Posted on 11/16/2008 9:36:52 AM PST by forkinsocket
They are born in France and called Louis, Laurent or Marie but they want to become Abdel, Said or Rachida. Such requests from immigrants’ children for name changes are mounting in the French courts and worrying a state that lays store on melding a single national culture.
In a sign of a new assertiveness, children with families from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are reversing the old custom in which immigrants from the old colonies gave French names to their children.
Driven by a feeling that they do not belong to their Gallic Christian names, the applicants are meeting resistance from judges who are reluctant to endorse what they see as a rejection of France.
Under France’s strict administrative laws, an official change of first name requires court consent. Until 1992 parents could only register their babies with names from an approved list.
“The way I look is out of sync with my name,” said Jacques, 25, who wants to adopt a name from his parents’ native Algeria. He rejected the standard view that a French name overcomes the persisting reluctance of French employers to recruit nonwhite minorities.
“There is a double-take when I send a job application and then turn up for the interview. They hesitate, as if the person they have summoned could not be me,” he said.
There is abundant evidence that, despite antidiscrimination laws, French employers discriminate against job-seekers with foreign names. Nadine, who is in her forties, failed to convince a Paris court to let her go back to Zoubida, the name she had before naturalisation. “I want to return to my roots,” she told Judge Anne-Marie Lemarinier, according to Le Monde newspaper.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
There are a lot of things in play in this article but I can't agree with forcing something a personal as a first name.
France is doomed. This is what happens when you toss out your own Christian cultural heritage, flood the nation with immigrants with another who’s “scripture” demands that they destroy Christian ans Jewish religion and establish their own.
Bravo France.
I am assuming that the job application form also lists the applicant's surname. Given that Jacques' probably sounds something like "Al-Akbar Osama," I don't see the necessity of his changing his first name.
Regards,
Since there is wide job discrimination by the French against Muslims (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4399748.stm), I’d reckon that if Jacques changes his first name, then instead of employers being surprised when he shows up at interviews, he just won’t get the interview. Nice going.
I am guessing, they have learned not to hire trouble.
What are you talking about? The same is happening in the US and all over Europe. France is not an isolated case of self-destruction.
This is so reminiscent of what is happening in South Africa where a lot of the old Boer town names have been scrapped in favour of names attached to people who have nothing to do with the region.
ha
They (Islam) are doing to France and England what they did to Lebanon - and have already begun in thee U.S.
The only way to prevent this is for bid them from entering and outlaw the cult of Islam!
It’s a political and social system that hides behind what they would want the non-believer to think is a religion.
The ONLY think the U.S. has going for it right now is that there exists an armed public - at least for now.
I don’t see where he said that it is an isolated case.
In some societies (France is one such) this naming business is really serious and no exceptions are tolerated. Seems to me the demands of Islam and France are incompatible.
I'm all for French-bashing (where appropriate) but this "single national culture" policy is a major improvement over the politically correct stance of the American ruling class.
“The same is happening in the US...”
I’ve been interviewing and hiring people for 20+ years here on the west coast; a jillion first and second-generation immigrants among them, and I still find the opposite mostly true.
People still mostly shed their wonderfully exotic names for “American” names both as they naturalize or informally for common use. Remember, you still get one free name change when you become a citizen and lots and lots of people take advantage of this.
If they want their “mother country name”, they should go to their mother country...leave France. Or will they not leave because their mother country has no free lunch?
I recall many of the Obamista "newsies" getting upset about the fact Governor Palin and her husband gave their children names of which they, the "newsies", didn't approve.
I've been thinking to backtrack through the articles, find out which reporters and reporterettes were most disturbed, then turn them into ICE for repatriation to their third-world hellhole countries.
MY Dutch friend said Holland had a list of approved names that parents were forced to choose from.
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