legislating baby names

Quote: sunrise089

The name of one's child is, in my opinion, way down on the list of things the government should be deciding.

It would be difficult thing to legislate. My grandfather misspelled my aunt's name on her birth certificate (by one letter). He couldn't read at an advanced level, and he didn't know the spelling. She finally corrected it when she was middle aged.

Because it was a Spanish name, most people didn't know the correct spelling, so no one pointed it out for most of her life.

How would you tell a genius like Frank Zappa that he couldn't name is daughter "Moon Unit".

Quote: pacomartin

It would be difficult thing to legislate. My grandfather misspelled my aunt's name on her birth certificate (by one letter).

Immigrants of all sorts ahve had their anmes mangled, chopped, or otherwise changed at their destination country. My grandfather had his given anme and last name chopped when he entered Mexico, for example.

As to Zappa, genius???

Forcing name selection out of a list is an extremely stupid and bigoted idea. I'm not a multiculturalist, but even I'm concerned about the excessive moral impact against first-generation immigrant families. Not just Mexicans, but most of Europe.

The only restrictions on the legal name should be technical, that is Roman alphabet, no punctuation marks, perhaps a length limit, etc, so as to ensure it fits both paper and electronic forms. "Adolf Hitlers" can be processed on a case-by-case basis.

My mother-in-law is pretty much a tee-totaler, but due to
a typo, technicallh her name is MargueritA, not Marguerite.

She goes by Peg, I call her Peg-leg, just for fun.

Arrrrgh.......

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Even before reading your post, I was thinking about this story:


Frankly, parents should be given a grace period (72 hours?) to change their mind, and give the child a new name without having to go thru major hurdles. If a parent gives their child an unusual name, they the health dept. should contact them prior to the end of the grace period, just to make sure.

Then again, since I have no kids, I have no idea if such a grace period already exists.

I heard about that just a few months ago from a co-worker!! But my coworker said that her friend came across this name in a hospital. She said she was reading the chart saying she could go, but Le-a's friend corrected her, quite rudely I guess. I can't remember but I thought she said this happened here in Iowa. So either there's more than one of these people, or my coworkers friend actually knows this woman.. crazy.

Quote: pacomartin

The story of Ledasha (Le-a) is almost certainly fake. No child with that name has ever been located, and Livingston Parish, LA is an overwhelmingly white municipality (about 4% Black). The sentence "cause the dash don't be silent" is not even the standard use of the "habitual be", so it is clearly a story made up by someone mocking the vernacular.

If it is fake, then my coworkers friend must've been pulling a fast one on her.