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I'd Have Gone With the Death Penalty

Jul 24, 2008
By .
Effluvia

Well, if it was always your dream to move to New Zealand, have a baby, and legally name your child Choad Spawn, this recent legal decision may cause you to rethink your plan.

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.

I suppose one could ponder the nanny-state ramifications of judges subverting the will of free citizens of a democracy to overrule, perhaps on personal whim, one of the fundamental incidents of parenthood (i.e., creating an identity for your child).

That would be less fun, however, than focusing on the mouth breathers running around amusing themselves by giving their kids horrific, un-name-like names.  I can't even fathom the thinking behind some of these names, other than perhaps I was on meth when I made her, I might as well be on meth when I name her. The linked article also gives some examples of unusual names that had been rejected by Kiwi registration officials, including "Fish and Chips," "Yeah Detroit," "Keenan Got Lucy" and "Sex Fruit."  Perhaps even more shocking, though, were some of the names that have previously been issued, including "and tragically, Violence" and "Number 16 Bus Shelter."

If your folks name you Number 16 Bus Shelter, do you shorten it and go by Bus?  Perhaps you go the Chad Johnson route and ask people to call you Diez y Seis.  Or perhaps you start obsessing about knives at an early age and turn your folks (wait, who am I kidding?, I mean your mom, since dad surely cut out a long time ago) into coleslaw in the middle of the night.

All I know is Judge Murfitt needs to move to the states.

Last 5 posts by Jesse

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9 Comments

  1. Patrick  •  Jul 24, 2008 @10:28 am

    I think I'd just ask people to call me Junior.

  2. tgb  •  Jul 24, 2008 @12:47 pm

    Number 16 Bus Shelter? Reminds me of the old joke about Native American names.

  3. Ken  •  Jul 24, 2008 @3:47 pm

    You're a creeping totalitarian, Jesse. As I said before on this topic, the appropriate punishment for self-involved twits who give their kids dorm-room-philosopher names is the child's undying hatred, vast therapy bills, and someday down the line a stay in a very unpleasant rest home maliciously selected by a then-middle-aged Rainpuddle or Vagasil or Thunderboy.

  4. Bruce  •  Jul 24, 2008 @4:39 pm

    I think Number 16 may have been jumping on the Beckham bandwagon of naming the children after the location of the conception.

  5. Bruce  •  Jul 24, 2008 @4:40 pm

    And I remember after I hit submit that Douglas Adams used it for Fenchurch.

  6. Jesse  •  Jul 24, 2008 @5:06 pm

    I can live with being labeled a totalitarian. When a name gets stupid enough, it crosses the line into intentional infliction of emotional distress. If we can all agree that its a good idea for the state to stop parents from punching their kids in the face, I think we should all be able to get behind limiting the parental authority of a retard who names their kid Number 16 Bus Shelter.

    A more amusing remedy, however, would be to allow the child to legally force a name change of their own choosing upon their parents. That would balance the cosmic scales.

  7. Patrick  •  Jul 30, 2008 @1:41 pm

    More fun on the topic of parents whom the law, in its mercy, allows to live.

  8. Jesse  •  Jul 30, 2008 @2:13 pm

    Man … some of those are really grim. The death penalty is too good for the psychopath who named her kid "Weather'By Dot Com Chanel Fourcast". Patrick's linked article is a must read simply to review the exchange between the mom and the trial court concerning poor Weather'By's name.

  9. Patrick  •  Jul 31, 2008 @1:18 pm

    This is too much of a good thing. (again Via Volokh).

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