Baby Names Gone Wild
Toeing the line between creative and crackpot.
by Jeanne Sager
October 6, 2008
Gwyneth has Apple. Frank Zappa has Moon Unit and Dweezil. And a New Zealand family has Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii.
At least they did.
Nine-year-old Talula Does the Hula convinced a judge to put an end to her parents' attempt at whimsy last month with a name change that made international news. Her creative parents got a tongue-lashing from Judge Rob Murfitt for "[making] a fool of the child and [setting] her up with a social disability and handicap unnecessarily."
Murfitt's become a folk hero to wackily named children the world over. But a legion of creative namers are outraged.
Baby Name Laws Around the World
China Chinese officials recently refused a father who wanted to name his child @. But the country will have to get creative somehow. Officials in Beijing announced that they're running out of unique names in a country of 1.3 billion people. It's taxing the cops — who go looking for the equivalent of John Smith and two million donuts later still haven't tracked down the right one. The government is proposing parents give children both Mom's and Dad's last names, creating a whole new set of surnames for the next generation of Chinese. So @ is out, but the hyphen is in.
Denmark Polonious would find it harder to be true to thine own self these days if he had his heart set on creative naming. The Danish government has a pre-approved list of names for parents to persue — 3,000 for boys, 4,000 for girls. Convinced you can do better? Call the Copenhagen University's Names Investigation Department at the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs — they have the final word. We wonder, would poor Yorick get a nod?
Germany The Standesamt has the final word on German monikers. The criteria? The name: "1) must reflect the sex of the child, and (2) it must not endanger the 'well-being of the child." Well, that eliminates pretty much every celebrity baby name ever.
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"Normal names like John or David have always seemed very unimaginative and even stifling to me," says Lynette Bondarchuk. When she gave birth to a boy in 2005, the Edmonton, Alberta, mom graced him with the name of a character from a '70s made-for-TV movie. The brainchild of musician Henry Nilsson (supposedly while tripping out on acid), the film followed Oblio, the only round-headed creature in an animated land where everything is pointy.
"I saw the film in 1978 — when I was nine — and never forgot the story," Bondarchuk says.
She tacked on Justice as a middle name — to represent her own social activism — and opted out on a traditional last name. The result? Her little boy is Oblio Justice X.
That's right — X, as in Malcolm, who dropped his given surname, Little, because he considered it a slave name. Bondarchuk now uses "X" professionally as well, and defends her choice vehemently.
"As I said to one friend-of-a-friend — Marie — who repeatedly disparaged his name (within earshot) every time she saw us, 'What makes Oblio any worse than Marie?'"
Similar logic convinced Portland, Oregon, parents Kurt and Cathy Kemmerer that it wouldn't be "too bad" to name their son Catcher.
"I had just spent the past week watching the Ken Burns documentary Baseball," Kurt explains. "This left me with fresh memories of many of the old-time names and nicknames. Dizzy, Babe, Mordechai, Mookie, Boog and Solly are a few that I threw out, thinking I was being funny and lightening up the mood."
"Fine. If we're going to go with baseball, why not just Pitcher or Catcher or First Base?" Cathy spit back. It was a joke, but Catcher stuck.
"We did feel slightly embarrassed to tell people his name at ball games, though we have grown used to it now," Kurt admits.
©2008 Jeanne Sager and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Jeanne Sager is a freelance writer and photographer living in upstate New York with her husband and daughter, Jillian. She maintains a blog of her award-winning columns at jeannesager.blogspot.com. |
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