Sweden, Denmark, and Sameness

I'm guessing anyone reading my little blog has already seen this news.

I can't say that I'm surprised, since the Scandinavian countries, and Sweden in particular, carry reputations of being lax in terms of marital status, and big on inclusion. I remember reading an article a few years ago (I believe it was New York Times, but I can't find it - apologies) that documented the rising number of couples who cohabited and had children in Norway (and possibly Sweden as well - again, sorry I'm fuzzy on the details) before getting married, though many of those couples did end up making their unions official.

This is another article on a Scandinavian country (Denmark) about which I did remember enough detail to find for you. The article concerns baby names and the government's sanctioning of them. In Denmark there is a government ministry to approve newborns' names. Nothing too outlandish or non-traditional is ever approved, or at least, not often. Such an idea is anathema to our country, a land of individuality, but the article makes a point that Denmark (and, again, much of Scandinavia) is not the U.S.: it's a socialist country which wasn't founded on the idea of individuality. The article suggests that the underlying drive of ministries like the one responsible for approving baby names in Denmark is to solidify the sameness and oneness of the population: no one can stand out too much due to his or her name, and therefore no one will, presumably, be ridiculed or revered for his or her name. That's certainly not an idea you'd expect to come from the American government, for sure.

It seems to me that one undercurrent of the collective unconscious drives the baby names issue and the same-sex marriage issue in Scandinavia: the drive to acknowledge everyone as equal, everyone as on the same footing.

Imagine that kind of drive at work in the U.S.?