This was originally posted on February 1, 2013
It emerged this week that a 15 year old girl in Iceland was subjected to being known as ‘Girl’ due to the fact that her given baby name was banned by the government. Her name was actually Blaer, which means ‘light breeze’, but the government would not accept her name due to it being determined as too masculine for a girls name. Can you imagine the uproar in this country if Jamie was only allowed for boys, or Charlie was only allowed for girls! Whilst some control over baby names could be deemed acceptable, surely no one wants to grow up with the name #SmartyPants, should a government be able to limit a parents choice to 1,853 approved feminine names, as they do in Iceland?
Crazy Baby Names
Banned baby names have been reported throughout the world for many years, there have been cases in Europe where parents decided it was a ‘good’ idea to name their child Hitler, or recently in the UK a parent actually did decide to use the baby name Hashtag – although there has been some suggestion that this was actually a PR ruse. In fact I can remember in the years surrounding the launch of well known kids TV programme, The Teletubbies, a parent deciding that the best name for their new born child would be, yep, LaLa. Perhaps it should be the parents who are banned from choosing a name, not the names being banned per se!
Whilst there are reported cases of these bans, it certainly takes some digging to find out the names that some people have decided to come up with. New Zealand seems to be a hotbed of crazy baby names, including the terrible 4Real and the almost comical Tulula Does The Hula From Hawaii. Whilst it may seem funny to read such names on paper, can you imagine the pressure that you are putting on the child? Notwithstanding the embarrassment of actually having to put your name down on official papers as 4Real, you also have to suffer the views of yours peers. We all know that children can be horrible if they want to be, and parents giving other kids the kind of free ammunition like that is just asking for trouble. It’s called being responsible, and names like that have got to concern people, who knows what the grandparents think!
Would you welcome such measures in the UK? The General Register Office claim there are no restrictions in place, except in exceptional circumstances, and that parents are free to name their child as they see fit. This is obviously perfectly acceptable in the vast majority of cases. If you had a choice of 1,853 baby names, as they do in Iceland, could you find a name that you liked or would you go off the book and aim for another Blaer fiasco? Or perhaps you could go all out and choose Cutey13, IamCool or PurpleBear – no thought not!
