Should parents be restricted from giving their babies very unusual names? Share on Tumblr PinExt Whats in a Name?

By Jennie

In recent years, when a celebrity has a child, the question usually asked after “boy or girl?” is “what did they name it?” Okay, that’s a common question, even for non-celebrities. But celebrities have gotten a reputation, perhaps undeserved, of being more…adventurous in their choice of baby names than the average American. There’s Audio Science. And Pilot Inspektor (what, because Pilot Inspector was too conventional?). And who could forget Moxie Crimefighter? It’s gotten to the point where the fact that Freddie Prinze and Sarah Michelle Gellar named their recently born daughter Charlotte drew comment. The name, while a bit old-fashioned, struck some commenters as surprisingly sane and normal.

Of course, as noted, it’s not just celebrities. I’ve heard a number of people scoff lately not just at unusual baby names, but unusual spellings of more conventional names. The ubiquity of “Mackenzie” as a girl’s name has given way to unique spellings such as Mykenzie and McKenzi. “Michaela” seems to be another one that has endless variants, including Mikayla and Mechaluh. It seems to be girl’s names that inspire the most creativity.

Not surprisingly, there is a backlash. It’s not hard to find someone who will tell you all about the disservice a parent does to their child by giving him or her an unusual or difficult-to-spell name. I’ve often agreed with this judgment in the past – it seems short-sighted and self-indulgent to saddle a kid with a name that they are going to have repeat (and spell!) for the rest of their lives.

Lately, though, I’ve been having my own backlash against the backlash. One thing that occurred to me was that, presumably, every name was an unusual name once. Somebody had to come up with your name at some point. Today’s common names were made up by someone or are a variation on an older name (as is the case with my name) – but then someone had to decide to spell it differently. There are no Mirandas in the Bible (even names in the Bible must have been made up by someone, somewhere, at some point). Miranda was actually made up by Shakespeare for The Tempest (Shakespeare made up quite a few names in his plays, many of which remain popular to this day.)

Plus, most Americans probably don’t want to go the way of some European countries, many of which place fairly stringent restrictions on what names citizens can give to their offspring. Denmark, France and Portugal, just to name a few, have customarily limited parents to a list of acceptable, traditional names, and parents wishing to go outside of these limits usually have to apply to a board or agency and give a justification for their choice. A New York Times article from 2004 references a case in which Danish parents were asked to justify by letter their reason for naming their newborn daughter “Molli” – the mother went to the court clerk and said “Here’s your stupid letter: The reason for naming her Molli is because we like it.”

The justification in these countries for infringing on what would seem to be a parent’s natural right to name their own child is that the state has an interest in protecting the dignity of the child in question. Even in the U.S., you would not be able to say, give your child an obscene word as their name, but that’s a bit different than being given a list – even a long list – of acceptable names, and being told that you have to choose from it, or having a court reject your child’s name (as has happened in Germany) because the gender of the child was not readily apparent from the name.

What are your thoughts on child naming – traditional or unique? Do you think there is some merit to the government placing limitations on naming, or do you think it’s none of the state’s business?

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