Sweden says no to naming your kid "Q"

[CaptainStoner]

The Swedish Courts are obviously TOS purists:

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/01/22/Court-rules-Q-unacceptable-as-boys-name/UPI-45961232647402/

 

[RoJoHen]

How odd. How the hell can the government determine what a name is?

 

[Rii]

They could always go with "Queue".

 

[sidious618]

This seems weird and rather unethical. It's hardly an offensive name unless there is some local thing about it that I don't know about.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

It's a good thing that actor A Martinez didn't grow up there.

 

[Kirkman1987]

It is ridiculous. I would love to see the practical reasoning behind this decision.

 

[bigdaddy]

So is "Fu" still OK?

 

[Sephiroth]

So is "Fu" still OK?

only if your a chineese lesbian cannibal

 

[Kestra]

It's not like it's the first time a government has said "no" to a name, right? I could've sworn I read about that sort of thing happening here.

 

[Yoda]

Pretty stupid ruling IMO.

Of course if an American judge ruled the names Mackenzie and Piper illegal I would send him a fucking fruit basket!

 

[sidious618]

It's not like it's the first time a government has said "no" to a name, right? I could've sworn I read about that sort of thing happening here.

In that case the name was Adolf Hitler, IIRC, though.

 

[Miss Chicken]

How odd. How the hell can the government determine what a name is?

There are quite a few countries in the world that have laws about what you can name your children.

Even in America, where there is no such laws, naming a child something odd can sometimes be difficult. When Frank Zappa wanted to name his son Dweezil the hospital refused to put that name on the birth certificate so Dweezil's original birth certificate had his name as Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa. However, at little Dweezil's insistence it was changed by deed poll a few years later.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

It's a damn letter, not a name...

Just throwing it out there, can I name my kid 1...as in the number?

 

[RoJoHen]

It's a damn letter, not a name...

Just throwing it out there, can I name my kid 1...as in the number?

It would be weird, but I don't understand why it should ever be illegal.

Is "Q" illegal because it doesn't have a vowel and is therefore not a word? Is that the problem? What if I wanted to name someone "O."

How about "I." They would constantly be speaking in the 3rd person.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

It's a damn letter, not a name...

Just throwing it out there, can I name my kid 1...as in the number?

It would be weird, but I don't understand why it should ever be illegal.

Is "Q" illegal because it doesn't have a vowel and is therefore not a word? Is that the problem? What if I wanted to name someone "O."

How about "I." They would constantly be speaking in the 3rd person.

Could be actual legal problems with a one letter name actually now to come think about it.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

^^^ Single letter names are discouraged by the law, but not specifically outlawed, hence the court ruling in the article linked to at the bottom of this post.

Sweden has fairly strict yet often seemingly arbitrary naming laws, which has sometimes had the opposite effect of making parents give their children even more bizarre names:

Lower courts have ruled that the name does not comply with the 1982 Naming Law, a complex bit of legislation under which the names Lego and Google were approved in recent years, but Superman, Elvis and Metallica were not. (Also rejected, “Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116″ – pronounced Albin.)

The law was originally enacted because non-noble families were giving their children noble names, which is simply not O.K. So the legislature put the Swedish tax authority in charge, requiring that all names be registered there, and allowing some to be rejected on the grounds that they could “cause trouble” for children later in life.

(Not only has the authority taken to rejecting wild names and spellings, they also have prohibited couples from giving children the equivalent of two last names — either hyphenated or as a middle and surname. That’s a whole other story, which you can read here.)

Link

As an update, the parents have won the right to name their kid Q, and a woman was allowed to legally change her name to A-C from Anne-Christine:

Link

 

[Yoda]

Wait, they have the law in the first place to prevent commoners from using 'noble' names? What the fuck. There's a country in need of a fucking revolution.

By the way I had a high school science teacher names H. Yep, just H. He was an utter twat, and we made fun of his one letter name, but having been named H didn't seem to cause the universe to collapse.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Wait, they have the law in the first place to prevent commoners from using 'noble' names? What the fuck. There's a country in need of a fucking revolution.

Yep, they have one of the highest quality of life rankings in the world, but that silly naming law is what's going to push the people over the edge into a no doubt strangely-named revolution.

 

[RoJoHen]

Wait, they have the law in the first place to prevent commoners from using 'noble' names? What the fuck. There's a country in need of a fucking revolution.

Yep, they have one of the highest quality of life rankings in the world, but that silly naming law is what's going to push the people over the edge into a no doubt strangely-named revolution.

Suddenly, all around the country, people will be changing the name field on their Facebook page to names of noblemen. And then they will Twitter their new names to all their friends.

I, for one, am terrified.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Well I , for one, welcome our new Swede overlords π, Widget, XOXO, 2Legit2Quit, and Sven of Nine Bjorling.