Is the Name Property? Sketches of an Answer between England and France

Abstract

This article is the result of a research originally undertaken at the Louisiana State University in September 2006 and continued later on at Essex and Lyon thanks to a British Academy Small Research Grant.

Its objective is to question the distinction between persons and things and its relative concepts of property and personality, through one example, that of the name. The author analyses the affirmation in French and English laws that the name is not property, but, for French law at least, a personality right. The use of multiple historical sources (notably the English case of Du Boulay v. Du Boulay, and the French cases in the 19th century) as well as of contemporary works enable the author to trace the origin of the affirmation and what it entailed and still entails. Ultimately, comparing the evolution of English law and French law, the author concludes that "[t]he debate about the nature of the name is not on whether the name is property or not, but on what the relationship should be between a person and his name," with at its heart the concepts of property and personality.