New Zealand has banned baby names it deems inappropriate.
Among those recently added to the list are Lucifer, Messiah, Duke and 89, reported Global Post.
There are 102 names that New Zealand has outlawed in the past two years, including names too close to titles like Mr., Knight, King, Justice, Judge, General, Duke, Bishop and Baron, reported Dave McGinn with The Globe and Mail.
"The name Messiah has also been turned down, as have requests to name kids 89, C, D, I and T," he wrote. "As well, the agency has refused to give a pass to full stops, asterisks, virgules and other punctuation marks."
New Zealand's Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages policy for allowing baby names has been ambiguous in the past. In 2008 it allowed the names Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter for two boys, and Benson and Hedge for a pair of twins, but wouldn't allow another set of parents to name their child 4Real in 2007, McGinn said.
Other countries have similar policies against weird names that may cause offense, create insecurity and limit social interaction, reports Yahoo! Lifestyle.
In Italy, parents weren't allowed to name their child Venerdi, which translates from Italian into Friday. Dalmata was also turned down because it means Dalmatian in English.
Sweden also has strict baby name laws not allowing Metallica, IKEA, Veranda and Q. When one couple tried to name their child Brfxxcxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced Albin) in 1996 in protest of the strict laws, they were also refused. The Swedes do approve of Google as a name, however.
Yahoo! also reported that Norway jailed a woman in 1998 for failing to pay a fine for naming her son an unapproved name — Gesher, which translates to Bridge in English.
Malaysia and China have also cracked down on inappropriate names like Chow Tow — Smelly Head, Ah Chwar — Snake, Khiow Khoo — Hunchback and Sor Chai — Insane in Malaysia. And China wouldn't let parents name their baby with the @ symbol, Yahoo! said.
The reason for so many parents wanting to name their children unusual names is because of the "baby-naming revolution" that has been happening for the past 50 years, Laura Wattenberg, who wrote "The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby," told NPR.
Wattenberg said that people don't choose the same names anymore, names like John and Mary that were used by older generations over and over again for centuries.
"What you're looking at is your great-grandparents' generation. Our own names are too ordinary, our parents are too boring, our grandparents sound old," she said. "But when you get back to your great-grandparents, you never were surrounded by those names, so they sound fresh again."
But, she said, parents will take names wherever they can find them, as long as they are attractive names.
"Everyone wants to be different," she told NPR. "That's the No. 1 thing we all have in common."
EMAIL: rcampbell@desnews.com