How is a request for a name change assessed to avoid its extinction?

As part of a process of change of name on legitimate grounds, a mother and her son were authorized by decree dated 17 June 2022 to add to their surnames the surname of their respective maternal great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother, in order to prevent the name from dying out.

Several members of the family then decided to oppose that decree on the grounds that the adult daughter of one of the applicants now had that name added to her own, following an application submitted in the context of the new name change procedure resulting from filiation which entered into force on 1^er July 2022, and that the other adult child of that same applicant had taken steps for the same purpose.

The Conseil d’État rejects the applicants’ request, stating that such circumstances, after the enactment of the contested decree, could not usefully be relied on. After recalling that, at the time of its publication, the name claimed was in the process of extinction in the family, since there were no bearers capable of transmitting it, the Conseil d’État considers that the defendants thus justified a legitimate interest in requesting the change of their name.