NZ's No-No Names List

You're Thinking of Naming Me What, Now?

New Zealand has some of the world's most famous naming laws. In 1995 a new Births, Deaths and Marriages and Relationships Registration Act was passed, outlining a set of rules around acceptable names for New Zealanders.

Now, you've probably heard about the parents who wanted to name their daughter "Talulah Does The Hula From Hawaii" but were turned down. But you may not have known that this was actually their daughters name until she was nine years old. It wasn't until 2008 that a family court judge ordered that her name be changed because he felt that the name was "embarrassing" and "makes a fool of the child".

Some of the main no-no's in New Zealand are:

• Names that are too bizarre or too offensive. Anal and Lucifer have been rejected for this reason
• Names that are unreasonably long
• Names that might imply that a child holds an official title or rank. Remembering that New Zealand is part of the British ruled Commonwealth, this includes Duke and Princess, as well as Justice and alternative spellings Justus and Juztice
• Stand alone letters that appear to be initials but don't stand for anything, such as CJ or MC. This might explain why we are starting to see phonetic versions such as Ceejay and Emcee in birth announcements.
• Names with numbers in them, such as the infamous Number 16 Bus Shelter, or other proposed names 4real and 2nd.
• Symbols for Roman numerals, such as I, II, III (you get the picture)
• Names that are punctuation (if you were wondering, no, it is not OK to call your child "*"), or using a backslash or brackets to indicate a second or middle name

And in case you find it hard to believe that parents would actually want to give their children such seemingly silly names as "," or V8, New Zealand officials this week released a list of names that have been rejected since 2001 - and how many times they have been denied. Happy reading!

Justice:62

King:31

Princess:28

Prince:27

Royal:25

Duke:10

Major:9

Bishop:9

Majesty:7

J:6

Lucifer:6

using brackets around middle names:4

Knight:4

Lady:3

using back slash between names:8

Judge:3

Royale:2

Messiah:2

T:2

I:2

Queen:2

II:2

Sir:2

III:2

Jr:2

E:2

V:2

Justus:2

Master:2

Constable:1

Queen Victoria:1

Regal:1

Emperor:1

Christ:1

Juztice:1

3rd:1

C J :1

G:1

Roman numerals III:1

General:1

Saint:1

Lord:1

. (full stop):1

89:1

Eminence:1

M:1

VI:1

Mafia No Fear:1

2nd:1

Majesti:1

Rogue:1

4real:1

* (star symbol):1

5th:1

S P:1

C:1

Sargent:1

Honour:1

D:1

Minister:1

MJ:1

Chief:1

Mr:1

V8:1

President:1

MC:1

Anal:1

A.J:1

Baron:1

L B:1

H-Q:1

Queen V:1

Makybe Diva

Makybe Diva's historic 3rd Melbourne Cup win in 2005

Today's post is inspired by two things. One, The Melbourne Cup is on today. In case you hadn't heard, it's one of the biggest horse races of the year, and a very big deal in Australia. And as I live in Melbourne I also get the luxury of a public holiday today so I can enjoy the race  - we're off to a BBQ with friends later today, which is the usual way to commemorate the day if you're not actually at the track today.

My second inspiration is the smoosh name, by way of Abby at Appellation Mountain. Abby has recently commented on her Facebook page that she's spotted an Emmylou, and that a post on name smooshes remains one of her favourites on Nameberry.

Which got me to thinking about one of the most successful name smooshes I've seen on a Melbourne Cup champion - Makybe Diva. Makybe Diva became the first ever horse to win the Melbourne Cup three times, which she did in years 2003, 2004 and 2005. I won't go into the history of the Melbourne Cup, as Anna did a great job of this recently at Waltzing More Than Matilda when she profiled the first ever winner of the Cup, Archer. But needless to say, it was a big deal to win it three years back to back, and a statue has been erected in the owners home town to commemorate this achievement.

Makybe Diva is owned by a tuna fisherman in my home state of South Australia named Tony. Tony is the one who gave Maybe Diva her name, which he designed by taking the first two initials of five of his female employees and creating a name. Thus MAureen - KYlie - BElinda - DIanne - VAnessa became Makybe Diva (pronounced mah-KY-bee DEE-vah). I think he was very lucky, as I've tried to do this before when creating team names and it does't usually work out so smoothly!

This was a slightly unusual way to name a horse, as it has generally been tradition to name a horse based on the name of their Sire (father) and Dam (mother). However it is not totally outside the rules - yes, there are rules for naming a racehorse, the same as there is for naming a child. In Australia, a brief overview of the rules are:

1. The maximum length of a name is 18 characters, including spaces.
2. Names can't be repeated for 20 years
3. Rude, offensive or racist words are not allowed.
4. Names can't promote a public company
5. Numbers up to 25 are not allowed, due to potential confusion for race callers. Eg One, Two, Three or First, Second, Third are not allowed.
6. But numbers is used in conjunction with other words, such as First Love will be considered
7. Letters must be spelt out. Eg Pea Kay. A & I are acceptable as a single letter as part of a horse's full name.
8. Names will not be considered if single letters are expected to be pronounced. A name must be pronounceable as words and understandable to the general public. Eg RUFIRST will not be considered, however, AREYOUFIRST will be considered.
9. Combinations of first name & surname (eg.,John Smith) will not be considered. Two first names will be considered (eg., John David)

It's interesting to see how race horse names are policed, but makes sense .

Whatever you're doing today, have a good one and try to catch the race at 3pm Melbourne time. I drew #14 Green Moon in our sweepstakes at work, which isn't a favourite to win but I guess anything can happen!

Your Favourite Letter

Name Magnets Available from Three Button Designs

Most people put a lot of thought into naming their children, or characters in a story. Amongst the lists of "rules" that many people have when choosing names, choosing a name for its first initial - and consequently how the initials of their given names will work with their surname - is a consideration for most people. Here are some of the most common factors people care about in relation to initials:

• They don't want more than one person in the family to have the same first initial, to avoid confusion with mail, at school, on labelling etc
• They don't want all of their children to have the same first initial so they can avoid "Duggar Style" naming. Or Kardashian style naming for that matter.
• If the first two children have different initials, the third one can't have the same initial as the other two to avoid the one with the different initial feeling "left out"
• Conversely, they prefer all children to have the same initial - either because the first two happen to have the same one and they don't want subsequent children to feel like the odd one out, or because they like the children to have a common bond (beyond belonging to the same family)
• Perhaps the most important one - their initials must not spell out any undesirable words. i.e. Freddie Ulysses Kramer = not good.

However here's another thing worth considering - how would you feel if their first initial became their nickname? Some people deliberately choose first and second names to get a cute nickname, such as J.P. or D.J. On the other hand, others choose names specifically because they feel it doesn't have any usable nicknames. On first appearances, would you think Blair has any obvious nicknames? No? How about the character Blair on 'Gossip Girl'. Her best friend Serena calls her B, which further translates to her famous reputation as "Queen Bee".

This all crossed by mind the other day when dealing with someone at work who loves to use this method of nicknaming. Luckily my first name starts with B, which I think works well as a nickname. And I've heard him call a Helen "H", which I guess is OK. But I started to wonder when Felicity (Flick to most people) became "F". What do you think? Which letters work best for this style of nicknaming? And how would you feel about carefully choosing a name you love that seems to have no nicknames, only to have that name reduced to just a letter?