SALT LAKE CITY — If you’re having difficulty choosing a name for your child, you could always select a household brand — that’s what one family from Indonesia did when they named their newborn Google.
According to Kotaku, Ella Karina and Andi Cahya Saputra of Bekasi, West Java, chose to name their son after the internet giant after they couldn’t come up with a name. Ella said she hopes her child will inspire others and take charge in the future.
“I hope my son will be a leader who leads many people, who is useful to many others,” she said.
Andi, the father, also said that while comments on social media occasionally cause him to question the decision, he says he likes to focus on “positive” messages — which tend to paint Saputra as an opportunist.
"Some even said (I named my son Google) to get financial compensation, or that my son would be recruited by Google in the future, or gets his schooling paid for by Google,” he said. “I said ‘Amen’ to positive messages, because I try to think positively.”
Whether or not they chose “Google” to leverage some sort of gift from the company, that’s what the family got. According to the Jakarta Post (via AsiaOne), Google Indonesia sent the family a gift bag — including a baby jumper with Google’s logo printed on it.
A family photo — including baby Google — can be seen on Instagram.
Meanwhile, Google isn’t the only kid with a branded name. Mashable notes other parents have named their babies things like Hashtag, Facebook, Like, Siri and “@.” A Google blog post from 2005 also notes that Dr. Walid Elias Kai, a Lebanese man working in search engine marketing, named his son Oliver Google Kai.
"When we first knew that my wife Carol is pregnant, I said, 'we will name our child Google.' Everyone laughed and did not take me seriously. My brother said, 'Yeah, name the next one yahoo fuji nikon,” Walid Kai wrote at the time. “Carol (Kai, his wife) knew how serious I am – she knows how much I adore Google services."