Me chame pelo meu nome: o nome civil e o direito à identidade

Abstract

The legal name represents the instrument used to designate and individualize people, whether considered alone or in connection with the family to which they belong. Through the evolution of the concept of State, the legal name came to be regulated, shaping its constitution, origin, maintenance, as well as, in some exceptional circumstances, ways of changing it. This research seeks to discuss the name’s immutability in the circumstance of subjective non-identification to the first name given by the family. To this end, it sought to identify national law that regulates the legal name and the possibilities for its changing; relate interdisciplinary aspects that involve the right to a name and the right to identity; observe circumstances that generate subjective non-identification through case studies. A literature review was carried out on legal aspects of the legal name and the right to identity, and an exploratory, qualitative study of semi-structured interviews with people who demonstrated dissatisfaction with their given name and with officers from Civil Law of Natural Persons Registries in the exercise of their activity. The results revealed the understanding of the name as a sign of human individuality, as well as its public aspect before the State, as the state entity set limits and rules for its exercise; the importance of knowledge of the law regarding the possibilities of changing the given name; the limits established by law for judicial change; the given name change in the registry office, and the position of the registry officers who defended the provision of more options for the extrajudicial change. Moreover, the research demonstrated the pursuit for the construction of identity through processes of changing the given name and factors that hindered the subjective identification of the interviewees to the names given to them. Among these factors, there are parents disagreeing about the name chosen at the time of registration, difficulty with the spelling of the names chosen, and late registrations giving different names to what had previously been indicated. And finally, the path of provocation to the State to manifest itself on issues related to the name of the natural person, primarily guided by the right to the personal identity of each individual, in order to guarantee the prerogative of adequacy of the name to the identity of the subject of right. This work contributed to a greater understanding of the legal name in addition to its legal aspects and the path taken by the human being to identify himself with the given name, which allowed an analysis of contemporary themes, such as the right to identity, human dignity, personality rights, and family contexts.