The parents don’t understand. And they must even wonder, like most observers, why there is such relentlessness. In Lorient (Morbihan), the parents of a very young baby received a letter from the public prosecutor’s office explaining to them that little Fañch would not be able to wear his tilde. Distributed by regionalist deputy Paul Molac, the letter from prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger is clear. The tilde desired by the parents on the ñ of Fañch cannot be accepted. Pattern ? “This diacritic sign is non-existent, both in French and in positive law,” assures the Lorient magistrate. “An absurdity” according to Lorient MP Paul Molac.
The son of Mélissa and Etienne, born on June 17, cannot, for the moment, claim his comma, although it is common in certain languages such as Breton or Spanish. In France, he is not the first to see a prosecutor oppose his tilde. In 2017, a couple from Quimper experienced the same story and took legal action. If the Quimper court had been in the same direction as its prosecution, the Rennes court of appeal had ultimately had a different reading, authorizing the child to wear his comma. A story which had reached the Court of Cassation but ended with the green light from French justice for the tilde.
After a second case that occurred in 2019, the public prosecutor of the Rennes court asked the court of cassation to rule on the use of diacritical marks in the French language. “It is not up to justice to decide what the law should be,” said Jean-François Thony. As the 2014 circular governing these special signs is still in force, the courts are “entitled” to refuse them. In February 2020, Breton Richard Ferrand (LREM), who was then president of the National Assembly, assured that a “decree for Fañch” was “being finalized” at the Chancellery. We are in 2023 and nothing has changed. “The only solution to this impasse? Modify the Constitution,” says MP Paul Molac.