The naming of your child in Sweden is a process that actually has to go through the Swedish tax agency. Recently unusual names have become the norm. Names for girls like Elin, Anna, Hanna, Sofie, Lisa, Felicia and Moa have just in the past year been substituted for 1200 new girls’ names and 1000 new boys’ names. People are naming their girls: Attrisia, Chelsiana, Delafina, Elensia and Friola whilst boys are being called: Androny, Costian, Donior, Eminas as well as Five instead of: Axel, Emil, Johan, Ludvig or Martin.

Legal expert Lars Tegenfeldt explains in an interview with the newspaper DN (Dagens Nyheter) that the Swedish tax agency is trying to give people the freedom to name their children exactly what they want to. As long as it isn’t a title along the lines of “superintendent”, “captain” or “inspector” and naming your child after a swear word is definitively not allowed basically anything is allowed, he says.

Many of these names are hard to determine the gender of the person, or the nationality, so maybe a lot of the discrimination caused by foreign sounding names will disappear with this new name trend.