A Boy Named Sue

Or a girl named Harper. One of these things wouldn't fly in Germany. Can you guess which one?

Just as I suspected, the issuing of Harper's birth certificate has been delayed by her first name. We got a letter from the city hall the other day, requesting proof that Harper is a girl's name. What I think is kind of funny (not ha ha funny, more like *sigh* funny) is that as long as we could prove that some other female was named Harper, then it would be OK. Guess that pioneer woman couldn't have been German. And I'd like to take this chance to thank the good folks at Wikipedia (yes, a Wiki entry was accepted by the ever-so-anal German bureaucrats) for the entry about Harper Lee. And, of course, a big shout out goes out to my girl Harper Lee, mainly for being a woman.

So Harper can stay Harper. I think I would've done some old-fashioned eyeball out-scratching had they said that we had to change her name. The laws here regarding what you can name your kids are stricter than in the U.S., in that they exist at all. Which is mainly a good thing, but we won't go into that whole story again about the hillbilly who named his boy Adolf Hitler. I had just hoped we could avoid the whole proving her name isn't just male game by giving her a relatively girly middle name. Or, as the Germans call it, second first name.

We picked the name Harper Ophelia because we wanted something not too common, not too weird, not too girly and could be pronounced in German and English. But the Germans seem to be having a hard time anyway. One of the nurses in the hospital thought her name was Happy. And I get the feeling that her German grandparents aren't sure what her name is. They probably would've appreciated a more Germanic name, like Brunhilde or Walpurga. Eh, maybe next time.