Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos

KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA Institute of the Lithuanian Language THE WRITING OF PERSONAL NAMES IN DOCUMENTS OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE LANGUAGE KEYWORDS: personal name, given name, surname, cultural heritage, state language, Constitution, language policy, sociolinguistics. INTRODUCTION In the near future, the Seimas aims to decide how personal names will be written, pronounced, and used in the Republic of Lithuania. This is a very important issue for the state, the nation, and the language. The author has been involved with this issue, which lies at the intersection of several academic disciplines, for 20 years, and has reviewed or prepared draft laws that do not contravene the Constitution. The initiative to change the spelling of personal names in documents was raised not by linguists, but primarily by politicians. In justifying their proposals, the proponents of the draft laws cited reasons that are inconsistent with linguistic scholarship, as well as other arguments, but these still need to be addressed. The aim of the article is to examine the most important principles governing the writing of the given names and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania in documents and to propose the most suitable draft law. The objectives of the article are to briefly discuss current problems in the spelling of personal names, research methodology, the most important available data, draft laws, and their relationship to the functions of the state language. PERSONAL NAMES—PART OF LANGUAGE AND PRIMARILY AN OBJECT OF LINGUISTIC RESEARCH The issue of personal-name spelling could not and cannot be resolved quickly, appropriately, and definitively because, in seeking to adapt the alphabets and spelling principles of other languages to Lithuanian, people began to falsify scientific data, claiming that: 1) personal names belong not to language but are trademarks; 2) they are not part of language but part of a person’s identity and its principal marker; 3) the right to decide on the spelling of personal names (i.e., personal identity) belongs not to society or state institutions, but only to the “owner” of the personal name; 4) a shared family surname must be retained (it was also distorted by occupying regimes)—as part of private life; 5) Lithuanian surnames are supposedly exclusively Lithuanian, while non-Lithuanian surnames supposedly belong to non-Lithuanians; 6) there is, and ought to be, an “original” spelling and pronunciation of surnames; 7) Grammar of Contemporary Lithuanian supposedly permits disregarding the Lithuanian alphabet and spelling principles; 8) in all BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 2 countries (except Lithuania and Latvia) whose writing systems use Latin-based scripts, personal names are written “originally” in documents, i.e. using all Latin-based characters; 9) transferring personal names spelled in the Latin script from all languages into Lithuanian would introduce only 3 new letters; 10) “original” surname spelling was introduced in Lithuania in 1938, etc. (see www.lrs.lt ŽTK 2014 12 03. First and surname—part of personal identity; draft law XIIP-1653, etc.). It has long been known that the vocabulary of every language comprises common nouns (written with a lowercase letter) and proper nouns (personal names, place names, etc., written with an uppercase letter; cf. LKE 305, 379, 396–402). Personal names are entirely unjustifiably regarded as trademarks. A trademark is any sign intended to distinguish the goods or services of one person from those of another and capable of being represented graphically. A trademark may consist of signs such as words, surnames, given names, artistic pseudonyms, names of legal entities, and slogans, which are afforded legal protection under the Law on Trademarks of the Republic of Lithuania (“Legal Acts Governing the Protection of Inventions, Designs, Trademarks and Semiconductor Product Topographies in the Republic of Lithuania” 2013: 253–255). A trademark may be a geographical indication—a place name or other word or sign by which it is possible to determine, directly or indirectly, that a product originates from a particular territory, region, or locality, and which links the product’s quality, reputation, or other essential characteristics to its geographical origin (Law on Trademarks of the Republic of Lithuania. Available online: www.lrs.lt). A personal name is a person’s proper name (LKE 27), a conventional sign for identifying a person, rather than an actual part of personal identity. Residents named Jono, Petro, Stepono, Tado, Kotrynos, Teresės and others are not saints, identical (i.e. the same, equivalent; DLKŽ 830) to their patron saints after whom they were named. Kirkilas is not a screamer (one who shouts, “kir-kia”), Kubilius is usually no longer a maker of tubs, and Vilkas