Silly First Name Syndrome

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

West Auckland that is, where people have taken to aflicting their children with Silly First Name Syndrome. Only pain and suffering comes from Silly First Names.

Ruby and Liam were among the most popular baby names in New Zealand last year but in West Auckland be prepared to come across Unique or Hannibal.

Many parents in the west are proud to give their children names that are a little different.

Shaela Nathan and John Tike of Henderson are parents to 10-month-old Hurricayn Rob and his 2-year-old sister Riivah Jayde.

Miss Nathan says her children’s names reflect their personalities.

“Riivah was pretty hard to name and it took three weeks before one stuck. She’s really calm and quiet,” Miss Nathan says.

“But when Hurricayn came out the midwife said he was loud and proud. When he cried you could hear him from the letterbox.

“Hurricayn also matches the season he was born in because when I went into labour it was 3am and pouring with rain.”

Miss Nathan has always liked unusual names but her parents were shocked by her choices.

“They were like `why’d you name him that for?’ but you only have to spend five minutes with him to know why. He’s going to be a rugby player for sure.”

Suburbs rugby premier team coach Ramsey Tomakino says he’s come across some unusual names during his three years with the Waitakere team.

“Last year we had Hannibal, Nissan and Rambo – we have lots of people who say they like seeing our team lists because of the names.”

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

Look, I feel sorry for the kiddie having an accident, really I do, but what were his parents (or more likely just his mum) thinking when they named him?

Silly First Name Syndrome is lethal.

A Feilding childcare worker has admitted showing a lack of care at a pedestrian crossing when she drove into a toddler’s pram.

The 2-year-old boy, who was thrown from the pram, had to have a finger amputated as a result of the collision.

In Feilding District Court yesterday, Tania Nicole Bowater, 32, pleaded guilty to a charge of careless driving causing injury.

The incident happened on March 2 as she was driving along Kimbolton Rd, Feilding.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Whitmore said Bowater was driving about 50kmh and failed to see Lisa Nuku and her son Southern-Rome Nuku crossing the road. Bowater struck the pram.

“[Ms Nuku] received no injuries but [Southern-Rome] had his left hand badly lacerated which later required the removing of his ring finger and an operation to his little and index fingers,” Whitmore said.

This small kid is lucky to be alive:

Gnarley is his name, and he certainly lived up to it yesterday, “surfing” a vehicle down Golden Bay’s Takaka Hill.

The parents of the adventurous Takaka Hill toddler turned stowaway are relieved to have him back safe and sound.

Two-year-old Gnarley Maguire hitched a ride in his grandfather’s trailer for 20 kilometres, from the hill’s summit to Motueka.

A truck driver spotted him in the trailer with a 1.2-metre-high cage, winding its way down the steep Takaka Hill road, and followed him to Motueka.

He asked Gnarley’s grandfather, who had stopped at the town’s Placemakers store, if he knew he had a child in his trailer.

He didn’t.

Here is the chart that shows the propensity of Silly First Name Syndrome to occur:

Shelley Bridgeman writes about Silly First name Syndrome:

It’s official. A study has discovered that the name you bestow on your newborn can affect its future. Who would have thought? You mean to say twins called Benson and Hedges might stand out from their peers – and not in a good way? So inventing names, mangling spellings and inserting random apostrophes are inadvisable? Gosh, we learn something new every day.

Most new parents appear to fall into one of two camps. There are the traditionalists who want a nice, normal name that no one will bat an eyelid at. Hello Sarah, Elizabeth, William and Jack. Then there are the people determined to be original and stand out from the crowd. Like television characters Kath and Kim, they consider “unusual” to be a desirable attribute.

“Oh, yes, that’s noice, different, unusual,” they say about Sativa-Rochee, KleeShay and Qba (names I encountered on Trade Me’s Parenting message-board).

I must belong to the first group because the simplicity of a regular name appeals to me. I’m not inclined to inflict a child with a lifelong need to clarify the spelling – or worse, the pronunciation – of their name. Don’t think I’m deriding cultural names or prized family names here; it’s the creation of one-of-a-kind, plucked-out-of-thin-air names to which I am drawing attention.

Stuff carries a list of the names some people tried to inflict upon their children.

Do they not know the tragedy of Silly First name Syndrome?

Parents who tried to name their child Mafia No Fear are among hundreds who had their choice of name rejected in the past decade.

