There is no federal law listing names you can’t name your child in the United States, but every state’s vital records office enforces its own rules, and a handful of restrictions show up almost everywhere: numerals, symbols, characters outside the English alphabet, names that exceed the database’s character limit, and in some states, obscenities. Most parents never bump into these limits. The ones who do usually find out when the birth certificate is held up.
Numbers and Symbols Are Almost Always Off-Limits
The most universal restriction is on digits and non-letter symbols. A name made of numbers, or one that includes characters like @, #, or $, will almost certainly be rejected. State vital records systems typically accept the 26 letters of the English alphabet plus some combination of hyphens, apostrophes, and spaces. The databases that store and transmit birth records are not built to handle numerals or pictographic symbols in a name field.
The leading case on this goes back to 1976, when a North Dakota man petitioned to legally change his name to “1069.” The state supreme court denied the request, reasoning that a “name” at common law consists of letters, and possibly characters or symbols in addition to letters, but no accepted definition allows a word to consist solely of numbers.1Justia Law. Petition of Dengler 1976 North Dakota Supreme Court Decisions That reasoning has influenced how registrars nationwide treat numerical names, even in states without a specific statute.
The restriction is partly practical and partly definitional. Government software that handles tax records, passports, and law enforcement databases expects letters in name fields, and a numeral-only entry causes matching errors across systems.
Accent Marks and Non-English Characters
Accent marks, tildes, umlauts, and other diacritical marks are prohibited on birth certificates in a significant number of states. The restriction traces to vital records systems built around the basic English alphabet and, in at least one large state, to a ballot measure declaring English the official state language. The practical effect lands hardest on families with Spanish, French, Vietnamese, or other naming traditions where diacritical marks carry real meaning. “José” becomes “Jose” on the certificate. “Sofía” becomes “Sofia.”
Some states have updated their systems to accept these characters; others still restrict names to the 26 unaccented English letters. If your intended name uses special characters, call your state’s vital records office before the birth and ask what the certificate will actually print.
Obscene and Offensive Names
A smaller number of states explicitly let registrars reject names containing obscenities, slurs, or language likely to cause severe embarrassment or harm to the child. The justification rests on the state’s interest in child welfare and on the idea that a government-issued document should not force officials to repeat offensive language every time they handle the child’s records.
Outright rejections on obscenity grounds are rare. The standard is subjective, few parents attempt it, and most states do not maintain a blacklist of specific prohibited names. One widely reported case involved New Jersey children given names with Nazi associations, including “Adolf Hitler.” The names were legally registered without objection. The children were later removed from the home, but courts confirmed the removal was based on domestic violence and neglect concerns, not the names. Unless a statute specifically empowers the registrar to reject offensive names, even deeply objectionable choices may be legally recorded.
Where a registrar does reject a name on this ground, a parent can usually challenge the decision in court. The burden is on the parent to show the name serves a legitimate purpose and will not harm the child.
Titles and Honorifics
A handful of states scrutinize names that resemble official titles or professional designations. “Doctor,” “Judge,” or “Major” can be flagged on the theory that they create confusion about whether the person actually holds the credential. The boundaries are not clean. “King” and “Prince” are registered routinely and appear in Social Security Administration records thousands of times.
A Tennessee magistrate once ordered a baby’s first name changed from “Messiah” on religious grounds, saying the title “has only been earned by one person.” An appellate court reversed the order, finding the reasoning violated the separation of church and state. Personal opinions about a name’s appropriateness do not carry legal weight unless a statute specifically addresses the issue.
Character Limits
Every state’s birth certificate system has a maximum number of characters it can store in each name field, and the ceilings are not uniform. Some states cap individual name fields at 30 characters, others allow 40 per field, and a few permit 100 or more total characters across first, middle, and last names combined. The limits are driven by database design, not policy.
When a name exceeds the field limit, it gets truncated on the birth certificate, which then causes mismatches on the Social Security card, passport, and every downstream document. Parents with long cultural or hyphenated names should ask the hospital’s birth registrar about the specific character limits before filling out the worksheet. Fixing truncation after the fact means amendment fees and weeks of waiting.
Names That Sound Illegal but Are Not
A lot of what circulates online about banned baby names is wrong. Trademarked names are the clearest example. Intellectual property law does not stop you from naming a child after a commercial brand. Trademark protection covers use of a name in commerce, not personal identity. A child named after a tech company faces no legal risk, and the company has no standing to object.
Naming a child after a controversial historical figure is not prohibited by any state statute. Names with religious significance, unconventional spellings, or invented words are generally permissible so long as they comply with the character-set and length rules. The real restrictions are almost entirely technical and procedural rather than content-based, with obscenity being the narrow exception in states that address it.
Surnames When Unmarried Parents Disagree
The surname question gets legally complicated when parents are unmarried and do not agree. In most states, if paternity has not been established on the birth certificate, the mother has sole legal authority over the child’s name, including the surname. A father who wants input must first establish parental rights, either by signing a voluntary acknowledgment of paternity or getting a court order.
When both parents are on the birth certificate but cannot agree, states handle the impasse differently. Some hyphenate both surnames in alphabetical order. Others default to the mother’s surname. A few leave it to the registrar or send the parents to family court, where a judge applies a best-interest-of-the-child standard. No state requires a child to carry the surname of either biological parent. Parents can choose a different last name entirely in most jurisdictions, subject to the same character and obscenity restrictions that apply to first names.
What Happens If the Registrar Rejects Your Name
If a registrar flags a name for prohibited characters, length, or an obscenity provision, you receive a notice explaining the problem and asking for a revision. The birth certificate cannot be issued until you provide a compliant name. In the meantime, the child sits in a bureaucratic gap: no birth certificate means no Social Security number through the Enumeration at Birth program, which lets state vital records transmit birth data directly to the Social Security Administration for automatic SSN assignment.2Social Security Administration. What Is Enumeration at Birth and How Does It Work
That delay creates a tax problem. Federal law requires a taxpayer identification number for every dependent claimed on a return. Without your child’s Social Security number, the IRS will not let you claim the child as a dependent or receive related credits.3Internal Revenue Service. Dependents 9 The statute is direct: no exemption is allowed “with respect to any individual unless the TIN of such individual is included on the return claiming the exemption.”4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 151 Allowance of Deductions for Personal Exemptions For a family counting on the Child Tax Credit, resolving a rejection quickly matters.
You can challenge a rejection through the state’s administrative process or in court. Courts weigh your naming liberty against the state’s reason for the restriction. Challenges to technical limits like character-set rules rarely succeed, because the state can point to concrete database constraints. Content-based rejections, especially subjective ones about whether a name is offensive, have a better chance, though outcomes depend on the specific statute and the specific name.
Changing a name after the certificate has already been issued is a separate process. You file paperwork with the state vital records office, provide supporting documentation, and pay a fee. For substantive changes rather than clerical corrections, most states require a court order. Catching a problem on the hospital worksheet is far cheaper than amending the certificate later.