Naming law in Sweden
former Swedish law
The naming law in Sweden (Swedish: lag om personnamn, alternately namnlagen) is a Swedish law which requires the approval of the government agency for names to be given to Swedish children. The parents must submit the proposed name of a child within three months of birth. The current law was enacted in 2017, replacing a 1982 law. The Swedish Tax Agency administers the registration of names in Sweden. The law has been revised since originally enacted; in 1983, it was made possible for a man to adopt his wife's or partner's name, as well as for a woman to adopt her husband's name.
The 2017 law states, in part: "First names shall not be approved if they can lead to discomfort for the person bearing the name, or for any other reason is unsuitable as a name" (§ 28). This text applies both when parents name their children and when an adult wants to change their own name. Unlike the 1982 law, the 2017 law gives the Swedish Tax Agency the ability to charge a fee for requesting to change your name. The law states nothing about registering which name is used on a daily basis, but the tax authority can register that if requested.
History
The first real national legislation on family names was the Name Ordinance of 5 December 1901, primarily meant to prevent non-noble families from giving their children the names of noble families.
The public source identifies “Naming law in Sweden” as former Swedish law. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Naming, Sweden and former.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2580549. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 1982, 1983 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “Naming law in Sweden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.