Names serve as important symbolic representations of individual identities and as a crucial tool for state documentation of those who reside within their borders. This analysis considers the extent to which the right to a name is protected under international law and general principles like privacy and freedom of expression. After analyzing the jurisprudential status of the right to a name, I consider its application in cases involving the parental naming of children, i.e., giving names, and individuals who challenge government policies that force them to take their husbands’ surnames, i.e., changing names. Regulations governing the use of names illustrate the limits of law. This project demonstrates the importance of symbols for identity and how the law is employed to attempt to control the choice of particular symbols.

Alison Dundes Renteln is a Professor of Political Science with joint appointments in Anthropology, Law, and Public Policy. She teaches Law and Public Policy with an emphasis on comparative and international law. Her expertise includes American Politics, Comparative Politics, and Political Theory. A graduate of Harvard (History and Literature: Modern Europe), she has a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence and Social Policy from the University of California, Berkeley and a J.D. from the USC Gould School of Law. She served as Director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politic and also Vice-Chair and Chair of Political Science. In 2005 she received the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching (campus-wide) and two Mellon Excellence in Mentoring Awards for graduate and undergraduate students (2005, 2011).

Her publications include The Cultural Defense (Oxford, 2004), Folk Law (University of Wisconsin, 1995), Multicultural Jurisprudence (Hart, 2009), Cultural Law (Cambridge, 2010), Global Bioethics and Human Rights (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), Images and Human Rights (Cambridge Scholars 2018), Personal Autonomy in Plural Societies: A Principle and Its Paradoxes (Routledge, 2018), and numerous articles.