The PS has introduced a bill to end the legal requirement that the first name must clearly indicate the gender of the person, thus opening the door to the possibility of gender-neutral names. For socialists, the current legal framework excludes “people in situations of intersexuality or non-binary gender identities” as well as transsexual and intersex individuals who choose not to change their gender in the registry office – preventing a formal name change.
Currently, the Code of Civil Registry determines this “the given names must be Portuguese, taken from national onomastics or graphically and phonetically adapted to the Portuguese language, and must not raise doubts about the sex of the registrant”. In the bill submitted to the Assembly of the Republic last Monday – which “amends the regime for assigning the first name by promoting self-determination over identity and gender expression” – the PS deletes the last part of the sentence from the law. An amendment with the express purpose of “enshrining the right to choose a neutral name, repealing the obligation that the first name should not cast doubt on the sex of the registrant”.
In the preamble to the bill, the PS invokes the Identity and Gender Expression Act, passed in 2018, in view of the manifested gender identity”, followed by the initials of the name appearing on the identification document, and then the full surnames. However, ” this step only involves an informally adopted name, the official registration of which is prohibited” by the Civil Registry Code.
Which means, concludes the PS, that the “law prevents transgender and intersex people who, for personal reasons or for any other reason, do not change their gender in the registry office to fully assert their personal identity, in that fundamental characteristic which is the first name”. And if the current legal framework makes an exception to prevent the first name that the person does not recognize as his own, the PS states that it is “natural that the obligation to make use of this possibility, when the trans or intersex person wants to be designated by their name causes suffering and gender dysphoria”.
If that can be claimed “it is enough for a person to change his gender and then change his name”, the PS believes that this is “contrary to the spirit” of the law on identity and gender expression, which “protects the primary and secondary sexual characteristics of each person and does not cover people in situations of intersex or non-binary gender identities”. Moreover, these are the most obvious cases of neutral names, since there is no identification with either gender.
In addition to the above requirements, the Civil Registry Code stipulates that “the full name may consist of a maximum of six grammatical words, singular or compound, of which only two can correspond to the first name and four to nicknames, which brothers cannot be given the same first name, or the situations in which a foreign first name may be given”.
Source: DN
