A reader called to say how angry she was when she saw her daughter’s school-leaving certificate. Her daughter has just left the Junior Lyceum. Emblazoned beneath her name is the legend “daughter of”, followed by her father’s name. The mother, of course, was non-existent. But that wasn’t why my reader was cross. It was because, she said, parents’ names have no place on a school-leaving

certificate. And she’s right.

She went straight to the head of school to complain about the Victorian practice. The head of school explained that it had been unchanged for as long as she could remember, and almost certainly before that. “Exactly,” my reader said. “But times have changed, the laws have changed, and society has changed, too.”

The point is not that the names of both parents should be on their child’s school-leaving certificate, but that no parents’ names should be on it at all. I left secondary school in 1980, and sixth form in 1982. Both schools were as conservative, traditional and old-fashioned as could be, but even in those dark ages my father’s name was not on either school-leaving certificate. The only name those certificates bore was my own.

So why is the Junior Lyceum still describing children, on their school-leaving certificates, as the sons or daughters of their fathers? And why did it adopt the practice in the first place? For very many years now, every baby whose birth is registered in Malta has been given a progressive registration number, which stays with him or her for life as the identity card number. That number is an official one, not a spurious one, and it is the “container” of all the information that can be tracked through the public registry, including parentage, place of birth, date of birth, and so on.

To authenticate a school-leaving certificate, all the school has to do is include the child’s identity card number along with the name. That is certainly more effective that a father’s name, which tells a potential employer absolutely nothing. Two girls called Carmen Borg, one without a school-leaving certificate and the other with, can share that certificate and no one will be any the wiser. No employer is going to say: “Oh, but you’re not Joseph Borg’s daughter. Your father is Paul Borg.”

The identity card is a blessing mainly because it has superseded, and more effectively so, the tradition of identifying people through their patrilinear descent (bin and bint). Because the identity card number “contains” all information on parentage, that information need not be spelt out on documents, breaching our right to privacy and forcing us to give out information to prying clerks and others that we might prefer to keep to ourselves.

The Education Department might not have realised this yet, but not every child has a father nowadays, and many others have fathers but are brought up by their single mothers. Those single mothers might justifiably object, after slogging it out on their own for years, to having the child they have raised single-handedly described as the son or daughter of the man who sends maintenance cheques or rather, who has to be chased for maintenance cheques.

Even to those who have both parents living at home, the description as “daughter of Mr X” is an offensive anachronism. Children are being made acutely aware nowadays that both their parents have significance in the eyes of the law, and equal status. Then something like this happens and causes offence.

* * *

There’s more, too. The other day I found myself filling in a passport application, because you can’t apply for a renewal anymore. It demanded of me the names, places of birth and identity card numbers of my mother and father, and – get this – the name and place of birth of my paternal grandfather. Name and place of birth I could manage for all of them, without making any telephone calls. But identity card numbers? Who in this country goes around with information on his or her parents’ identity card numbers? I called my father and asked. “Why do you want to know?” he asked, suspiciously. “Well, because I plan to defraud you, of course. Really it’s because they won’t give me a passport unless I tell them.”

While waiting to have my image captured – that’s what they do nowadays; they don’t take a photo, they “capture your image” – I had a little think. What about all those people who have fallen out with one or both parents, who are in a very strained relationship with them, or whose father or mother ran off years ago and now lives God knows where? How are they supposed to get hold of their parents’ identity card numbers – and if they are allowed to leave that box blank, then why are the rest of us not allowed to do the same? I sat there wishing I hadn’t been so readily compliant with the bossiness of the application form.

When I asked for an explanation, there was a whole palaver about how Maltese citizenship is granted on the basis of two generations born in Malta in the paternal line. But I wasn’t applying for Maltese citizenship, I protested; I was a Maltese citizen applying for a passport. Presumably, the passport office has software that will tell them, through the simple act of keying in my identity card number, whether I am a real Maltese citizen or just a fake one.

