Late Night: New Zealand Bans Weird Baby Names
Posted: July 21, 2011 Filed under: just because | Tags: baby names, first amendment, Global Post, New Zealand, Sweden 20 Comments
This story from the Global Post really tickled my funny bone: New Zealand Bans Weird Baby Names.
The country’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been cracking down on parents who get too creative when naming their kids, Australia’s Herald Sun reports.
The list of weird names for kids that are banned by New Zealand’s names registrar has grown to include Lucifer, Duke, Messiah and 89.
Also not approved: Bishop, Baron, General, Judge, King, Knight and Mr., names that were all said to be too similar to titles.
The letters, C, D, I and T were also rejected as first names, the Herald Sun says.
As well, the agency has refused to allow names involving asterisks, commas, periods and other punctuation marks.
Apparently New Zealand’s government isn’t burdened with a First Amendment. According to the article, Sweden also has laws prohibiting parents from using certain names.
While Lego and Google have been approved as names for children, Superman, Metallica and Elvis, and the name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, pronounced Albin, were not approved.
Too much. When I was in college years ago, I worked in the data processing department–those were the days of keypunch machines and computers that filled a good sized room. Anyway, I would see the strangest names when I was working there. There was a girl at the school named “Dimple Smith.” The funniest names were the rhyming ones–like Harry Carey. There was a girl in my high school named Tamara Paxon (Tam for short).
What’s the weirdest name you’ve ever come across?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Article on strange baby names from 2002:
I went to school with a Honey Buns. Yes, first name honey, last name buns. Poor kid, she was also a bit on the chubby side, so man she got made fun of big time.
Oh no!
I went to school in Hawaii — talk about a place with unique first, middle and last names. Most kids just had nick names.
Yeah, last year in the little league world series, Hawaii’s team all had nicknames…I remember that they said it was a cultural thing over in Hawaii.
After college, when I worked for bad credit car loan company as a loan application investigator…there was a stripper who had a loan with us, and she had legally changed her name to Misty Crotch. No kidding.
My sister said a couple of years ago that people were giving to their daughters names more suitable for their dogs…like , yes, ” Hunter ” …while calling their dogs names like ” Elizabeth” ….huh
Brandy is another example of that. I always thought it was strange to see a young woman working in the supermarket with Brandy on her name tag. Brandy, btw, is the cutie pie in my avatar.
I worked with children for many years. We had Prince Albert Poindexter, Baby Doll Burns, twins Martini and Rossi and their sister Champagne, and Sparkle Caress Rumphf.
I can’t believe that Sweden allowed Legos but banned Elvis.
I’m also seeing lots of “kreative” spellings lately. None in France (not sure whether they will let you do that here), but at my sons’ preschool in Eugene (obviously a hotbed of “unique and special” names) the parents REALLY seemed to love to add a “z” or a “y” wherever they possibly could. I think my own kids were the only ones in their classes with properly spelled names. (And they’re not Top-10 names, either.) It seems like little Mayzie and Zayvier and Jazmyne are just disadvantaged from the get-go. And I am not even including the names that appear just to have been made up.
Yeah, what’s wrong with Elvis anyway?
Frankly, I WISH the State of Michigan had had some power to crack down on this crap when I was born. The weirdest name I have ever heard is my own (real) name(*), and it led to years of schoolyard bullying. Furthermore, because it leaves absolutely no doubt about the year I was born, it was a huge handicap in the workforce when I was young (even on the phone, people knew they were talking to a very young person and did not take me seriously), and now again that I am reaching my sell-by date. Not to mention the fact that every stupid thing I have ever done is instantly Google-able. (And I am not talking about crimes — right now the problem is that I am completely unable to “move on” from my lawyer-career back to a normal job because as soon as somebody Googles me, there’s my whole career right there, and NOBODY wants to hire a lawyer for a non-legal job. Why? Because they either assume that you’re a jerk, that you will be filing frivolous lawsuits against the company, OR that you want to go find a lucrative law firm job the moment the recession ends.) It seems like not a lot of folks think about this stuff from the point of view of poor little Moxie Crimefighter. : )
Fortunately, the French citizenship application inquires as to whether you want to change your name upon obtaining citizenship. My married surname is pretty ubiquitous in France (my maiden name is very unusual in either country and is of Gypsy origin, which creates a whole new set of problems for me in Europe), and I intend to take the blandest first name I can possibly find as my “official” name, if for no other reason than to be able to job-hunt for a non-law position without Google killing my chances. I’ll keep the crazy hippie name with my family because at this point, that’s what they know me by!
(*)OK, that part is probably in the eye of the beholder. Many years ago when I worked at the U Chicago pediatric hospital, we had a kid named Aristartle. Yes, you read that right. Oy.
Glad to see you made it to France in one piece! How is votre vie en rose?
I’ll get back to you on that once my lease starts and I am OUT of my in-laws’ house. (Where my brother-in-law dumps his children most of the summer, so not only am I trapped in this house until I can buy a care hopefully next week, I am trapped in this house with SEVEN KIDS. That is too many even for me. Particularly because I don’t understand the ever-changing house rules, much less explain them to my own kids.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, I’m optimistic that once the living situation normalizes, I will like France very much. : )
I have a set of Irish Twins too Jadzia…that is hellish enough. Having two more and then three OPM (Other People’s Munchkins) geez girl! My heart goes out to you, and if I could make a bottle of vodka materialize in your freezer I would. Even then, you couldn’t partake in it’s mind numbing qualities…;)
Someone told me, and I don’t know if it’s true, that it is illegal to name your baby Adolf in Germany.
That makes sense.
Attila is a popular name in Hungary, but sort of unacceptable here. I have a Hungarian friend who wanted to name her son Attila, but was disappointed that it had such negative connotations!
I went to school with a girl called Sari Ann (not that weird) but the weird part is she claimed she was named after her mother’s cesarian!
eeeeek!
I know! As a kid, that kind of freaked me out.