The injustice

Swedish man dismayed after being told he cannot change name to Tottenham

• 39-year-old David Lind may appeal against decision 
• ‘There are a lot of strange names. Someone’s called Potato’

Taken from Guardian sport

Published:14:06 Mon 15 July 2019

 Follow Guardian sport

A 39-year-old Swedish man has expressed his disappointment after he was denied the right to change his name to Tottenham in wake of the club’s run to the Champions League final.

David Lind from Kumla was one of three winners in a competition open to people who were considering changing their names to their favourite English team. Lind immediately sent in his application to the relevant authority, Skatteverket, to have his name changed but a few weeks later he got a letter saying that it had been declined.

“This is very sad," the 39-year-old told Nerikes Allehanda. “It looks as if you can be called pretty much everything in Sweden but not Tottenham. It is not any more natural to be called Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool or Guiseley.

“There are a lot of people with strange names in Sweden. There is even someone called Potato. Maybe someone at Skatteverket is an Arsenal fan?"

Lind had found out that there were people in Sweden bearing the names of those clubs, including Jacob Guiseley Åhman-Dahlin, who has fallen in love with the English National League North (sixth tier) club Guiseley AFC and decided to change his name to reflect that.

A spokesman for Skatteverket said he had simply fallen foul of new rules introduced in 2017 which contained much stricter guidelines of what people can be called. “If someone is called Arsenal in Sweden they probably got that through before 2017," Hajrudin Alijagic at Skatteverket told Nerikes Allehanda. “In the law from 1982 you could be called pretty much anything and there are around 60 people in Sweden called ‘Bajen’ [the nickname for the Swedish club Hammarby].

“When we are faced with an application for a name we are not sure about we consult another institution and they ruled that Tottenham was not constructed in a way that was appropriate for a name in Sweden."

Lind is considering appealing the decision.



Anyone know a decent lawyer? Lol