is not a beast resembling a dog, etc. Baltakis, Bepirštis, Šaikus, Sysas may be more handsome than Gružulis, while Mažylis may be bigger than Didžulis or Ilgakojis. If personal names began to be written with Polish letters, the former eastern Aukštaitians Varnialo, Žverialo, Žuvialo, Gerul, Gražul, Mažul and others would not preserve even their former identity. The standard language makes no exceptions for the owner of a personal name regarding the spelling, pronunciation, or stress of their given name or surname. Many women have the names Asta, Aušra, Dalia, Diana, Edita, Elena, Gražina, Irena, Janina, Jurgita, Kristina, Lina, Loreta, Marija, Rasa, Regina, Renata, Rima, Rita, Roma, Sigita, Vida, Violeta, Vita, etc., and are accustomed in private conversation to stressing the penultimate syllable of their names in the nominative and instrumental singular, but when speaking publicly they must stress the final syllable (cf. Mokomasis lietuvių kalbos ir kirčiavimo žodynas 1989: 65). Surnames are not merely part of a family’s private life—they are also part of the history of language, culture, and the state. Over 800 years, the personal names of Lithuania’s residents have been written in 6 different languages and 6 different alphabets, and have been greatly distorted; nevertheless, this has not fundamentally changed the identity of many Lithuanians. Surnames in the archaic Lithuanian language have preserved only the shared root or even stem of the family and kin surname, but women’s surnames differ from men’s: for example, the husband is Daukša, the wife Daukšienė, and the daughter Daukšaitė. We cannot agree with the 2008 statement by the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language that “personal names from foreign languages do not belong to the system of the Lithuanian language [...]. In every language, a certain number of facts from other languages function, including personal names and place names” (www.vlkk.lt, 2008 01 14. Detailed response to the appeal “More attention to the legal protection of the Lithuanian language”). Personal names from any language undergo at least some adaptation in Lithuanian, as they do in other Indo-European languages. According to the aforementioned counter-argu- BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 3 In accordance with the rule for stressing the final syllable Obamà, Irinà, Jelenà, Lenà, Marinà, Natašà, Tatjanà, Žanà and other personal names in the Lithuanian singular nominative and instrumental cases are stressed not “authentically” but in Lithuanian, that is, on the final syllable, even though the bearers of those names may have no connection whatsoever with Lithuania. In accordance with the rules of the Lithuanian language, we also write and pronounce not Pūcin, Lukašenka, but Putinas, Lukašenka, and so on—this is clear to many. The surnames of Lithuanian citizens are adapted to the system of the Lithuanian language, although only 30 percent of them are exclusively Lithuanian (derived from Lithuanian or Baltic common and proper nouns) and 70 percent are partly non-Lithuanian (derived from foreign names, Slavicized Lithuanian personal names, or borrowed) (LKE 400–402). Lithuanians and local Poles have surnames of the same origins. So-called original spelling of surnames is not used exactly letter for letter in any country, because alphabets and spelling systems differ between languages. Lithuanians would read Polish personal names Katarzyna, Malgorzata, Tomaszewski as Ka-tar-zy-na, Mal-gor-za-ta, To-mas-zev-ski, although Poles pronounce them Ka-ta-ży-na, Mal-go-ża-ta, To-ma-ševs-ki. This demonstrates why it remains appropriate in Lithuania to write non-Lithuanian personal names according to their pronunciation rather than their spelling in a foreign language. The European Human Rights Foundation (EFHR) published a “Step by step” guide—change your first and last name if “your first or last name has been Lithuanianized and you want it recorded in its original spelling” (www.efhr.eu/asmenvardziu-rasyba). The foundation will prepare such complaints free of charge, citing nearly 8,800 records held by the Lithuanian Republic’s Residents’ Register Service in which foreigners’ surnames or Lithuanian surnames Barz-da, Ker-za are registered (cf. Lithuanian kerzukas [a short person; one who does not grow]). The foundation in question reads those surnames in Polish: Baž-da, Ke-ža. