Another surname with “w” will appear in the Lithuanian Population Register

Vilnius City District Court on October 1 made another decision on the original spelling of personal names. The Lithuanian citizen, who appealed to the court, in  2015, in the United Arab Emirates,  married a British citizen and took her husband’s surname „Newman“ . The Civil Registry Office of the Legal Department of the Vilnius City Municipality Administration refused to enter the marriage record by typing the applicant’s name with “w”.

After assessing the material gathered in the case, the court decided that “in the case there is no evidence that the applicant’s name entered with the letter “w”, i.e. Newman, interferes with identifying a person, causing inconvenience, impeding the well-being of the community, or causing practical difficulties. In addition, the Vilnius City Municipality Administration, in its response to the applicant‘s statement, supported the petition of the petitioner, and the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, as mentioned, submitted to the Seimas the conclusions of draft laws on the names of  citizines of  the Republic of Lithuania, stating that, taking into account the needs of the modern society, Lithuanian citizen marriages with foreigners, the names of the citizens of the Republic of Lithuania who make the marriage can be written in Latin characters “. Accordingly, the court ordered the marriage to be entered into the account by filing the applicant with the name “Newman” and issuing the marriage record.

Evelina Dobrovolska, an assistant lawyer representing the original spelling of personal names, points out that the winners have not encountered any difficulty – having entered the name with the w, x or q in the civil status record, this name also appears in the Population Register. Regitra, Real Estate Register and other institutions issue the documents on this basis, i.e. a person who has acquired the right to Newman’s marriage certificate on a trial basis will be able to obtain a driver’s license, title and other documents with an original record upon enforcement of the decision. The European Foundation of Human Rights counts nearly forty winning cases, most of them contains mixed families and children born to them who have taken the opportunity to unify the non-native surnames of family members through the judicial path.