(If you don’t get the reference in the title, don’t worry. Neither does anyone else, probably, but I liked the sound of it.)

While searching for bad baby name goodness, I came across this story. In general, it is remarkably similar to the story in this post: parents want to name their child something funky (in this case, “4real”) but their goverment prevents them. In this case, there is apparently a regulation against names that begin with numbers. According to the article, this–and presumably other regulations–are in place to “prevent names that are likely to cause offense to a reasonable person.” The article mentions further that the New Zealander government has blocked other names in the past, such as Satan and Adolf Hitler.

It seems we could have used a similar regulation here as well, since scores of Satans show up in the U.S. federal census.

I picked this one because his name was clearly “Satan” (no indexing errors here), though based on handwriting elsewhere on the page, his last name could be either “Gripp” or “Tripp.” He was an engineer in California who was born in Ohio and who was 27 at the time this census (the 1860 census) was taken.

I’ve tried to imagine the motivation behind naming your child Satan (especially in 1860!) and I come up short, and believe me, I have a fertile imagination. Alas.

Posted: January 4th, 2008 under Name Fun, Name Highlight.
Comments: 2

You may have read or heard about the parents who wanted to name their kid Friday but were denied by the Italian courts. Clearly there are some political and cultural differences at play, and I don’t want to belittle those, but after combing through census records and looking at thousands of horrible horrible names, the name Friday doesn’t seem that bad to me. Here are a few thoughts on that story:

I read Robinson Crusoe fairly recently, and when I heard of these people wanting to name their kid Friday, I didn’t even connect the two. If I met a person named Friday, I definitely wouldn’t think of Robinson Crusoe. If anything, I’d think of Dragnet, and Joe Friday isn’t the worst person in the world to be named after.

A search of the U.S. federal census records at Ancestry.com produces almost 1,400 results for people named Friday. They can’t all have been barred from “serene interpersonal relationships.”

The Italian court also said that “as a day of the week, Friday raises a sentiment of sadness and penitence, when not being associated with bad luck outright.” This must be a European thing. Raise your hand if you think Friday is a day of sadness and penitence.

I think it’s interesting also that the court chose a name for poor [Friday]. I wonder if when he’s grown, which name will define him most. The so-called weird name his parents gave him or the name the court imposed on him. I also wonder if there’s going to be a surge in people named Friday after this, a little nominative rebellion. I guess we’ll see.

Posted: December 20th, 2007 under Name Fun.
Comments: 6