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatikos (1994, 1996, 2006) rašybos ir transkripcijos skyriuje, kurį parašė šio straipsnio autorius (su Aleksu Girdeniu), išnašoje paminėta, kad rašant užsieniečių asmenvardžius šalia lietuvių abėcėlės raidžių gali būti vartojamos dar 3 raidės (o rečiau – dar 3) iš kitų kalbų abėcėlių. Ši nuostata apima tik užsienio piliečių pavardžių rašymą mokslinėje literatūroje, o ne dokumentuose. Diacritical marks on Latin-based letters in personal names are generally omitted in Latvia, Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States of America, and elsewhere. For example, Rūta Meilutytė is written abroad as Ruta Meilutyte; often, the surnames of wives and daughters are not distinguished from those of men. Even the aforementioned foundation knows that Lithuanian women who go abroad to study or work ask to change their Lithuanian personal names because of “difficulties associated with spelling in other countries. For example, a person named ‘Ana’, seeking to avoid further difficulties (e.g., administrative ones), wants to change it to ‘Anna’, because in that country even her original name ‘Ana’ is written with a double ‘nn’ (www.efhr.eu/asmenvardziu-rasyba). If personal names written in Latin-based alphabets of all languages were transferred into Lithuanian, there would be not 3 new letters but about 150 (no one has counted them precisely, knows how to pronounce them, or even knows how much writing the aforementioned letters in all fields would cost Lithuania). It is reported that point 22 was added to the Surnames Act on 1938 12 06: “A non-Lithuanian’s surname shall be written according to the rules of the Lithuanian language and spelling, but it may also be written as its bearer writes it in their own language, if they so wish and if that language uses the Lithuanian alphabet.” In this case, as many as six things are left unsaid: 1) this addition came after Poland’s ultimatum to Lithuania; 2) this point 22 did not specify where and how exactly these exceptions could be applied; 3) in practice, this requirement was not observed in documents; 4) at the time, the law under consideration concerned not the de-Lithuanianization of surnames but their re-Lithuanianization; 5) in 1939, the Lithuanian Government and Lithuanian institutions worked to restore and publish as quickly as possible standardized Lithuanian forms of surnames and place names in the Vilnius Region (Salys 1983: 490–670); 6) point 22 of the said law refers not to a Latin-based alphabet but to the Lithuanian alphabet. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 4 If universal foreign spelling of personal names were legalized, then, according to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of 2009 03 24, 3 (out of 9) criteria for language vitality would be violated in Lithuania: 1) intergenerational language transmission, 2) government and institutional attitudes and language policy, 3) community members’ relationship with their language. The State Commission of the Lithuanian Language (hereinafter, VLKK) prepared a qualified response on this issue, but makes errors regarding the spelling of foreigners’ first and last names (cf. Astas 2014). If a personal name is written in our documents using the characters of another language, that foreign language is also used as an official language in our Republic (cf. Kniūkšta 2013: 157, 165). In such a case, the spelling and even pronunciation and inflection rules of another language may be imposed on the Lithuanian state language. The VLKK, which under its statutes is charged with protecting and defending the Lithuanian language, took a step toward changing the Lithuanian spelling system that had been in force for 110 years. In the VLKK’s view, the first and last names of citizens of the Lithuanian Republic in personal documents both must be written using Lithuanian characters and must no longer be written using Lithuanian characters “in light of the needs of contemporary society [...]: a) the first and last names of foreigners who have acquired citizenship of the Lithuanian Republic are entered in personal documents issued by the Lithuanian Republic using Latin-based characters, based on the source document—a personal document issued by another state (in accordance with international practice, diacritical marks may be omitted for technical reasons); b) the surnames of a citizen of the Lithuanian Republic who has married a foreigner and taken that person’s surname, as well as the surnames of their children, may be written using Latin-based characters, with the foreigner’s personal document regarded as the source document. The personal names of foreign citizens are to be written in other documents in accordance with the principles set out in VLKK Resolution No. 60” (www.lrs.lt). We propose that foreign spelling, if requested, be used only in special identity cards or in parentheses after the Lithuanian form of the personal name, and on the second page of the passport—and nowhere else: not in registers, bank, transport, library, or other documents, nor in the press, and so on. THE WRITING OF CITIZENS’ PERSONAL NAMES The surnames of all Lithuanian citizens that existed before 1940 began to be published 30 years ago in the Dictionary of Lithuanian Surnames (vol. 1, 1985; vol. 2, 1989), and this occasioned no discussion. In its ruling of 21 October 1999, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania stated that the state language is a