Is it acceptable to call a child Adolf? Or has the name been permanently tainted by its association with Hitler? That’s the question a new German film set to open in cinemas this autumn explores.

Der Vorname, or The First Name is set at dinner party of old friends that starts to go wrong when one of the guests tells the others he and his pregnant girlfriend want to call their unborn child Adolf.

The others object that it’s unthinkable to give a child the same name as a man who started a world war and murdered millions, and the evening swiftly unravels as the argument brings old rivalries and tensions into the open.

Der Vorname is based on What’s in a Name?, a 2012 French film set in Paris. But by shifting the action to the former West German capital of Bonn, it hopes to ratchet up the tension further.

In fact, it is perfectly legal to call a child Adolf in modern Germany, and there are some 46,000 people of that name living in the country, according to a study by the University of Leipzig. Germany has some of the strictest laws in Europe on what you can name a child.