You can imagine what my reaction was when I came to the section demanding details of my spouse.

The nice man on the other side of the desk saw my lips narrow into a tight line, and hastily put in: “Oh don’t worry, you don’t have to fill that in.” I told him that I wasn’t worried; I was annoyed. Was I now expected to call my husband and ask for his identity card number and parental details?

And let’s suppose – just for the hell of it – that I was applying for a passport without his knowledge or consent, for reasons of my own? “Yes, that’s why you don’t have to fill it in,” the nice man said. So why in heaven’s name include that section, then? To be scrupulously fair, the section applies to men, too (or rather, it doesn’t – because they too are not required to fill it in). But here too, a passport application is not an application for citizenship, so the details of one’s spouse, or even the fact of whether one has a spouse or not, are irrelevant.

* * *

I had already been muttering crossly over what took place in a courtroom some days before. As I took the witness stand, the magistrate said: “Daphne Caruana Galizia, bint… skuzani, insejt li int mizzewga. Zewg…” As I smouldered darkly, my lips in the thinnest of all possible lines, the magistrate himself gave my husband’s name.

I thought it wise not to aggravate him by objecting, but I was considerably aggravated myself. Afterwards, over coffee, there was another palaver. Are male witnesses asked for their wife’s name? No, of course not. They aren’t.

Let’s leave that huge piece of discrimination aside, and look at the archaic reasoning instead. Male witnesses are asked for their parents’ names. In the days before identity cards, this was what served instead to identify us – Gamri iben/bin Pawlu. But now we have identity cards, so why are we not just asked to show the ruddy thing instead, as we do everywhere else when we need to identify ourselves, including crossing borders between one EU country and another?

If an identity card is sufficient identification to allow me off a plane into 24 other European countries, then surely it is sufficient to identify me when I am a witness in the courts of law – or applying for a blessed passport. Thank God, it’s too late to be talking about school-leaving certificates.

* * *

I see that common sense has prevailed and the Maltese cross has topped the poll in the euro coin choice. Aside from the fact that people have been exposed to the arguments against having Christ’s image on a coin, since the earlier poll when it came top, I think what really tipped the balance was the design itself. Most of those who voted to have Christ’s image on our coin wouldn’t have had a clue what they were voting for. It is unlikely that they have ever had a look at the statue of the Baptism of Christ.

They probably had in mind a euro coin that looked something like the golden medallions with the face of Christ that children are given for their first Holy Communion – you know the sort, a big face with long hair and a crown of thorns. Noel Galea Bason worked wonders in getting that massive statue down to a tiny bas-relief, but apparently it wasn’t “in your face” enough for the Christ-on-our-coin bigots. It could have been anything, which was the point many of us tried to make in the first place.

Now those who masterminded the campaign to get Christ on our coins are cheesed off. My dark mutterings at the passport office are as nothing compared to their giant sulks. They have a cheek. The second poll has exposed the false result that their machinations produced in the first poll. Even without a second poll, the result of the first could not have been accepted, in view of the great and vehement backlash against it. The corres-pondence columns of the newspapers were flooded with letters protesting against it.

Very many people absolutely hated the idea of having Christ’s image on a coin – some of them because they are not religious, others because they are religious, and others still because they believe that coins are no place for religious statements. The arguments against were far more eloquently put than the argument for, which went something like this: “Let’s show them we’re Christian, dammit!”

I am glad that another way has been found. Why put something on a coin that causes offence to many and creates severe division of opinion, when there are more appropriate designs that cause offence to no one? This is not the election of a government we’re talking about. One or two of the Christ-on-our-coiners mentioned democracy. Oh please, democracy has nothing to do with a mobile telephone messaging poll that asks you to send a blank text message to vote for your favourite design. The Maltese cross causes offence to nobody, does not divide opinion fiercely and means Malta. So let’s leave it at that, and keep the image of Christ for medallions hung around our necks beneath our shirts.

* * *

If there is room to add some text to our euro coins, I suggest the following: “Father’s name, please.”