constitutional value which “protects the identity of the nation, integrates the civic nation, ensures the expression of national sovereignty, the integrity and indivisibility of the state, and the normal functioning of state and municipal institutions” (Valstybės žinios 1999). Entries in official documents of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania, irrespective of their nationality or other characteristics, must be written using Lithuanian characters; otherwise, “not only would the constitutional principle of the state language be denied, but the activities of state and municipal institutions and other enterprises, institutions and organisations would also be disrupted. This would make it more difficult for citizens to exercise their rights and legitimate interests and would violate the principle of their equality before the law enshrined in the Constitution” (Valstybės žinios 1999). These statements apply to the spelling of all proper names in all Lithuanian-language texts, since periodicals, books, advertising, given names and surnames, place names, and other public inscriptions are all spheres of public life in the state. In accordance with the treaty between Lithuania and Poland, the surnames of Lithuania’s Poles are traditionally written according to their sound and are not Lithuanianised—Lithuanian suffixes are not added, vowels are not changed, etc., although Lithuanian surnames are Polonised in Poland. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 5 Nevertheless, there are still demands that Lithuania use the Polish alphabet as well, with eight additional letters (rather than just one w). Writing surnames and given names using all Latin-based alphabets would add about 150 new letters (including all diacritics) to the Lithuanian language, causing the greatest turmoil in the state language, since the familiar letters (32) would make up less than 20 per cent of that alphabet. Thus, the debate is not about the spelling of Polish surnames, but about the functioning and spelling of the Lithuanian state language. We have no information that the given names and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania were written using other languages’ alphabets in documents before the occupation. The High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe stated that Lithuania itself must decide how Polish surnames are to be written. The Constitution may be amended by a referendum of the entire nation, not by promises or wishes of any official. The European Court of Human Rights (Mentzen v. Latvia, application no. 46726/99) has already rejected claims concerning the alteration of the written form of the surname Mentzen to Mencena under the rules on the spelling and registration of given names and surnames in documents in force in Latvia, which require all surnames and given names of Latvian citizens to be transcribed according to Latvian spelling rules, reproducing as accurately as possible their pronunciation in the original language. It was emphasised that people’s given names and surnames belong to a wholly different category from trademarks or company names and are governed by different rules. A surname is used not only by the person who bears it but also by society; therefore, surnames must be regulated for the convenience of the majority. The European Court of Human Rights further emphasised: Latvia is the only place in the world where the existence and development of the Latvian language—and thus of the Latvian nation—can be guaranteed. The prohibition or restriction of the Latvian language within its own state territory must be regarded as a danger to the democratic order of the state. The measures which the applicant called “interference in her private life” pursued the legitimate aim of defending the right of other residents of Latvia to use their language freely throughout the state’s territory, that is, of defending the country’s democratic order (Mentzen v. Latvia, application no. 46726/99). The European Court of Human Rights, which has the status of a constitutional court, has no doubt that the written form of a surname in documents directly affects other areas of language use, since they are closely connected. If only the “original” written form of foreign surnames were permitted in documents, it would spread increasingly through various texts. This would pose a serious threat to the quality of the state language and its functioning as a unified system. The harm to the state language caused by writing surnames using other languages’ alphabets would far outweigh any inconvenience that a person might experience in daily life when carrying a passport in which their surname had been transcribed according to the rules and traditions of the state language. Transcription of a surname is not its translation into the state language, but merely its adaptation to the grammatical features of that language. All these observations apply to Lithuanian as