New Solutions and the Problems of Spelling the Forenames and Surnames of the Polish Minority in Lithuania in the Light of National and International Law

Abstract

The name is an integral part of a person’s identification, and the spelling of a citizen’s name in official documents is also indicative of a country’s policy towards its citizens. A person’s identification is linked to the nationality to which that person belongs, as well as being linked to the requirements of the law of the country, the traditions of that country and the norms of international law governing human rights.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Republic of Poland and the newly revived Republic of Lithuania found themselves in a new geopolitical space. Democratic political forces came to power in both countries, striving for a Western system of values with human rights as its foundation. Both Poland and Lithuania were home to significant numbers of people belonging to the Lithuanian and Polish national minorities respectively, whose rights needed to be defined according to the European standards. The spelling of the names and surnames of the Polish minority in Lithuania and the Lithuanian minority in Poland is one of the most important in this set of national minority rights. Therefore, this issue was included both in the Declaration on Friendly Relations and Good‑Neighbourly Cooperation between the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Lithuania signed on 13 January 1992, and in the Treaty on Friendly Relations and Good‑Neighbourly Cooperation ratified on 13 October 1994. Poland and Lithuania ratified the legal document Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and several others, which also referred to respecting the right of national minorities to spell their name in official documents.

On the other hand, a trend emphasising the fundamental importance of the state language in both countries is evident and any attempt to introduce additional letters and diacritical marks is potentially assessed as some illusory threat to the state language. Poland has dealt with this problem, despite a complicated and often even tragic history of relations with its neighbours, and has adopted relevant legislation allowing for the original spelling of names and surnames. Lithuania is on the way to solving this problem, but the path is neither straightforward nor easy to predict. Over the past almost 20 years, it is the court judgements, international and domestic, that have largely contributed to changes in the perception of this phenomenon by citizens themselves, judges and legislators alike.