The term distinctive signs refers to trademarks, geographical Indications and appellations of Origin, Domain and other Names. EU law only provides rules on trademarks and geographical indications. All other characteristics and distinctive signs are subject to the national legislation. European trademark law and harmonized national trademark law in principle permit the registration of any sign as a trademark. In particular, all kinds of words, including personal names have the general capacity to constitute a trademark. The protection afforded by registration is however dependent on whether the concrete sign shows distinctiveness to which products or services it relates and alludes to its business origins. General terms or descriptive terms do not always provide sufficient distinctiveness to a sign. The combined use however of those general terms with descriptive terms can indeed be registered because they constitute a distinguishable identity. Artistic terms contrarily are mostly advantageous. Upon registration of a certain sign the owner obtains an exclusive right and as proprietor is the only one permitted to use said sign for labelling his / her products or services with the terms provided at registration. Trademark law stipulates use of a sign not only in relation to its respective product / services but also in relation to similar products / services where there is a likelihood of confusion to the consumer. Famous trademarks are in addition protected from measures of image transfers. The owner of the trademark can take actions against both the actual usage of identical signs or signs which induse confusion, and / or to achieve removal of a violating sign which is itself registered as a trademark. It is still possible to use one’s own name in business operations although a third party has previously registered it as a trademark or as a part of a trademark, as long as it is only used within reasonable habits of trade so that the identity or similarity will not be misused to gain the reputation of said third party’s trademark. It is possible to use third party trademarks to for the purpose of identifying or referring to goods or services as those of the proprietor of that trade mark, in particular, where the use of that trade mark is necessary to indicate the intended purpose of a product or service, in particular as accessories or spare parts.

Surnames can be analyzed from three perspectives: as a linguistic sign (M+o+z+a+r+t), as a feature related to an individual (Leopold Mozart), or as a feature of a group (Leopold, Wolfgang, Konstanze Mozart). In this article, juridical regulations concerning these three aspects are discussed with special focus on the linguistic perspective. It is shown in which way juridical regulations influence the identification function of names and how they can lead to the impoverishment or the extension of a language’s surname inventory. From a linguist’s viewpoint, it is advisable to relax the strict juridical regulations relating to the use of personal names. Introducing personal numbers would facilitate this process.

Until the 18th century the name of a natural person was not a legal issue in Germany. The determination of a person’s name – first and family name – was rather a matter of custom. According to Roman tradition which German law adopted generally it was allowed to change the name without any involvement of the State – no person was legally bound to his or her previous name. The article describes the development to a legal regulation of personal names by the State and describes the rules currently in force in Germany. It is shown that the first name of a child is determined by the (relatively) free choice of the parents, while the child himself is bound to the given name normally through all his life. A change of name is allowed only on the basis of an administrative decision of an authority which requires the person to show an important reason for the change of his or her name. The family name is also set by law. Traditionally, the name of the husband was transferred to the wife. This approach violated the principle of equal rights of men and women guaranteed by the German constitution of the 20th century. The article reports on legal reforms which introduced step-by-step a rather surprising freedom of choice for married couples in the determining their marital name.

British personal names from a linguistic perspective. ‒ On the Continent, names have been heavily regulated since the 19th century. In Great Britain, on the other hand, acquiring and changing a name are governed by custom rather than law, although some legal rules exist for the names of legal entities. In its first part, this article considers how natural persons acquire (1.1.) and change (1.2.) their name in Great Britain. It also discusses three – potentially conflicting – interests that might be affected by a change of name, i.e. the interests of the public and in particular the state; the interests of other persons bearing the same name; and the interests of parents in the case of a minor child’s change of name (1.3.). In its second part, the article deals with the names of legal entities (2.). It concludes with a short resumé.

I present the essentials of my thinking about names over the last 20 years, stimulated mainly from a historical linguistic point of view to think about the question of how expressions which are not names etymologically come to be used as names. The resultant theoretical approach, The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP), is intended to be valid for names in all categories: place-names, personal names, business names, and so on. As regards the law, personal names and business names form the most interesting categories, but I draw most of my examples from the categories of names applying to persons. I set out what seem from the perspective of TPTP to be the most important linguistic questions about the nature of names that may have legal implications, and the answers to which may vary in different jurisdictions. These questions are framed with personal names in mind, but some may apply also in the case of businesses.

Using examples taken from historical name inventories, focusing on Portugal and France, this paper delineates mechanisms of name-giving (or better naming) as a result of administrative practice without any legal basis. An analysis by social classes (middle and under classes, aristocracy, foundlings, among others) demonstrate significant differences.

This article deals with problems related to the tradition of name evidences in written documents. Those written sources functioning as mediating medium for the variant types of the names, have a specific context of origin and tradition, which makes its use for the etymological derivation problematic. Taking the example of the written evidences cited in the German Book of Water Names edited by Albrecht Greule for the rivers Milde, Biese and Aland, the importance of a source-critical analysis for every single document used there shall be shown. The aim of the study is not only to provide new insights into the etymological derivation of the river names in the Altmark, but also to illustrate the importance of an interdisciplinary approach in onomatology.

The Slavonic district Quezici in the light of place names. ‒ The Slavonic district Quezici is mentioned for the first time in a document by Otto I, dated 961, as regio Quezici, in qua inest civitas Ilburg. Past linguistic research localized this district as a narrow strip of land beginning on the left bank of the Mulde river in the vicinity of Eilenburg which extended ca. 15 km to the north. The analysis and mapping of the Slavonic place names in the Eilenburg district revealed a clearly definable settlement area farther south. It extended from Taucha in the west to Müglenz, east of the Mulde. In the west it bordered on the pagus Chutici, in the north on the tribal area of the Siusili, in the south on the district Neletici. In the east a wide primeval forest belt separated the Quezici, Old Sorbian *Kvasici ‘Kvas people’, from the Slavonic tribes in the Elbe valley.

In the last years two millennia were celebrated in Merseburg: In 1013 the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Henry II, met there with the King of Poland, Bolesław Chrobry, and in 1015 the Merseburg cathedral was consecrated. Thus it is not surprising that linguists, too, took again some interest in the town and the still unclear etymology of its name. The first was Christian Zschieschang, showing in two papers the potential relevance of the medieval etymology ‘city/castle of (the war-god) Mars’, the second was Karlheinz Hengst, proposing the name might mean ‘city / castle with a good overview (over the surroundings)’ and the last one to join was Harald Bichlmeier arguing (based on an idea by Albrecht Greule) for a ‘castle/town at the area with rocks / stones / pebbles’.

The name of the small town Merseburg, some 15 km south of the city of Halle (Saale) has puzzled researchers for decades. Several solutions have been proposed, but all of them were flawed with respect to phonology and / or morphology and / or semantics. Here a new solution, first proposed by Albrecht Greule in 2014 can be corroborated taking also the geological formations of the surroundings of Merseburg into account. Greule connected the first part of the compound name Merse- with names of lakes and islands in Scandinavia. Together with a Swedish dialectal term for ‘heap of stones’ these names point to several terms with the structure Proto-Germ. *mVrs/zV- ‘(having) stone(s)/pebble(s)/rock(s)’ (originally ‘the crushed one’ vel sim.). North of the city of Merseburg we find on the left bank of the river Saale – below thick layers of mud, which might not be older then the Middle-Ages – an area of about 500 × 3000 m characterized exactly by rock and pebbles. Thus Merseburg might have been the ‘castle / town at the area with rocks / stones / pebbles’ – or, more pointedly: the ‘castle on the rocks’.