New Zealand judge criticizes cre8tive children's names

About time...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2008-07-24-New-Zealand_N.htm

New Zealand judge is tired of bizarre children names
Posted 7/24/2008 12:34 PM

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names here, and did something about it.

Just ask Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. He had her renamed.

Judge Rob Murfitt made the 9-year-old girl a ward of the court so that her name could be changed, he said in a ruling made public Thursday. The girl was involved in a custody battle, he said.

The new name was not made public to protect the girl's privacy.

"The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have shown in choosing this name," he wrote. "It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily."

The girl had been so embarrassed at the name that she had never told her closest friends what it was. She told people to call her "K" instead, the girl's lawyer, Colleen MacLeod, told the court.

In his ruling, Murfitt cited a list of the unfortunate names.
Registration officials blocked some names, including Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit, he said. But others were allowed, including Number 16 Bus Shelter "and tragically, Violence," he said.

New Zealand law does not allow names that would cause offense to a reasonable person, among other conditions, said Brian Clarke, the registrar general of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Clarke said officials usually talked to parents who proposed unusual names to convince them about the potential for embarrassment.

Why the bloody-hell parents names these kids.
What name is: "number 16 bus". What is wrong with these parents.
"Fish and Chips"? You got to be kidding? Nick name yes, as a real name? That parent is definately up-side down.

Don't the stupid parents/breeders ever realise that when they grown older and go to school. They will be victim of bullying because of their names. Also they become adult with tht name?

Use decent names like 'Milo', 'Jules' or 'Vern'. Not f-king 'Hula Hoops' or 'Fish and Chips'. WTF.

Don't forget those bizzare names will be on their ID, bank account or other life ID.

Yes, but the parents have to demonstrate their creativity and individuality to the world. This is the only way they can do that - by having a child and giving it an unusual name. These types of people have no other achievements in life. Nothing else to be proud of.

I already posted this a week or two ago.

Anyhoo, I have to add this time, that as a person with a semi-kre8tiv name, it angers me to no end when I read a birth notice and see that the parents have bestowed upon their kid some ridiculous moniker. (I say semi-kre8tiv, because although my name is rare, it's nothing completely idiotic like Legacy (I once met a four-year-old named that) or Apple).

In my case, my parents gave me a perfectly normal name, but chose to spell it in a perfectly rare and stupid way. The result is that I have spent my entire life having my name constantly misspelled and mispronounced (even close relatives and friends I've known for twenty years still spell it wrong). It drives me absolutely insane. What rubs salt further into the wound, is that I have an older brother who has a perfectly normal name. So I feel as though my parents were kind enough to give my brother a nice simple easy name, but then chose to curse me with a stupid name, almost like karma for some past-life sin.

I have told my parents many times how much I hate my name. The first time I told them they were offended, because they thought it would be 'different' and 'spayshul'. Now they just laugh.

The only reason I haven't legally changed it is because of the hassle it would involve (having to change my passport, driver's licence, banking and IRD documents etc). Maybe one day I'll get so fed up that I will anyway, but in the meantime I put on a fake smile and politely correct people when they inevitably get the spelling and/or pronunciation wrong.

In conclusion, parents who think that giving their kid a kre8tiv name will help it become unique or successful or whatever, are stupid. If your kid is gonna be unique (whatever that means), it will be unique regardless of its name, and when it comes to success, you're hampering your kid more than anything because potential employers will never take someone named Evangeline-Jazz (one of my mother's friends named his daughter that) seriously.

I remember a kerfuffle about 15 years ago in Quebec, which also has regulated names - someone wanted to name their kid something like "Gilbert Smythe Overwrought IV". They objected to the "IV" part of it.

Ultimately, it got settled: the sprog's last name is "Iv". At the time it looked stupid.

Now it looks prescient.

I also have a somewhat unusual name (although its not creative or weird) and just get sick of the flack I get.

People with normal names don't understand that people with unusual names get sick of jokes about our names.

Its not going to make the kid special in life; its going to make him miserable. Parents do not get this.

casseyrod Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, but the parents have to demonstrate their
> creativity and individuality to the world. This is
> the only way they can do that - by having a child
> and giving it an unusual name. These types of
> people have no other achievements in life. Nothing
> else to be proud of.

I don't understand how simply naming your child after some random object is creative. "Acoustical Tile", "Stirrups", "Speculum", "Pocket Lint", is just naming what's around you...not naming.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

They think its creative, though. Even if its not.