ABSTRACT

Far from being a neutral administrative marker, the name often embodies genealogies of faith and cultural transmission, becoming a visible expression of religious identity in pluralistic societies. Drawing on European jurisprudence and comparative legal practices, the article examines how religiously connoted names are at times subject to erasure, alteration, or misrecognition within state registries, immigration systems, or public institutions. The analysis focuses on the tension between self-attributed religious identity and state-driven norms of linguistic conformity, transliteration, or cultural neutrality. In doing so, the paper reframes the right to a name as part of the broader right to freedom of religion or belief, and as a claim to symbolic visibility in secular democracies. Legal regimes that constrain religious naming practices, even unintentionally, may act as silent instruments of secularization and cultural assimilation, undermining both the dignity of religious subjects and the pluralistic ethos of constitutional orders. By linking the nominal dimension of legal identity to the freedom of conscience and the right to difference, the article invites a rethinking of secular legal frameworks in light of their implicit effects on religious expression. Ultimately, the right to a name is revealed as a micro-political battleground of inclusion, where faith, law, and citizenship converge.