well. In violation of Article 14 of the treaty between Lithuania and Poland, the given names and surnames of many Lithuanians in Poland are not written according to their sound, but are Polonised and drastically altered, with Polish suffixes, without distinguishing gender, etc.: Birgelis, Birgelienė are written identically as Birgel, Malinauskas – Malinowski, Vitkauskas – Witkowski, Valinčius – Wołyniec, Zakarauskas – Zakrewski, Vaicekauskienė – Wojciechowska, and so on. In theory, under very difficult and inconvenient conditions, it is also permitted to write names authentically in Polish passports, but such documents are not valid at banks, in registers, or elsewhere. Consequently, only 0.2 per cent of Lithuanian-speaking Lithuanians living in their ethnic lands have documents bearing the Lithuanian form of their surname. All their surnames are listed and discussed in Zigmas Zinkevičius’s book Lithuanian Heritage in the Surnames of the Suwałki and Augustów Region in Poland (2010). BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 6 DRAFT LAWS ON NAMES AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE LANGUAGE The draft Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the Writing of Names and Surnames in Documents, submitted by Irena Šiaulienė and Gediminas Kirkilas, changes state language policy, the spelling of personal names, pronunciation rules, and the functions of the state language. The purpose of this draft is not to ensure the legal protection of the names and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania—the cultural heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—but to destroy it. A common family surname is partially ensured by the third point of the Resolution of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania of 1991 01 31 “On the Writing of Names and Surnames in the Passport of a Citizen of the Republic of Lithuania,” which permits personal names to be written in accordance with primary documents. More than 1,000 Lithuanian citizens married to foreigners signed the Demand to Defend the State Language and Territorial Integrity, refusing to have foreign letters in their surnames. The third part of Article 2 of the draft law should be worded as follows: “The source document is one issued by a competent institution of the Republic of Lithuania”. The draft violates the fundamental principle of Lithuanian spelling—that different sounds (phonemes) should be represented by different letters—and adds approximately 150 new letters to the 32 Lithuanian letters, none of which people know how to pronounce or write, and none of which are found in any alphabet. The draft law is contrary to the Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania (“The Lithuanian Nation, having preserved its spirit, native language, script and customs”), Article 3 (“No one may restrict or limit the sovereignty of the Nation or appropriate sovereign powers belonging to the entire Nation”), Article 7 (“No law or other act contrary to the Constitution shall be valid”), Article 10 (“The territory of the State of Lithuania is integral and indivisible into any state entities”), and Article 14 (“The state language is Lithuanian”). The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter, the LRKT) examined only whether the spelling of the names and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania complied with Article 14 of the Constitution. In its ruling of 1999-10-21, “On the compliance of the Resolution of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania of 1991-01-31 ‘On the Writing of Names and Surnames in the Passport of a Citizen of the Republic of Lithuania’ with the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania,” the Constitutional Court demonstrated that “a person’s name and surname must be written in the citizen’s passport in the state language. Otherwise, the constitutional status of the state language would be denied.” In its 2014 decision, the LRKT neither rejected nor abandoned any of these provisions, noting: “...other rules for writing a person’s name and surname in the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania may be established, differing from those laid down in point 2 of the Resolution of the Supreme Council of 1991-01-31 ‘On the Writing of Names and Surnames in the Passport of a Citizen of the Republic of Lithuania,’ when changes to them are proposed in accordance with the laws of the Republic of Lithuania by a state institution composed of professional linguists—specialists in the Lithuanian language (and, to the extent permitted by law, representatives of other branches of linguistics), which is empowered to safeguard the state language.” In the explanatory memorandum, the authors of the draft registered on 1 April 2014 groundlessly claim that “the draft was prompted by the LRKT decision of 2014-02-27. This decision does not propose, for example, ‘writing the names and surnames of