Wednesday 30 July 2008

Which Is Worse The Name Or The Court?

Being named "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii", or the NZ Family Court placing the child under their custody? (Like my choice of source?)

This has been an ongoing discussion on Myspace for the past few days.

The girl given that name managed to avoid being bullied by calling herself "K".

This story spread quite quickly with it being found apart from the Honolulu Advertiser on theInternational Herald Tribune the BBC, CBC, CNN and Reuters.

What I don't seem to understand is why exactly the mainly American posters on the Myspace thread seem to think that a) the action of the courts was wrong and b) the child was permanently removed from the parents.

The linked articles all made the second point clear. The girl was placed in the custody of the court so her name could be changed. Based on that I think it would be quite safe to say that after the girl got her name changed (probably to whatever "K" was since most people knew her as that) her parents regained custody of the child.

I however, fail to see why the action of the court was the wrong one.

The girl clearly didn't like her name and the court, in doing what it did, complied with her wishes. It's like the Swedish court forbidding a couple from naming their kid Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, which by the way, somehow corresponds to the name "Albin". I see no difference in what the Swedish court did and what this court did except that the Kiwi parent at least knew how to spell the name in such a way that it matched with the pronunciation of the name.

Yet I see mainly American people trying to argue that it is wrong.

What is the logic behind that? Or do they think that it is fair that children should be bullied for their name?

So parents want to give their kids "creative" names (honestly, "Number 16 Bus Shelter" as a name is as creative as me putting a dot on a white canvas and calling it "Ant in a Snowstorm"), but I guess that when I am older giving kids names that we consider "normal" today will become the new "crazy".

If parents can come up with a "creative" name that is good, and I mean good, not some stupid one, then by all means go for it. But if you want to name a kid something that stupid, then maybe you should move to New Zealand and see how far you get, or to the US where they don't seem to have any restrictions on giving your kids really, really, stupid names.

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