Making Mealtime Meaningful: Discover how we're giving back with the 12T Cares program →

When it comes to naming children, there are many European countries – such as France, Germany, and Spain – where children can be given both the surnames of their parents.

However, in Italy, this is not the case. But things are changing. As it turns out, Italy’s highest court has decided to overturn the tradition of automatically naming babies after the father. The court has called the tradition “discriminatory and harmful” to the child’s identity.

Photo: Pixabay/Marcin

The Italian minister for Equal Opportunities and Family, Elena Bonetti, took to Facebook to share the historic news, saying, “Today, the Constitutional Court ruled illegal the rules stipulating the automatic assignment of the paternal surname to children. Already in the past, the [court] had shone a beacon on the discriminatory nature of such automatism, both towards children and mothers.”

The post continued to read, “Today comes back to remind us that the time has come to change: we need to give body, even in the assignment of the surname, to that equal responsibility between mothers and fathers that is in the parental choice, and it is a high and urgent task of politics to get it done. Let’s move forward quickly and together on this road, which I have repeatedly urged to take. As a minister, I guarantee to the Parliamentary process all the support of the government to take another fundamental step in achieving equal rights between the women and men of our country.”

https://www.facebook.com/elenabonetti/posts/549312969883614

According to the New York Times, during one court case that was a part of the historic decision, a family had three kids. The two oldest were named after their mother’s family name as the parents weren’t married and the father initially didn’t claim them.

However, the court reviewed the case as the parents were seeking legal appeal as they couldn’t name their third child – who was born after the couple wed – the same surname as the siblings.

Photo: Pixabay/Adele Morris

One of the family’s lawyers, Giampaolo Brienza, explained to The New York Times, “For them it was a matter of family identity. One of the eldest siblings is 14, she could not take a different surname all of a sudden.”

The Italian Parliament has to first approve the new legislation in order to enforce the historic decision. The court’s recommendation happens to be that parents should be able to give their children both surnames unless they mutually decide otherwise.