Banned Baby Names in New Zealand Include 'Justice' and 'Lucifer'
New Zealand has released its updated list of banned baby names. The Department of Internal Affairs is responsible for the list, which currently includes nearly 80 unacceptable names.
Some of the latest names to be added to the list are: "Justice," "Lucifer," "Mafia No Fear," "Anal," and "A.J." Children whose name has initials without any significant meaning (MC, VI, CJ) are also nixed from the list.
Names "cannot cause offence to a reasonable person, cannot be unreasonably long and should not, without adequate justification, include an official title or rank," the Department states. It began enforcing the law in 1995, according to TVNZ.
The top 10 most regularly banned names in New Zealand are: "Justice," "King," "Princess," "Prince," "Royal," "Duke," "Major," "Bishop," "Majesty," and "J," according to the Huffington Post. These names are regularly changed by the government in order to ensure order among the people.
Four years ago, a 9-year-old girl was taken into custody by the state in order to officially change her name, which was "Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii." No one knows what it was legally changed to but shows the determination of the government to police names.
New Zealand is not the only country to have banned or acted on behalf of children who receive unique names at birth. Sweden has a naming law and prohibits parents from naming their children "Superman" and "Metallica," while in the Dominican Republic, parents were discouraged from naming their children after vehicles or pieces of fruit.
Here in the United States, two children were removed from their home in New Jersey after it was reported that their legal names were "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nation." Yet in Illinois, a man was allowed to legally change his first name to "In God" and his last name to "We Trust."
