Politics

A couple from the Maine-et-Loire region has been summons to appear in court for having named their son Fañch, a traditional Breton name with a tilde (which equates to François in French. Ed.), French broadcaster France 3 reports.

The tilde (~) is a diacritic whose use is not permitted in birth, death and marriage certificates in France, despite its existence in Breton, the traditional regional language of Brittany.

The couple have been summonsed to appear before the family court in February for their choice of first name for their son, who was born last summer. The registrar at the maternity hospital had warned the parents that the spelling of Fañch could pose a problem, but they stuck by their decision. The mother is of Breton descent.

The public prosecutor’s office in Angers has now initiated proceedings to ask the judge to remove the first name Fañch from the birth certificate and to give the child another first name minus the tilde, with or without parental consent. The public prosecutor is using a circular of July 23 2014 as the legal basis for his action. This circular lists the diacritics such as the cedilla, grave and acute accents and diaeresis authorised for use on civil registration documents.

“We’ve been told we are not taking the best interests of our child into account,” said the mother. “That’s harsh. Just because of a tilde, it’s implied that we’re bad parents.”

Strange first names often mocked

In its summons the Angers public prosecutor’s office recalls that “The civil code provides that “the child’s first names are chosen freely by its father and mother”, but with the child’s best interests as a limit”.

First names have often been banned because they were likely to give rise to ridicule. Thus the parents of little Titeuf, Fraise, Nutella, Mini-Cooper or the Babord and Tribord twins have had to amend their children’s birth certificates.

First names intended to pay homage to the parents’ idols – e.g. “Griezmann-Mbappé” or “MJ” in reference to Michael Jackson – have likewise been censured, then censored.

Fañch, a traditional Breton first name

The problem of the tilde in Fañch is different, because in several cases the courts ultimately ruled in favour of the parents who had chosen this traditional Breton first name. Thus, one little Fañch who was born in Quimper in 2017, finally saw the Court of Appeal rule in favour of his parents after a legal case lasting over two years.

Politicians and civil society organisations swung into action citing the European Court of Human Rights affirming that “the choice of first name has an intimate and emotional character and consequently belongs to the realm of private life.”

The cultural council of Brittany has also commented, rejecting the argument that the “ñ” is a foreign character since it has been used “for centuries in Latin, French, Gallo, Breton and Basque and is not an exclusive feature of Spanish”.

A long battle before the courts, parliament and the Constitutional Council

In February 2020, a parliamentary report drew up a list of diacritics used in regional languages such as Breton, Tahitian, Alsatian, Corsican or Creole, recommending in particular use of the tilde be permitted to “clarify the current situation and to definitively thwart any refusals which could opposed parents’ legitimate requests for recognition of the integrity of their name or the first name that they have chosen to give to their child be respected.”

The provision was then rejected by the Constitutional Council which thought this would be tantamount to giving individuals “a right to use a language other than French in their relations with public sector organisations and public services.”

The proceedings initiated against the couple from Maine-et-Loire will therefore mark a new skirmish in this long battle.

France is one of a handful of countries in western Europe not to have ratified the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

News arrived today of a bizarre feudal remnant – one used by a human bizarre feudal remnant line his own already well-stuffed pockets.

The human bizarre feudal remnant is none other than Mr Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor, alleged to be the head of state of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.), who generally masquerades under the alias of “King” Charles III.

Today’s Guardian reveals that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is stealing the estates of people who die intestate – i.e. without leaving a will – or with no known relatives in the territory of the Duchy of Lancaster, which consists of consists of 18,433 hectares of land holdings, including rural estates and farmland, urban developments, historic buildings, and commercial properties across England and Wales, particularly in Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire and the Savoy Estate in London. Its principal purpose of the estate is to provide a source of independent income for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor and his heirs and successors.

This theft of other people’s assets is covered by the legal term ‘bona vacantia‘, meaning unowned property. The same practice of ‘bona vacantia‘ is employed by the Duchy of Cornwall to provide an income for the so-called ‘Prince’ of Wales, one William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor.

The rich and powerful of this backward medieval country have been stealing the assets owned or used by others for centuries. From 1604 onwards the Inclosure Acts created legal property rights for the rich to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km².

These thefts of common land were commemorated in a popular poem in the early 18th century.

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.


The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

This practice of appropriating land owned and used by others reached its zenith during Britain’s colonial expansion under the concept of ‘terra nullius‘, literally nobody’s land. How could allegedly primitive people claim ownership of land when nothing concerning property rights was written down, was the flawed logic behind these seizures, which reached their height in Australia, where people now commemorated by street names and public artworks were responsible for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people, who have no public monuments by which to remember the victims. This was documented in all its brutality by the three part 2022 TV series The Australian Wars.

Anyway, back from nobody’s land to nobody’s property in the north of England. The Guardian has found out that the Duchy of Lancaster has been secretly using the bona vacantia funds to renovate properties owned by the alleged king and rented out for profit. The Duchy’s accounts suggest it has collected £61.8m in bona vacantia funds over the last decade. Of those, only £9.3m or 15% of the total has gone to charities, which the Duchy maintains is the main reason for collecting the funds.

Needless to say, this news has not gone down well in areas subject to the Duchy of Lancaster’s writ.

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester is on record as saying:

I think many people in the north-west will be surprised to learn that the savings and assets of friends and neighbours are being taken in this way. I don’t recall this archaic system ever being explained to anyone here nor public consent for it being given.

Burnham furthermore added that:

This appears to be a bizarre remnant of feudal Britain. While we await the public acts of levelling up that we have been promised, it seems this country still has silent mechanisms of levelling down at work, redistributing wealth in the wrong direction.

Furthermore, friends of some of those whose assets have been stolen have described their use to fix up Duchy properties for future rental as ‘unethical, ‘shocking and ‘a disgrace.

The worst decision this country ever made was to readmit Charles Stuart (son of the late tyrant) in 1660. That would have avoided any future regal robbery of people’s property either in this country or around the world.