1er July 2022, at 8 a.m., David Sina was the first to enter the town hall of Grenoble, identity papers in hand, heading for the civil status services. When he came out a little later, he wasn’t quite the same. The young man of 27 years old was going to be able to officially bear the name of his mother and to be called David Marial from now on, once the period of reflection of one month has passed.
According to the Ministry of Justice, during the summer of 2022, nearly 40,000 French citizens asked, like David, to change their surname, a process authorized by the Vignal law of March 2, 2022. This procedure, which responded to a strong societal demand, allows any adult person, once in their life, to substitute their mother’s name for their father’s free of charge or vice versa, or to combine them to obtain a double name, in the sense Of his choice. Until now, the process was costly (you had to pay for the publication before Official newspaper and in a local newspaper), long and uncertain, based on strict criteria (a ridiculous, foreign-sounding name that we want to save from extinction). As a result, it was requested by 4,000 people per year, compared to 6,500 per month since the entry into force of the law on 1er July.
“Names carry a language as one carries a garment”writes the psychoanalyst Céline Masson in the article “The language of names: changing your name means changing your language », published in the journal Mediterranean clinics (Eres, 2011). Mask of exile, transgenerational heritage, the name takes on different faces. And, sometimes, it weighs, irritates, inconveniences, to the point of wanting to offload it. “We have sad stories, based on violence, abandonment, ruptures, by people who wish to free themselves from a name, testimonies of love, of gratitude, in particular towards the mother who raised her children alone. , or back to basics, in the name of foreign origin abandoned on arrival in France”, reports Marine Gatineau-Dupré, founder of the collective Porte mon nom, at the origin of the bill. So many unique, intimate stories that tell the diversity of family situations in France, towards the recognition of a filial identity based on one’s own experience.
“My brother calls me ‘cousin'”
This is the case of David Marial. Born in Arès, in Afghanistan, he was then called Kamel when he arrived in France at the age of 3. He subsequently changed Kamel to David as an adult, when he was naturalized. So much for the first name. Regarding his surname, his father, Afghan journalist, edited it to not be recognized when he fled the country and the Taliban who were hunting him in 1996. He then chose for himself and for his family the name Sina, in homage to Ibn Sina, known as “Avicenna”, philosopher and doctor with theories imprinted with East and West. A name that David no longer wishes to bear, unlike Marial, that of his mother, of Australian origin, who has crossed the generations and is now worn by its cousins on the other side of the globe. “I always wanted to change Sina, this “false name” to which nothing attached me, to take Marial, to keep the real roots, the real heritage. It is also a tribute to my maternal grandfather, who passed away. »
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