STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Metallica may work as a name for a heavy metal band, but a Swedish couple is struggling to convince authorities it’s also suitable for a baby girl.Apparently the Swedish government has some authority over what one may name a child - at least with regards to their legal name. One has to ask why any population would grant a government agency this sort of authority? I can think of rationales associated with issues like identity theft and the like but they hardly seem to justify this sort of interference in the lives of citizens.
Addendum: Oh and I pulled the title of this post from Shakespeare's Othello:
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
11 comments:
Hey! This was in my blog, too!
Yeah, the notion of the state having some sort of control over what you can name a child is just absolutely foreign to me.
Sure - that's the way it is in Scandinavia. I talked with the Danish Minister of Education about that (they do that in Dk, too), and he felt that there was a need to protect children from poor naming choices - to prevent kids from getting teased.
sigh.
oh - there was no booze at that gathering.
VM,
How are government officials any better at picking the name of a child than parents are?
IIRC, this happens in a lot of nations, no?
Even in the US, doesn't a judge have to approve a name change? (Not the same as them approving the name at birth, but still...)
What gives the parents the right to choose the name for the child, for that matter? ;)
Why can't we just all walk around with a number until an appropriate, sexy name just...well...occurs to us!
Not that "Panda" is very sexy...
highnumber, panda & vm,
Well, one solution to the problem of screwy names would be to provide for a two time only streamlined legal name change between say the age sixteen and twenty-five.
This is my favorite story on the subject of bizarre names:
A Boy Named "Albin"
FWIW, I think it is a cute name.
Gro:
I have no idea how gov't officials are better at that.
Apparently they are.
Smacky - what about a boy called sue?
ha ha.
vm,
I'm a big fan of the man in black.
smacky,
That Albin thing was great.
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