Late last summer, a judge in the town of Newport, Tennessee ordered that a 7-month old boy’s name be changed from Messiah to Martin, saying that “it’s a title that has only been earned by one person … Jesus Christ.”
This decision was eventually overturned and the judge was reprimanded for her obvious religious bias.
The baby naming laws of individual states vary widely.
In California, baby names cannot contain umlauts or accents. In South Dakota, if a mother is unmarried at the time of conception, her surname goes on the birth certificate (unless a man signs an affidavit saying he’s the father). Roman numerals are allowed for suffixes in Texas, but not Arabic ones, so a boy could be Rick Perry III but not Rick Perry 3. In Massachusetts, the total number of characters in first, middle and last names cannot exceed 40. New Hampshire, meanwhile, prohibits all punctuation marks except for apostrophes and dashes.
None of these laws helped Adolf Hitler Campbell, the boy who made headlines when a New Jersey bakery refused to decorate a cake ordered by his father.
Adolf Hitler Campbell is probably the worst name that I can imagine.
Right behind it, however, are my father and uncles.
My father is Leslie Jean Dicks. He goes by Les Dicks.
My father says that his mother must have hated him at birth.
My great uncle is Harry Dicks, and my uncle is Harold Dicks, but he also goes by Harry Dicks.
The last name is admittedly not the easiest, but you would be hard pressed to find two more unfortunate first names to attach to it.
