It is my firm belief that it is your god-given right to name your child whatever you wish. A swear word. The name of an existing celebrity. Your own name. A string of random numbers and letters. Hell, even ‘Moon Unit‘. Whatever. I acknowledge that this might well have consequences in the child’s life but I also believe that knowing that your own child will grow to hate you is a deterrent enough to stop people from going too wild.
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As the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs is quick to stress, there are no ‘banned’ names for babies, but there are guidelines as to what they will accept. They will knock back anything with “swear words, names of more than 70 characters, numerals or anything unpronounceable”. Most importantly, those FASCIST BASTARDS will not accept anything that could be mistaken for an official title. As much fun as it would be, you cannot get away with calling your child ‘Captain’.
Seemingly quite proud of their system, ever year the NZ Department of Internal Affairs releases the list of names they have said ‘no’ to, this time putting out a list of 66 names that were, for the most part, either too close to an official title or, alternately, composed of too many Roman numerals.
The names, in order of how many times they were rejected, are as follows:
- Allah: 1
- Avaya-Royal: 1
- Duke: 1
- Emperor: 1
- Emprah: 1
- Gunner: 1
- Heaven-Princezz-Star: 1
- Hunter-Rhouge: 1
- III: 1
- Jahstice: 1
- Judge: 1
- Jusdyce: 1
- Justus: 1
- Kiing: 1
- Kingdavid: 1
- Kyro-King: 1
- Lee-Royal: 1
- Majestee-Honours: 1
- Majesty: 1
- Major: 1
- Prince-Ryder: 1
- Princess-Dixie-Rose: 1
- Prinz: 1
- Prynce: 1
- Rhoyal-Kahurangi: 1
- Rogue: 1
- Roil: 1
- Royaale: 1
- Royale-Bubz: 1
- Royality: 1
- Royelle: 1
- Sir: 1
- Sire: 1
- Zdiam-Bishop: 1
- II: 2
- Messiah: 2
- Miss: 2
- Queen: 2
- Royale: 2
- Royalty: 3
- Saint: 3
- Prince: 4
- King: 6
- Royal: 6
Just as an aside: I am struggling to imagine any sort of scenario where having the first name ‘Emperor’ could potentially see you mistaken for someone holding the title of ‘Emperor’, considering there is only one actual Emperor in the world currently.
