There are almost no illegal baby names in the US. No federal law restricts what you can name a child, and the state-level rules that do exist are mostly technical: limits on which characters a birth certificate system can print, how many letters fit on a line, and whether numerals or symbols are allowed. A smaller group of states also bars obscenities. No state keeps a blacklist of forbidden names, and many names that circulate on “banned names” lists online are registered every year without any trouble.
What States Actually Restrict
Birth certificates are issued by state and local vital records offices, not by any federal agency. Each state writes its own rules, and the real restrictions fall into a short list.
Characters and Symbols
The most common rule is the plainest one: many states accept only the 26 letters of the English alphabet, sometimes with hyphens and apostrophes. No numerals. No symbols like @ or #. No pictographs. New Jersey’s regulation states directly that the State Registrar may reject a name containing numerals, symbols, or a combination of letters, numerals, and symbols.1Legal Information Institute. New Jersey Administrative Code 8:2-1.4 – Designation of Child’s Name
This is the rule that actually stops names like “1069.” In 1976, a North Dakota court denied a petition to change someone’s legal name to the number 1069, reasoning that the legislature intended “name” to mean a name as commonly understood, not a number.2Justia Law. Petition of Dengler, 1976
Length
Several states cap how many characters a name can contain. The limits vary, and they come from database field sizes and printing constraints rather than any policy about what makes a reasonable name. If a name goes over, the vital records office will ask for a shorter version or an abbreviation.
Obscenity
A smaller number of states explicitly prohibit obscene or vulgar names. New Jersey’s code, again, lets the State Registrar reject a name containing an obscenity.1Legal Information Institute. New Jersey Administrative Code 8:2-1.4 – Designation of Child’s Name Other states handle it informally, with a clerk flagging a name for review rather than applying a written standard. The boundary rarely gets litigated because outright vulgar submissions are uncommon.
The Accent Mark Problem
For families with Spanish, French, Hawaiian, or other non-English naming traditions, the restriction that bites hardest isn’t about content. It’s about diacritical marks. Many state vital records systems can’t print them, so a child named José is recorded as “Jose,” and Ramón becomes “Ramon.”
California has been the most visible example, requiring names to use only the 26 English letters. That is changing. In 2024, California passed AB 2156, which requires the State Registrar to properly record diacritical marks on birth certificates, death certificates, and marriage licenses starting January 1, 2027.3California Legislative Information. AB-2156 Vital Records: Diacritical Marks
A few states already accommodate certain marks. Alaska and Hawaii, for instance, allow characters used in Native Hawaiian and Inupiaq names, including the kahakō. Most states still strip these marks at registration. Because the limitation is baked into the software, there’s no administrative appeal.
Names People Think Are Banned but Aren’t
Online lists of “illegal baby names” routinely include names that are perfectly legal, and in many cases quite popular.
Titles Like King, Queen, Prince, and Judge
You’ll often read that title-style names are prohibited because they imply a status the child doesn’t hold. In reality, these names are registered constantly. Over 1,200 boys were named King in 2023 alone, and names like Reign, Royal, and Princess all appear in the Social Security Administration’s current top-1,000 list. No U.S. state has a statute banning title-style names.
Religious Names Like Messiah
In 2013, a Tennessee child support magistrate ordered a baby’s name changed from “Messiah” to “Martin,” arguing that the title belonged exclusively to Jesus Christ. A Tennessee chancellor overturned the ruling as a violation of the Establishment Clause. The name Messiah has ranked in the top 200 baby names nationally for years, and Hispanic families have named sons Jesús for generations without legal challenge.
Offensive Names
A New Jersey couple named their son Adolf Hitler Campbell, and the name was accepted on the birth certificate. The children were later removed from the home, but the court’s reasons involved domestic violence and risk of abuse, not the name itself. In most states, the legal system has no mechanism to reject a name purely because it is offensive or in poor taste, as long as it doesn’t contain an actual obscenity or prohibited character.
What Happens If a Name Is Rejected
If a vital records office refuses to register a submitted name, it will notify the parents, explain the reason, and ask for an alternative. The usual reasons are prohibited characters, exceeding the character limit, or (in the handful of states with the rule) obscenity. A baby still needs a name on the certificate, so the registration pauses until the issue is resolved.
Parents who believe the rejection was wrong can challenge it in court. The procedure varies by state, but it typically involves filing a petition asking a judge to review the vital records office’s decision. The bar for the state is low. In Henne v. Wright, the Eighth Circuit held in 1990 that choosing a child’s name is not a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment, so a state only needs a rational basis for its naming rule.4Justia Law. Henne v. Wright, 904 F.2d 1208 Correcting or amending a name after the certificate is filed is a separate administrative process, with fees that generally run from about $20 to $50, higher if a court order is required.
Federal Document Formatting Can Change the Name
Even when a state accepts a name on the birth certificate, federal agencies have their own formatting rules, and the versions may not match.
The Social Security Administration allows 26 characters on the first line (first and middle names combined) and 26 characters on the second line (last name and suffix). If a name exceeds either limit, the SSA will drop the middle name, middle initial, or suffix to fit as many characters of the first and last names as possible.5Social Security Administration. How the Number Holder’s Name is Shown on SSN Card
Passports follow International Civil Aviation Organization standards, which do not support diacritical marks or special symbols. Consular officers are instructed to cross out all diacritical marks on applications, even when they appear on the applicant’s proof of citizenship.6U.S. Department of State. 8 FAM 403.1 – Name Formatting So a birth certificate reading “José” in a state that keeps the accent will still produce a Social Security card and passport reading “Jose.” The mismatch generally doesn’t create legal problems, but it’s worth knowing before you apply.
The One Constitutional Line States Can’t Cross
Because naming isn’t a fundamental right under Henne, states have wide latitude. The outer limit comes from the First Amendment. The Tennessee “Messiah” ruling is the clearest example: the magistrate’s reasoning was explicitly religious, and the appellate court found that a reasonable observer would view the action as a government endorsement of religion. A government official cannot reject a name based on their own religious beliefs. Beyond that, the constitutional ceiling on state naming rules has not been seriously tested, though Judge Arnold’s dissent in Henne argued that “what I call myself or my child is an aspect of speech” protected by the First Amendment.4Justia Law. Henne v. Wright, 904 F.2d 1208 No court has adopted that view as binding law.