В Латвии до такого маразма дошли, что даже супругам иностранцев не дают взять нормальную фамилию мужа (то есть фамилию в оригинале, без ее латышизации):
In 1998 the applicant married a German citizen and took her husband's surname "Mentzen". The applicant requested the Board on Citizenship and Immigration Affairs at the Ministry of Interior (hereinafter the BCIA) to change her old Latvian passport for a new passport that would include her new surname "Mentzen". In her request she expressed the wish to have her new surname entered without any changes.
However, the BCIA issued a new Latvian passport to the applicant where her surname was entered as "Mencena". This action of the BCIA was based on the Regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers No. 174 of 14 May 1996 "On Spelling and Identification of Given Names and Surnames in Documents", stipulating that all surnames and given names were to be spelt "according to the orthography norms of the Latvian literary language" and "as close to the pronunciation in the original language as possible". Thus, the letter "c" substituted the phoneme "tz", and the ending "a" was added to the name. However, the Board affixed a special seal in section "Special notes" on page 14, confirming that the original form of the above surname is Mentzen".
The applicant contested the new spelling of her surname; however, she lost the case in all instances of general jurisdiction courts. In their judgements, the courts emphasized that the BCIA had acted in compliance with the applicable regulations. The courts recognised that the contested situation might interfere with the rights guaranteed under Article 8 of the Convention; however, they held the opinion that the purpose of this interference was the protection of the Latvian language and it had taken place in compliance with Part 2 of Article 8 of the Convention.
The applicant filed a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court asking to declare Article 19 of the State Language Law and Regulations of the Cabinet of Ministers No. 295 of 22 August 2000 "On Spelling and Identification of Names and Family Names" unconstitutional. She emphasized in her complaint that the contested legal norms did not comply with Articles 96 and 116 of the Constitution.
In its judgement of 21 December 2001, the Constitutional Court declared Article 19 of the State Language Law, which provides for a general principle for the phonetic transcription and grammatical adaptation of surnames of other languages, to be in compliance with Article 96 of the Constitution. On the other hand, the Court recognised the unconstitutionality of those legal norms that stipulated that the original form of the surname be entered on page 14 of passports and not in a closer and more visible place, taking into account the fact that page 3 was the main page in the passport. The Constitutional Court specified that the above legal norms and in particular Section 3 of Instruction No. 52 would become invalid as of 1 July 2002.
http://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/Copenhagen...mplate/?pg=5465 |