Lithuanian citizens in foreign letters.’” Under the Constitution, the laws and the LRKT decision, other rules for writing a person’s name and surname in the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania, as referred to in the aforementioned point 2, could only be those proposed by Vincas Urbutis (2007: 16 et seq.): “2. The names and surnames of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania who are not of Lithuanian ethnicity shall be written in Lithuanian letters, with pronunciation and grammatical forms adapted to Lithuanian, while preserving authentic personal names and the norms of pronunciation, inflection and spelling of the state language.” BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 7 The LRKT also did not propose that political parties may compel an institution of professional linguists to carry out the will of any party, or establish a new institution of linguists that would implement party directives precisely and promptly. The LRKT decision states that “when establishing the legal regulation governing the writing of a person’s name and surname in the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania, the legislature needs special knowledge; it must obtain an official conclusion and a clearly stated position and clear proposals from persons (institutions) possessing professional knowledge, which the legislature cannot disregard.” Such clear proposals have already been formulated in the section “What Could a Law on the Writing of Names and Surnames in Documents Look Like?” in Pranas Kniūkšta’s book Between Grammar and Politics (2013: 145–170). Z. Zinkevičius (Lithuanian Personal Names, 2008; Surnames of Polish Speakers in the Vilnius Region, 2012), Vitalija Maciejauskienė, Vincas Urbutis, Vitas Labutis, Arnoldas Piročkinas, Alvydas Butkus and others have also written about this in their works. And not one of them proposed writing surnames in foreign letters. The LRKT decision apparently deliberately refers not to one institution of professional linguists, but to institutions. In addition to the VLKK, there is the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, which has a Department of Onomastics (since 2014 12 05, the Centre for Baltic Language and Onomastic Research), whose regulations assign it the task of shaping the strategy and policy for onomastic research and use in the Republic of Lithuania. In 2008, a seminar of professional linguists was held at the Institute; following discussions, it proposed that the names and surnames of Lithuanian citizens be written in documents using the alphabet of the state language. A second onomastics seminar held at the Institute in 2014 reaffirmed these provisions. The aforementioned draft law also fails to comply with the latest LRKT decision: without any consultations with institutions of professional linguists, the Government prepares and approves Rules for Writing Names and Surnames and prepares and implements the restructuring of registers and state information systems. This is done hastily and arbitrarily, “before this law enters into force,” although it would be contrary to the still-effective Resolution No. I-1031 of 1991 01 31 “On the Writing of Names and Surnames in the Passport of a Citizen of the Republic of Lithuania” (Valstybės žinios 1991, No. 5-132), which will cease to have effect only when this law enters into force. A similar draft Law on the Writing of Names and Surnames in Documents was submitted to the Seimas in 2010 and rejected by a majority of the Seimas; a draft that did not contradict the Constitution was selected for consideration instead. Under that draft, after a name and surname had been entered in the passport of a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania in the state language, the person could, if they so wished, have their name and surname indicated in a different, non-Lithuanian script and in an unadapted form in the section for other entries in the same passport. The draft by I. Šiaulienė and G. Kirkilas under consideration contains no provision consistent with the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. At the request of a citizen of the Republic of Lithuania, their surname must be written “in non-Lithuanian Latin-based characters” if the surname appears in those characters in the source document, with no exceptions for documents from periods of occupation, when personal names were forcibly Slavicized. The explanatory memorandum to the draft law anticipates no possible adverse consequences of the law’s adoption, although, in violation of Article 28 of the Constitution and Articles 4, 5, 6, 20 and 21 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the law would restrict the rights and freedoms of the autochthonous population and the majority population—the Lithuanians—as well as of other ethnic communities and national minorities living in Lithuania. Article 29 of the Constitution prohibits restricting human rights