No-name girl battles grammar police to keep ‘light breeze’

FOR 15 years, she has been the girl with no name. A teenager known on all official documents as ‘‘Girl’’ will find out from a judge next week whether she can keep the name she was given at birth, but which is banned under Iceland’s naming laws.

Her mother called her Blaer – an Icelandic word meaning ‘‘ light breeze’’ – but this was not an appellation that featured among the 1853 officially sanctioned female names on the island’s Personal Names Register.

There is even less choice for boys. Just 1712 names fit the tough Icelandic grammar and pronunciation rules that officials maintain will protect children from embarrassment and disadvantage in life.

In a country of 320,000 people where everyone is listed by their first name in the phone book – even President Grimsson is known simply as Olafur – having no name at all can be problematic.

‘‘I had no idea that the name was not on the list,’’ said Bjork Eidsdottir, Blaer’s mother, who chose the pretty-sounding moniker for her baby in 1997. ‘‘It seems like a basic human right to be able to name your child what you want, especially if it does not harm your child in any way.’’

Their Kafkaesque nightmare began soon afterwards when the priest who baptised Blaer later informed her that he had been wrong to allow it. She had to apply to a special three-person naming panel for permission and, even though she presented evidence that Blaer had been allowed once before in 1973, she was refused on the ground that the word Blaer takes a masculine article and can only be used for boys.

Ever since, Blaer has been known on all official paperwork as Stulka, meaning simply Girl. The law has become more relaxed in recent years, for example the name Elvis has been allowed on appeal because it fits all the Icelandic language guidelines. Names beginning with C are out, however, as it is not a letter that appears in the country’s 32-letter alphabet.

Iceland’s main court has until January 31 to rule on the case, but Bjork Eidsdottir is prepared to take it to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, she said.