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Govt. and the Name of a Child
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
In Germany, a Turkish couple just gave up their fight to officially register their newborn son as Osama bin Laden.
By German law, it is illegal "to allow parents to give their children names that might dishonor them or harm their dignity."
Whether or not a name may potentially harm a child, do you think it is right for the government to step in and tell these parents what they may or may not name their child?
More here
and here.
By German law, it is illegal "to allow parents to give their children names that might dishonor them or harm their dignity."
Whether or not a name may potentially harm a child, do you think it is right for the government to step in and tell these parents what they may or may not name their child?
More here
and here.
0
Comments
It's a privacy issue. The government shouldn't interfere in family matters, which is what this is.
Where would you draw the line? I heard of someone yesterday whose real name is *sniggers*, Ben Dover! Is that in bad taste? Wouldn't that kid get picked on mercilessly in school?
It's anyone's guess i suppose. I couldnt imagine anyone living in the West could be cruel enough to subject their child to a name like OBL, the other school kids would likely pound him into the pavement just for having the name.
Had Paula Yates lived in France, she probably wouldn't have been allowed to name her daughter Heavenly Couching Tiger Lilly Hidden Dragon, or whatever the hell the poor kid is called.
As for the morality of this, well I'm not sure. A balance between the rights of the child, and government interference in family life.
I was lucky though. My name in Danish means number or present tense of speak...
I think the government was, and always will be right in cases like this, for the child's sake.
Who would want to call their child such a name? The govt. should step in to protect the child.
While I agree that these are obviously misguided people, I repectfully disagree with you.
This is a family matter. Those two misguided idiots created this person from their bodies, the woman carried the kid and gave birth to it, they should be able to give it whatever name they want to. Period.
The government isn't going to raise this child. The government doesn't care for this child like its parents do. While its obvious these people aren't the the sharpest, you would have to prove to me that they don't love this child before I would agree that they shouldn't be have control over what he or she should be called for the rest of his life.
For God's sake, kids get teased and bullied for any number of reasons, most of which they don't have control over. Maybe the kid will be the biggest child in his class and will beat up anyone who teases him. Maybe he'll be the most popular. Maybe he'll revel in being the outcast. We don't know how he'll be treated.
Homosexual parents (we've had that discussion before), mixed marriages, people with ginger hair having children, children being overweight?
I undertand your point that it can open the child to bullying, but as I've said beofre (and as Alessandro said here) children will find any reason to bully other children.
You know that do you? Can we ban all names relating to anyone who ever committed crimes? What about calling your child Fred, or Peter? Osama bin Laden is a silly name to give a child at this point, but it was a name first, and a terrorist second. There must be other Osama bin Laden's in the world. Would we stop them entering the country because of that coincidence?
And as for bullying, maybe. Maybe he'll be in a class of kids called Adolf, Hermann, Rasputin and George W. Who knows? Maybe he'll be in a class with a couple of kids called Brooklyn and Romeo. Who's going to get bullied then?