Mom having name regrets
Dear Mrs Macaulay,
I am having name regrets for my baby, but he is over a year old. I named him in the hospital, then did a name change a month later through a certificate of naming, because I didn’t like the name. Now I still don’t like the new name (Christian and middle names), and felt that I was under duress and hormones and pressured to name my son. How can I change his name at this stage, before he starts kindergarten?
As you did the first name change so soon after birth, such an alteration could be smoothly and quickly effected as the registrar more than likely would still have your son’s registration of birth form and the counterfoil containing his birth registration to easily ensure that the alterations were entered in the Index of Births Book. Now that your son is over 12 months old, The Registration(Births and Deaths) Act is the legal source for these matters.
In section 20 of the Act, which deals with ‘registration of name or altered name of child given since first registration’, it provides that after the end of 12 months after the registration of the birth of any child, the registered name of the child shall not be altered, except with the written authority of the Registrar General, which fact must be entered on the registration form and counterfoil. The parent or guardian of the child seeking an alteration must deliver a certificate of naming which the section requires, to the Registrar General and pay the statutory fee. The Registrar General shall not give that authority after the child is 10 years old, unless satisfied by evidence that there were and are good and sufficient reasons to account for such registration to have been so delayed.
You say that you were under duress, but have not stated what this was and from whom. You also say that you were affected by hormones but can you provide a medical report to this effect and how this adversely affected your ability to think clearly? You also assert that you felt pressured to name your son, but by whom? The law applies to every mother and father on whom it places the legal duty to report the birth of a live child, to give the registrar within 42 days after the birth, information of the details required for the registration of the birth. You have not made any reference to the father of your child, so I assume that you struggled alone with the important task of choosing lasting names for your child.
Anyway, you can still change the altered names of your son, and since 12 months and more have passed since your son’s birth, you would have to apply for the Registrar General’s written authority to alter your son’s Christian and middle names, as there bis no provision in the Act completely forbidding this to be done. The Act says that after the child is 10 years old the Registrar General cannot give authority for a name change to occur (or initial registration) except there is evidence of good and sufficient reason to support such an application. There is therefore no legal bar to you applying to authorise your further change of your son’s names. I must however, strongly advise you that you should try and be sure of the names you choose this time, as no institution would be happy to repeatedly keep entering alterations in their records which they must keep for all time of all children born in Jamaica, and with names by which they can be identified.
So, please think deeply and choose well and get on with properly naming your son, so he can be sure of his identity and not be confused during any part of his development.
Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public, and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide private, personal responses.
