is very negatively connotated. In fact, the surnames Hitler and Goebbels are nearly extinct in Germany.
<ul>
<li>Note that the &quot;Standesamt&quot; (registry office) can also deny the parents to use first names that are in the view of the office not suitable. And there are judgments that ban (among others) the following first names on various grounds: Dracula, Judas, Lord, Lucifer, Majesty, Pain, Sputnik, Whiskey and <strong>any</strong> town or suburb name, company name or brand. While the combination of &quot;Anakin Skywalker&quot; is barred by judgment, Anakin on its own, as well as Merlin, are ok.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>To have no surname, you can't be born in Germany: In other cultures, people are born without a surname recognized under german law (e.g. an Egyptian Mahmood Ismail Issa has his own first name and then the first names of father and grandfather Mahmood Ismail Issa and no surname). Those people have to choose what shall become their surname if they want to gain German citizenship or other papers. The same happens for Indonesians without surname: The moment they apply for german papers, they can (and have to) choose from any recognized surname.</li>
<li>If those people are merely born in Germany, they are not forced to adopt a surname - or rather, a <em>first</em> name, as the registry will put the full name into the surname category and empty space into the first name because of technical reasons.</li>
</ul>

<p>In a paper in <em>Columbia Human Rights Law Review</em> titled <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3840603" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;There is no such thing as a 'legal name'&quot;</a> Austin Baker and J. Remy Green offer five ready-to-cite proposals about the existence, or lack thereof, of a &quot;legal name&quot;. They conclude in part (p. 162)</p>
<ol>
<li>There is no clear, uniform definition of a legal name.</li>
<li>The name a person uses in their community, generally speaking and in the absence of a specific statute providing otherwise (which most states do not have), is their legal name.</li>
</ol>
<p>They explain there is no coherent &quot;Law of the Name&quot; just as, for example, there is no coherent &quot;Law of the Horse&quot;. Horse-related matters are dealt with in diverse areas of the law, such as contracts to buy and sell them, laws about who is responsible if a rider falls off a horse and is injured, etc. Likewise name-related matters are governed by diverse areas of the law. Baker and Green contend that many people falsely believe there is a cohesive &quot;Law of the Name&quot; but in fact different areas of the law, such as common law, the Uniform Commercial Code Article 9, and US immigration law have separate, and sometimes contradictory, provisions about names.</p>
<p>I would draw from this that even if one can find a provision of law in Wisconsin, or federal law that is applicable to people in Wisconsin, that says a single name is sufficient, one can almost certainly find a provision that it is not sufficient.</p>

name wisconsin