It is hard not to feel exasperated at the names some parents lumber their children with these days. There’s the surname brigade who think Jackson, Bailey, Maddison and Harrison are great names for their kids; the weird spellers whose offspring will spend their lives having to write down Jaxson, Baylee, Mikaela and Caitee -- if they know how; and then there’s the off-the-radar group like the Swedish parents who called their poor little mite Lego.

New Zealand seems to have more than its share of the last group. Recently a family court judge during a custody hearing had to deal with the extra issue of the child’s name: Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii. No kidding; that’s the moniker the girl’s mum chose, and very poor judgement she had shown, said the judge sternly. “It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap quite unnecessarily.” The girl, who hated the name and had called herself “K”, was made a ward of the court so she could change it.

Judge Rob Murfitt also took a stand against other parents saddling their children with bizarre names despite officials trying to talk them out of it. He cited a family who named their children after six-cylinder Ford cars, twins called Benson and Hedges (a cigarette brand) and kids called Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence.

The Chinese are more into patriotic names: 4104 boys have been named Olympic Games (Aoyun) since China first applied to host the Games in 1992. Names such as Defend China, Build the Nation and Space Travel are not uncommon, and there are said to be 290,798 children called Civilisation in China. ~ News.com (Australia), July 25; June 12