Johnny Cash famously sang about it, but giving your child an unusual name is fraught with difficulties - as the parents of Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii found out, writes Ronan McGreevy
ANYBODY FAMILIAR with the music of Johnny Cash knows the story of A Boy Named Sue. According to the song, Sue's daddy left him and his ma with just an old guitar, an empty bottle of booze and a stupid name.
Sue spent his days roaming from town to town "to hide my shame". Then one day he found his daddy in a salon and vowed revenge for his name. The pair knocked seven bells out of each other, emerging into the street at which point his vanquished father offered this explanation:
"And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."
At least the man who called his boy Sue had an explanation for the moniker he placed on his unfortunate child. The parents of the New Zealand child Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii had no such excuse, which is why family court judge Rob Murfitt made the nine-year-old a ward of court and criticised her parents for their lack of judgment.
Many people on this side of the world would empathise with the judge's comments. Usually the parents are the last to hear if they exercise poor judgment in naming their children. Unfortunately, their children are the first to know, especially in the playground.
The story made headlines around the world because the modern-day phenomenon of calling children unusual names is now an international one.
The trend seems to have been set by celebrities. Famously, Bob Geldof and Paula Yates named their daughters Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie. When Yates later had a child with Michael Hutchence, they named her Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. Elsewhere, Bono has a daughter called Memphis Eve and a son named Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q, while The Edge named his daughter Blue Angel.
The Beckhams raised many a transatlantic titter by calling their first son Brooklyn, after the place where he was conceived, and their second Romeo. It had an impact: 10 children born in Ireland last year were called Brooklyn and five called Romeo. There was a time when Irish children were called conventional first names like Michael, Patrick, Anne, Mary, Tom and Bridget. Now the trend, aided by immigraton but also fuelled by celebrity culture, is towards diversity. Of the 64,237 children born in Ireland in 2006, 4,500 had a name that was unique to them. Among these were Marvellous, Maximus, Kia, Queen and Zi.
In other countries, bizarre names have resulted in court battles. In the United States, names such as 1069, III, They and Santa Claus have all been rejected by the courts. In Sweden, though, a couple fought successfully to call their child Metallica after the American heavy metal band.
France, Belgium and Portugal are among the countries to have an approved list of names from which families can draw. In Ireland, there are no provisions governing the forenames of children. Instead, it is up to the registrar of births in each county to decide if a name that is given to a child is appropriate.
"Registrars of births, in common with all public servants, have a duty of care to their customers and are advised that, where a parent has decided to assign a forename that might be considered by the general public to be inappropriate or offensive, the parent is made aware of the possible consequences of the decision," explains a spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Family Affairs. However, there is no case that the Office of the Registrar General is aware of in which a registrar refused to register a name.
The tendency towards bizarre names is also causing the Catholic Church some headaches. "A christening is just that," says a spokesman, "it is giving a child a Christian name. It is not the same as a naming ceremony."
Canon Law 855 states that parents and sponsor "are to take care that a name is not given that is foreign to Christian sentiment". The church has been known to exercise its discretion to seek to add a Christian name where it feels it is necessary. "If a child is called Pocahontas," the spokesman says, "we would be recommend she be called Pocahontas Mary, and we'd get around it that way."