A new default rule has been added to Practice On Names – Hyphen Rule.

For the purposes of checking the Name against PoN, a hyphen in given names is to be treated as optional.

What does this mean ?

Although under some codes of law and naming customs the hyphen is considered non-optional, it is optional under common-law tradition (cacert’s family of law), and our global community has many customs. These influences push us to be more inclusive than restrictive in naming practices.

So also a name under German law defined to be considered as one name like Heinz-Guenther becomes

1. Heinz-Guenther -or-
2. Heinz Guenther -or-
3. Heinz

under Common law. The new rule defines the hyphen to be optional.
This may contradicts local law, but this isn’t the first rule, that contradicts eg. German local law (eg. signature rule)