A given name and surname shall be assigned to the child upon agreement between the parents. If there is no agreement between the parents, a guardianship authority decides which name is assigned. If only one of the married parents comes to register the birth, a simplistic written consent of the other parent is necessary for assigning the child with a given name.
Up to three separately written names or two names connected by a hyphen may be assigned as a given name.
The given name must be compliant with good morals and correspond to the gender of the person. The given name may not contain numbers or non-alphabetical signs nor, together with the given name and surname, form a name of a well-known person. An exception may be made in case the child or the parents of the child have a personal connection with the name through their citizenship, family relations, nationality or other circumstances due to the name tradition of another language and in case the name applied for corresponds with it.
An Estonian given name must be in accordance with the rules of orthography of the Estonian language. The pronunciation and the spelling of the Estonian given name is the same and doesn’t contain foreign letters (e.g. c, č, q, w, x y), foreign word letters (e.g. f, š, z, ž), foreign letter combinations (e.g. th, sh) or begin with letters g, b, d. A foreign language given name must be in accordance with the rules of orthography of the relevant language and must be used as a given name in the foreign country. A proof concerning this may be asked for from the parents.
Checking the suitability of the given name at the e-population register
Both parents’ joint surname or the surname of the only parent may be assigned as a surname. If the parents have different surnames, the surname of one parent is assigned to the child. In case of multiple births, the children are assigned with the same surname. A child may not be assigned a parent’s surname consisting of two surnames. An exception may be made to assigning a child with a parent’s surname consisting of two surnames if the parent has acquired the name by birth, both or the only parent has a surname consisting of two names, or if the child’s sister or brother has a surname consisting of two names which is identical with the parent’s surname consisting of two names.