I don't think that's unusual. In my country there isn't a fixed official list, but the law says you need to use an actual name (it can be a foreign one). If it seems too crazy it might be denied.

People here find it very strange (insane even) that in US you can name your child Apple, North West or X Æ A-Xii.

(I don't have a strong personal opinion on this.)

That’s completely normal in many countries, Germany for example doesn’t let you pick offensive or clearly-bad names for the child. You can’t call your kid Hässlich (Ugly) for example. You can also not use X12-Whatever-Allowed-In-US.

But apart from that, there’s no list, you can invent names.

Yes, but a veto over an offensive name is different from choose-only-from-allowlist.

[delayed]

Pretty common, the state of California also prevented someone from naming their child "X Æ A-12".

Yes of course you can't name your child Shit Head. Is that a thing your government will print on a birth certificate?

If you give it some thought, it becomes obvious that since any name is used in many public settings, society/state has a legitimate case to prevent offensive naming. That is different from state literally creating an allowlist. The huge middleground is benign names that are in no way offensive but still require you to get an approval from the state. I think this is an overreach, ymmv

In order to lighten the administrative burden that occurs when society/state has a legitimate case to prevent offensive naming, society is likely to create an approve list.

Denmark did use to have "These and only these names" and they were written into the law (yes, there are pages and pages of Danish legislation that are just names), but now any non-offensive name is okay, and for administrative purposes, an "approved"-list is kept for easy reference to things that have already been, well, approved.

Some European states do that, or place restrictions.

In here, for example, the name needs approval to not be harmful to the kid, nor degrading, nor diminutive form of name can be used. Also typos are checked for.

Absolutely. For example, you can’t name your kid “dipshit” for obvious reasons.

In Iceland, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Naming_Committee