To the same extent that e-mail communication facilitates everyday work, it can be a trip hazard, too, that you neither see the people you are communicating with nor hear their voice. I’ve had a first-hand experience of this dilemma this morning when I opened an e-mail asking for picture material for a holiday magazine in the United Arab Emirates. It was signed by Robin. Luckily, in English there usually is no need to state the gender of the addressee in direct speech. Spanish is not as tolerant and I would have got myself into scrapes by writing ‘Bienvenido a la página web de Zell am See-Kaprun’. Why? Well, unlike the hero of the poor in Sherwood Forest or the friend of the winged retaliator over the roofs of Gotham City suggest, Robin was not a man but a lovely female colleague as I found out during a very pleasant phone call later in the day.

According to German naming rights, a first name has to be recognizable as such immediately (i.e. no place names, object names or titles). When foreign or unisex names are chosen which do not clearly tell whether the child is male or female (e.g. Kim, Alex, Sascha, Shannon, Shiva, Yael), a second, unmistakable name has to be added. The name by which the child will be called and which will be accepted as valid signature on documents can be marked by underlining it. Registrars may reject offensive names which are not in the best interest of the child by appealing to the parents’ sense of responsibility.

Not all countries have regulations which are as strict when it comes to choosing a name for your offspring as Germany does. In Latin America it is not unusual for parents to call their son Jesus while this would be a less common choice in Spain since the interjection ‘Jesús’ is used when someone sneezes. By the way: Jesus only became an option for parents in Germany in 1999. Consuelo (solace) and Esperanza (hope) are common names for girls in Latin America, too. Regularly, there is notice of … well, very creative names, US couple chose for their children which make me wonder whether something like a ‘parents’ licence’ should be introduced. Personally, I’d prefer not to live my life being called Sunshine or Sage Moon Blood – but each to his own, right?

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• Grammatik oder ‘Die Kunst des Lesens und Schreibens’: Vornamen mit ‘gender deficit’
• Subject and verb agreement and grammatical peer pressure