Before: Arbitrator UlrichSchroeter (A), Respondent: CAcert (R), Claimant: Dennis K (C), Case: a20100302.1

History Log

Original Dispute, Discovery (Private Part)

EOT Private Part

Discovery

Deliberations

Ruling

After doing long researches regarding hyphens in Givennames under common law, I've ended up with 0 results. Doing interviews with native people under common law, does not reveal any substenental name rules under common law. It seems that in the world under common law, Givennames with hyphens are non-existent. There are long articles about usage of hyphens in Surnames, but no one on usage within Givennames. No register to find with Givennames with hyphens in the common law world. So it seems, we have to define our own name rule for Givennames with hyphens.

From my own experiences with Givennames, I know about people with "2" Givennames. Ones name is Heinz-Guenter, the 2nd ones givenname is Karlheinz. The "rufname" / "roepnaam" of Heinz-Guenter is "Heinz" and the "rufname" / "roepnaam" of the 2nd one is "Karlheinz". Nobody of "Heinz-Guenter"'s relatives called him "Heinz-Guenter". All relatives and friends calls him "Heinz".

There is one exception in daily usage of this type of names, where relatives use both names: if they want to have the persons full attention, to make a statement, they'll sometimes use both names. But this still happens either with my own two givennames (two givennames w/o hyphen).

So this has some similarity with the NL common short givenname variation, where 80% of the Dutch citizens have a "roepnaam" that doesn't match the Givenname in their ID documents.

So one variation is "Mendel" to match onto "Immanuel" (case a20091118.2) is more a difference in the Givenname then "Heinz" to "Heinz-Guenter". Everybody who knows "Heinz" will match with "Heinz-Guenter" if this is his official name as written in an ID document.

The derivation is, that the hyphen doesn't count. Despite the fact this clashes the German local law, we here within CAcert are bound mainly to the common law. From the interviews with natives under common law, common law still drops hyphens.

Similiar to the spanish usage of hyphens, to only signal several names in a list of name parts to be part of the Givennames list or part of the Lastnames list, the hyphen is not realy part of the name, its a filling char that can be used optional.

  1. Following the deliberations under common law, there are two possible options for the current running case:
    1. username to become: Givenname1-Givenname2
    2. username to become: Givenname1 Givenname2
    3. username to leave as is: Givenname1
  2. Claimant prefers usage of short name variation
  3. Claimant has been adviced that assurers may give lesser points. Claimant accepted.
  4. Assurers have documented the double-givenname onto their CAP forms so this is verifyable thru arbitration.
  5. Dennis is a full name under common law and no abbreviation to Dennis-Oliver, so AP is followed that at least one name is used unabbreviated
  6. The ruling follows PracticeOnNames relaxed rules

So I hereby rule, that claimant can still continue use the short name variant in his user account. So there is nothing to change here.

I further declare this case as a precedent for other cases, where this question araises.

Further I rule, to add this sample into the PracticeOnNames as a default rule, to make the usage of hyphen in Givennames optional:

Principle regarding Assurance Statement is:

a) select the law under which Assuree / Assurer agrees to check the name local law or common law
b) dependent on the law, the Assurer has to give his Assurance Statement
   Assurer has to accept Assuree's decision but Assurer gives his
   Assurance Statement. In mind, that the full name as seen in users
   IdDoxs is documented onto the CAP form, it doesn't causes to decrease
   Assurance points as it fulfills the requirements for AP and Arbitration
   if the Assurer has confidence into the members identity.

Frankfurt/Main, 2011-04-12

Execution

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see also: PracticeOnNames