If you have had a child, you must notify the appropriate civil registry office and submit the required documents.
The registry office responsible is the one in whose jurisdiction the child was born.
If your child was born in a hospital or birthing center, these facilities will report the birth to the registry office. In the case of a home birth, you will receive a birth certificate, which you must submit in person to your local registry office.
Any additional information and documents required for the registration of the birth must be submitted to the relevant civil registry office along with the birth notification if they cannot be obtained from records to which the civil registry office has access.

The civil registry office maintains a birth registry in which the following entries are made:

• The child’s first names and birth name
• Place, day, hour, and minute of birth
• The child’s gender
• The first names and last names of the parents, and their gender.

Choosing the Child’s First Name:
As the legal guardian, you are free to choose the child’s first name. The chosen first name must not conflict with the child’s best interests. Terms that are not, by their nature, first names may not be chosen. Multiple first names may be combined into a single first name. Such a combination should not contain more than one hyphen.

Choosing the child’s birth surname:
If you have a shared married name, the child will receive this as their birth name.
If you, as parents, do not have a married name and you have joint custody, you may, by submitting a declaration to the registry office, designate the name that the father or mother is using at the time of the declaration as the child’s birth name. A declaration submitted after the birth has been registered must be notarized. Once you have chosen a birth name for your child, it applies to any additional children as well.

The legal guardians may declare to the civil registry office that a child should receive the family name:

• under the law of a country to which one parent belongs,
• under German law, if one parent has their habitual residence in Germany
• under the law of the country of which the person assigning the name is a national.