Unwieldy names + Chancellery new build + strikes

Dear Reader,

• For all of you who enjoy a German politician with an unpronounceable name, I have good news. In the future, we might not only have Anagrette Kramp-Karrenbauer, but Christian Lindner-Lehfeldt, too. Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann could soon have to fight for space on the pages of German newspapers with Hans-Peter Schmardendorf-Schmidt. That’s because the government is planning to relax the laws around double-barrelled names in order to make them more zeitgemäß. Currently, only the spouse (almost always the woman) who gives up their maiden name on their wedding day is allowed to add it onto the family name. When the new law comes in the couple and their children will be able to adopt a double-barrelled name, too. Which solves the problem for a generation… But what happens when a woman with a double barrelled name marries a man with an equally long surname? The result surely won’t be a quadrouple-barrelled name. At any rate, for journalists given a strict word count to report o…