It has taken, to me somewhat astonishingly, 15 years for an Icelandic girl to be allowed to officially use her given name, "Blaer". Although the government may yet appeal to the country's top court.

Apparently, in Iceland there are very strict official rules on what you can call you baby, and "Blaer" was "not feminine enough". So till now Icelandic officialdom has stubbornly officially referred to the poor lass simply as "Girl".

"Icelandic Naming Committee"?? FFS. What sort of a job is that? How much does it pay? Name your own price?

Then I noted that similar restrictions apply in places like Germany and Denmark. WTF?? In this day and age, with all the problems in the world, have these people really nothing better to do? Or are they right?
[urlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21280101[/url

A friend of mine named her first two kids Tia-Sian and Maia-Shae - exotic names of Spanish, Welsh, Greek and Gaelic origin but a little eccentric when you consider she's just a bog-standard whitey Brit with no exotic connections that I know of.

But she then outdid herself by appearing to choose her next daughter's profession well in advance with the glamorous title, 'Talulah-Belle".

Rejecting baby names or even having a statutory list of accepted names is nothing new, though (to a non-Icelandic) Blaer seems entirely reasonable. But then most Icelandics I've met have been a bit loopy. And the Finnish. Lunatics, the lot of 'em.

Anyway, [url=http://www.parentdish.co.uk/2012/03/20/banned-the-worlds-most-ridiculous-baby-names/Other rejections are more understandable.[/url To me it comes down to the child - if they're likely to be ridiculed, bullied, etc, the name should be rejected. To be fair a surprising proportion of parents are complete idiots, even when the welfare of their child is at stake.

Somewhere out there is a child officially named Number 16 Bus Shelter.

I'm just surprised two didn't come at once.

When pregnant, my sister was planning to name her daughter Tamara.

How to solve this?

Walk around singing: 'The sun'll come out, Tamara ...' regularly.

I think "Girl" is quite a good name, for a girl.

Obviously not for a boy, there would have to be rules.

And wasn't Tarzan's kid called "Boy" ?

And how the hell did that happen, what are the chances of two kids, a generation apart, being abandoned in the jungle and raised by apes ?

Yeah, like JerryChicken wouldn't fall fowl of any such rules.

Well, if the the Shelter bit was missing they might have.

I feel you need to be a little more accepting FA of other country's rules. I mean, if your son gets taken away from you simply because you christened him Adolf Hitler like in the US. Where will it end?

I know of a child over here called "Star of the Sea" as his first name.

A lad (well he's in his 30's now) that uses my local goes by the name of Sun. His somewhat hippy mum & dad named him Sunshine, the only other person I have ever seen carry that name was the Native American wife of Dustin Hoffman's character in Little Big Man.

Nigerians and other West Africans have a tradition of using Anglo names, although not in what we'd consider the correct order. Hence the current president, Goodluck Jonathan and there was a Nigerian lad at Hull Uni called Innocent Harry

Could you imagine, say, a Rugby League player named after an American space mission?
(Apollo '11' Perelini)

When my daughter was choosing a name for my Grandson, my suggestion of Fuifui Moimoi Clark wasn't well received.
There is a growing trend in America of children being named after brands, and a few years ago, along with names like Timberland, there was a report of a number of children being christened: ESPN

There is IMHO a strong link between names and being subject to Child protection concerns.

For Boys being called Jayden seems to be a good one to get involved in care proceedings and Destiny seems to be a good one for girls.


Their is also a correlation between Americanisms and poor spelling which seems to be a significant interrelationship with child protection.
Things like Charmyne etc.

There are some quite daft names knocking about.

If I ever have kids, don't really want any but if I have a boy it's being called Jack and the girl Jill.

If that ever happens then get in touch and you can buy my house.

I live at the bottom of a big hill and there really is a well at the top of it. (OK, its a reservoir, bit it still works)

I see what you did there.
Nice one.

Speaking of Hull Uni and names, I used to know somebody who worked there in admissions who told me that a lot of the students with traditional chinese names tend to adopt an English name rather than have people mangling the pronunciation of their real name. Apparently they had a tendency of using what they thought would be common, traditional names from classic English literature (Dickens being a popular choice), resulting in a few old names that aren't particularly in common usage any more after all, such as Henry/Henrietta, Walter, Frederick, Cecil and the like. Quite a few Roses as well, although that does seem to have had a revival anyway since the return of Dr Who.

When I was studying elsewhere with some chinese students they went by similar names too, so it seems like she was right. I'll always remember William being mad as a box of frogs.

I don't mind there being "rules". We have "rules". I just prefer our reactive system to ludicrously proactive systems where you actually have to have every name pre-approved. Which means basically you can ludicrously only use names someone else used first. This is ludicrous, because I can use "Gudrun", or whatever, through the happy chance that the "naming committee" only came into existence after someone came up with it; but had it been the other way round, then I couldn't, as you can't "invent" a new name. That is just silly.

The only issue should be a sane assessment of the welfare of the child, and nothing else.


Is this his school: [urlhttp://www.staroftheseaschool.co.uk/[/url ? If so, he went to school with my lad, here's an old class photo-

A well was never specified, just somewhere to fetch a pail of water from that was at the top of the hill.

Among my family and friends there is something of a tradition of giving babies a code name while they are in the womb before reverting to more traditional names once they are born.

Hence:

Town Hall became Joseph

Febreze became Emily

Lotherton became Thomas

Chlamydia became Sarah and

For-Longer became Jack.

I used to work in a library and one poor unfortunate junior member was called Piers Mycock!

Did his parents not think before christening him or did they have a sick sense of humour

I'll go: Was his nickname Albert?

There really is a very eminent Dr. Hugh Koch.

I'm unsure if this is at all relevant. Or if he has.

There used to be a newsreader on one of the Scottish TV channels who went by the name of Shona Twatt. Good for her, she absolutely refused to change it

This is not uncommon. Asians do the same. For simplicity and also for business reasons.