Greiner-Petter-Memm-Noelle-Neumann-Maier-Leibnitz, party of two, your table is ready

The Germans are famous for creating fast cars and very long words.  For example: Hoechsgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung - a word which does not apply to the Autobahn.

But, this generosity with word length does not extend to surnames.  A German court recently ruled that a couple could not combine their last names to form very long surnames.  The idea was that a child born to such a name would then possibly marry and add yet another name to an already long name - and so on and so forth until you get last names like Greiner-Petter-Memm or Noelle-Neumann-Maier-Leibnitz - both of which already exist, incidentally.  But if someone from these families were to marry each other, they would not be able to take the surname of Greiner-Petter-Memm-Noelle-Neumann-Maier-Leibnitz.

image: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com