and freedoms and forbids granting privileges on the grounds of nationality, language or beliefs. The sponsors of the draft conceal the fact that all complaints by the Electoral Action of Poles have been rejected in the European Union, as was the complaint of the Latvian citizen Mencenos. In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights refused to consider the complaint by Lithuanian resident M. Klečkovskio concerning the spelling of his surname, and in 2011 the Court of Justice of the European Union M. Runevič-Vardyn stated that the Court does not decide BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 8 the problem of uniform surnames for spouses, one of whom is a foreign national, and gives states the opportunity to determine national legal regulation on this matter at their discretion (cf. Kuzborska 2012: 175). The draft incorrectly claims that writing first names and surnames in Latin-based characters is “customary in all countries (except Lithuania and Latvia) whose writing systems are Latin-based” (p. 4). It omits the fact that no such spelling is used in the ethnic Lithuanian lands in Poland, and that many other countries of the world (except the Czech Republic) do not have the letters č, š, ž, ė, ū, etc., and likewise do not use the suffixes in the surnames of married and unmarried Lithuanian women. Most countries write surnames and first names according to their pronunciation and their own spelling rules. Article 11 of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities leaves states the option of writing all personal names according to the pronunciation of the state language (“in accordance with the conditions laid down by their legal systems”). Under this article, place names and street names in Lithuania and Latvia do not need to be written in a non-state language, because that does not meet the requirements of the states’ legal systems and violates the rights of the majority of residents (Art. 20), as well as, in particular, the principles of state sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, and political independence (Art. 21). Paragraph 68 of the commentary to this Convention reiterates: “the parties may write the surname(s) of a person belonging to a national minority using the characters of the official language as pronounced.” Article 14 of the 1994 Treaty on Friendly Relations and Good-Neighbourly Cooperation between Lithuania and Poland provides for surnames to be written according to their pronunciation, and the treaty is implemented accurately in Lithuania, unlike in Poland. According to surveys conducted, only 20 to 40 percent of Lithuania’s Poles would like to write their surnames using letters from a foreign alphabet. Some of them would thereby lose their native everyday language more quickly. Lithuanian negotiators and the authors of the draft under discussion have so far failed to explain properly to Polish representatives and the public that there are few surnames in Lithuania of purely Polish origin (just as only about 30 percent are of purely Lithuanian origin). Most surnames are part of the cultural heritage of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania (known as Lituanica), which took root in ethnic Lithuanian lands and adapted to the language of the local population. Civilized parties and countries should not encroach on it. Poland has not acknowledged either its occupation of eastern Lithuania and the historic Lithuanian capital Vilnius from 1920 to 1939, or the forced Polonization of Lithuanian personal names and place names carried out by Poland. Inscriptions imposed during the occupation, if revived in Lithuania, would revive the consequences of that occupation. The members of the Seimas who signed as authors of the draft, I. Šiaulienė and G. Kirkilas, still do not answer question 12 in the explanatory memorandum: how much funding from state and municipal budgets and other state-established funds will be needed to implement the law. The need to restructure registers and systems, as well as the funds and time required, are only now promised to be assessed. In response, something is said about “uniform identification.” It is incorrectly reported that no expert assessments or conclusions were received during the preparation of this bill. This draft is not new—the earlier drafts and their assessments should have been mentioned. Over 20 years, there have been several. By adopting the proposed draft, we would abandon the cultural unity of the Baltic peoples, the functions of the state language would be curtailed, and the traditional, distinctive language system would be disrupted. Members of the Seimas I. Šiaulienė and G. Kirkilas, together with bill XIIP-1653, registered a draft law amending Article 3.282 of the Civil Code, XIIP-1654, under which a first name, surname, and place names are written according to the rules of the Lithuanian language unless other laws provide otherwise. To date, no laws on the state language, education, or any other matter have provided for writing “otherwise,” yet the draft laws on First Names and Surnames and on National Minorities are precisely intended to violate the Constitution. