named 'Superman'...4reals I tell ya

[Skyman]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20179059/?GT1=10252

I guess they didn't want to name their kid Will or something trekkie like that. The obnoxious thing is that the goverment stopped them from doing a 733t speak name like 4reals. I put this in debate because I know someones gonna obviously say that the goverment is trying to step in for the childs benefit. But really, when Johnny Cash camed out with song boy named Sue...don't know the actually title....you know there was some dork that named their son Sue soon after.

[Dragonkin]

Yes, sky, the song was A Boy Named Sue. This, unfortunately, is not the first such story I've read. In Amsterdam (IIRC), a couple wanted to name their daughter Metallica, but received much the same response from the guv'mint.

[mrlost]

I don't see the big deal. As long as the kid has a name. If his parents refer to him as 4Real his whole life he'll either accept that name or reject it, but it isn't the governments purpose to define the identity of its members.

I happen to know a guy named Chance, another named Marian, and have heard of another named Seven.

[Shin Kenshiro]

I feel the government has a good reason here.

First off I believe ANYONE who wants to name their kid 4real should never have had a child to begin with.

As for the government, this is a blatantly obvious help the child is going to need. This isn't naming your kid Chance or something where the kid could accept it or find a way around it. You can't just legally change your name as a kid, no matter how much you hate the name your parents give you. This is pretty much the government stepping in and saying "No. You parents are morons and will not be allowed to ruin this kid with a name that socially unacceptable."

[Count Zero]

Well we can't really control morons, I would expect the government might have some issue with thing like numbers and such in the name. It might create problems for the system the information is stored in and could disrupt things like social security benefits and such. The other key is it sounds like a bogus name, and that also sends up red flags. 4Reals Johnson sounds like someone trying to get a fake social security card or something.

While somebody should have the right to name their kid whatever the hell they want, no matter how dumb, they also have to participate in society and sometimes you have to conform to society just a little bit.

EDIT: Didn't realize this was in New Zealand.... I would like to add this through.

“No matter what, it’s going to stay 4Real,” Wheaton told the Herald, “I’m certainly not a quitter.”

Man... I wish you had quit before your wife got pregnant.

[Scolopendra]

Heh. This reminds me of a conversation back in university about silly names given by people with no grasp of the local language. Unfortunately, it seems Mister Crusher^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWheaton does not have that excuse.

Given all the trouble associated with going by one's middle name, much less changing one's legal name, I can't really argue against the government acting preemptively in this case except from the standpoint that people should be allowed to, essentially, be idiots. Unfortunately, that relies on a slippery slope fallacy, so it's not really worth defending.

Now, -my- solution were I a rampant fool like Wheaton would be to name the kid something like Thor Real Wheaton. Hukid on fonix wurkd phor mi.

[Dragonkin]

Fire Two!!!

[Count Zero]

[quote="Dragonkin"]Fire [url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/oukoe_uk_china_language]Two!!![/url][/quote]


This one at least makes some sense.

[Drew]

[quote="Count Zero"]This one at least makes some sense.[/quote]



So, what are the going to call the poor kid? "Ampersand"? "Love Him"? "At sign"?

[Count Zero]

[quote="Drew"]So, what are the going to call the poor kid? "Ampersand"? "Love Him"? "At sign"?[/quote]


Apparently, the sound of how Chinese say "at" very similar to "Love Him", so probably that. Other cultures' naming conventions are very different from ours. Considering the Chinese langauge uses characters similar to "@", this might not be as odd as it seems. I have friends whose kid is named "Purity" in Japanese based on the kanji they used to name him.



Since it is a foreign culture, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and not jump on the ethnocentric bandwagon. It may seem much odder to us that it does to the Chinese. The name probably isn't unsual, but the character used might be.

[Drew]

That's true. "Green" is a very popular girls' name in Japanese. Of course, it is pronounced "Midori."