Article 19. The Name of the Citizen

1. The citizen shall acquire and exercise the rights and duties under his own name, which includes the surname and the name proper, as well as the patronymic, unless otherwise following from the law or from the national custom.

In the cases and in the order, stipulated by the law, the citizen shall have the right to make use of a pseudonym (an assumed name).

2. The citizen shall have the right to change his name in conformity with the law-stipulated procedure. The citizen's change of the name shall not be the ground for the termination or the change of his rights and duties, which he has acquired under his former name.

The citizen shall be obliged to take the necessary measures to inform his debtors and creditors about the change of his name and shall take the risk of the consequences that may arise in case these persons have no information on the change of his name.

The citizen, who has changed his name, shall have the right to demand that the corresponding changes be introduced, at his own expense, into the documents, formalized in his former name.

3. The name, acquired by the citizen at his birth, as well as the change of his name, shall be liable to registration in conformity with the procedure, laid down for the registration of the acts of the civil state.

4. The acquisition of the rights and duties under the name of another person shall not be admitted.

The name of a natural person or the pseudonym thereof may be used by approbation of this person by other persons in their creative, business or other economic activities in the ways that exclude misleading third persons in respect of citizens' identity and abuse of rights in any other forms.

5. The harm inflicted upon an individual as a result of violating the right thereof to a name or pseudonym is subject to compensation in compliance with this Code. 

In the event of the distortion of an individual's name or in the event of using a name in the ways or in a form that touch upon the honour thereof, derogate from an individual or belittle the business reputation thereof, the individual is entitled to demand refutation and repair of the damage caused to him/her, as well as compensation for moral harm.