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 9 If altered, inauthentic place names from occupation regimes Wilno, Kowno, Memel, Szawli, Poniewież, etc., were to be legalized, this would amount to acknowledging that the Constitution no longer applies within the territory of the Republic of Lithuania and no longer protects its authentic toponymy, just as in the ethnic Lithuanian lands beyond its borders, where Tilžė is called Sovietsk, Ragainė–Nieman, Vidugiriai–Widugiery, Vilkapėdžiai–Wilkopędzie, Gervėčiai–Gierwiaty, Gardinas–Grodno, etc. This also encroaches on Article 14 of the Law on the State Language (“official, standardized forms of place names in the Republic of Lithuania shall be written in the state language”), Article 17 (“public inscriptions in Lithuania shall be written in the state language”), and the rulings of the Supreme Administrative Court (“The Lithuanian language, which under the Constitution has acquired the status of the state language, must be used in all state and local government institutions, and in all establishments, enterprises, and organizations located in Lithuania”). We propose rejecting the bill that contradicts the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and continuing consideration of the bill that is consistent with the Constitution, selected by the Seimas in 2010 and now prepared by 12 members of the Seimas—Valentinas Stundys, Rytas Kupčinskas, Algirdas Patackas, and others—the Bill on the Writing of First Names and Surnames in Documents, XIP-1675. This provision was also endorsed by 70,000 citizens of the Republic of Lithuania, seminars of professional linguists, and state and public organizations. CONCLUSIONS 1. Surnames from the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania are not the cultural heritage of Poland, Belarus or Russia, but of Lithuania. 2. Over the course of 800 years, the personal names of Lithuania’s residents have been written in six languages, and the currently established spelling of personal names may be considered authentic. People’s identities did not change as a result of changes to the spelling of their personal names. The spelling of personal names did not always correspond to a person’s native language. 3. The spelling of the personal names of Lithuania’s Poles in the state language, Lithuanian, is not a question of Polish personal names, but of the functioning of the Lithuanian language. 4. According to surveys of residents, between 5 and 40 percent of residents of the Vilnius and Šalčininkai districts would agree to have personal names written in Polish in documents, while only 1–10 percent of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania would support this. 70,000 citizens of Lithuania and over 1,000 people married to foreigners opposed this, signing the Demand to Defend the State Language of the Republic of Lithuania and the Integrity of Its Territory. 5. Letters from other alphabets in passports and new spelling principles would entail amendments to the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and the Law on the State Language. The unconstitutional draft law is based on ten erroneous claims discussed at the beginning of this article. 6. The Ministry of Justice is advised to prepare a legal act so that Poles could more easily change Russified surnames Jedinskij, Kvietkovskij, Tomaševskij, etc., into Polish ones (without the final consonant j), if they so wish. 7. It is proposed that all personal names written using letters from other alphabets be included in documents of the Republic of Lithuania only as supplementary information. This would take into account the recommendations of linguists’ seminars held at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language in 2008 and 2014. BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA. Asmenvardžių rašymas Lietuvos Respublikos dokumentuose ir valstybinės kalbos funkcijos 10 LITERATŪRA Astas V. 2014: Kam tarnauja Valstybinė lietuvių kalbos komisija? Prieiga internete: www.alkas.lt. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika, red. V. 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Zinkevičius Z. 2008: Lietuvių asmenvardžiai. Vilnius, Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Zinkevičius Z. 2010: Lietuviškas paveldas Suvalkų ir Augustavo krašto Lenkijoje pavardėse: polonizacijos apybraiža, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras. Zinkevičius Z. 2012: Vilnijos lenkakalbių pavardės, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras. Gauta 2014 11 24 KAZIMIERAS GARŠVA Lietuvių kalbos institutas Petro Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius [email protected] BENDRINĖ KALBA | 87 (2014) www.bendrinekalba.lt ISSN 2351-7204