Justice was the most popular disallowed name, with royal titles, religious references and punctuation marks among names parents tried to bestow upon children.

A child and family psychologist who has even seen children named after illicit drugs says parents need to be more careful about stigmatising their kids.

A list provided by the Internal Affairs Department shows 350 parents had the names they chose for their offspring rejected in the 10 years ending June 30, 2011.

The list of disallowed names follows the release of the most popular names for 2011 – Liam and Ruby – this week. The most popular rejected name was Justice – 49 people tried to name their child that, along with alternate spellings Justus and Juztice.

Royal titles featured heavily – King, Prince, Princess, Knight, Queen, Queen V, Queen Victoria, Lord, Lady, Baron and Duke were all rejected as were Royal, Royale, Majesty and Majesti. Religious references Messiah, Christ, Bishop, Saint and Lucifer didn’t make the cut either.

Mafia No Fear, Anal, V8, single letters, the Roman numerals I, II, III, punctuation symbols * . and / and titles such as President, Emperor, Chief, Constable, Sargent and General were also rejected.

The Pope won’t do anything about his priests buggering boys in the past but he is prepared to make a stand on Silly First Name Syndrome:

This week the Pope declared war on parents naming babies after celebrities, fruit or popular sports cars. In an address to parents, the ever-progressive pontiff pleaded with worshipers to ‘give your children names that are in the Christian calendar’. So Apple, Brooklyn and Ferrari are out, Francisco and Giulia are in.

The post then goes on to list some banned names and makes the following comment about New Zealand:

1) Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii (New Zealand)
New Zealand law bans names which could cause offence to a ‘reasonable’ person. Good thing too – the country is a stupid name hotspot. We found a couple from the islands who tried and failed to call their son ’4Real’, but nothing beats the ridiculous moniker above. It belonged to a 9-year-old girl before a judge had her renamed during a custody battle. ‘It makes a fool of the child,’ he said. It certainly made application forms a pain in the butt.

Has New Zealand banned any other names? Oh yes. The judge listed some that were also blocked: Fish and Chips (twins), Yeah Detroit, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit. Number 16 Bus Shelter and Violence were allowed.

I note too that Denmark has made a stand about the frippery of double-barreled surnames, like Lees-Galloway and the such.

Yet another dog attack that Nanaia Mahuta said wouldn’t happen after dogs were chipped:

“The changes are aimed at better dog control, such as addressing dog attacks on people and, as often happens in rural areas, dog attacks on other people’s stock. Any dog can potentially bite – even family pets.”

That is what she said in 2006 when sponsoring the dog-chipping law. Like Sue Bradford’s anti-smacking law it hasn’t worked as it was intended. It was spurious then and it is spurious now to suggest that chipped dogs are safer and child abuse will stop because of silly misguided laws.

A 15-month-old boy was savaged by a pitbull as he wandered into the dog’s yard to play with a Christmas present he had received hours earlier.

The vicious Christmas Day mauling of Ozyris Beeching – whose family say he is lucky to be alive – came after the local council had been warned several times about the dog’s temperament, his distraught mother told the Herald yesterday.

Tracy Beeching said her family were getting ready to drive a few blocks across Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty for a Christmas breakfast with her brother’s family when little Ozyris wandered next door with his new toy lawnmower.

He entered the front yard shortly before 10.30am and came within reach of the tethered pitbull, which attacked the infant, biting him on his face and stomach.

Nanaia Mahuta needs to get in her car and drive down tot he Bay of Plenty and go and apologise that her law hasn’t stopped another child being mauled by a dog. She would have been far better sponsoring a law to stop people having silly first names…it may have saved this child.

Regular readers and loyal Army members know that I regularly feature stories of those afflicted with Silly First Name Syndrome. The Herald has an article with some boffin proving that the syndrome exists and is dangerous.

Prospective parents, beware – what you name your baby could negatively affect their future.

“Name your kids what you love, but be aware there are consequences,” David Figlio, an economics and education professor at Northwestern University, told Time.

Figlio found that, across all races and ethnicities, there are certain letter combinations that are more likely to be given by high school dropouts, for example, than mothers who have completed school.

Among caucasian families, Alexandra may be spelled Alekzandra; the “kz” combination is almost never seen in middle-class families. For African Americans, it may mean use of the prefix “Sha” rather than the more highly regarded “La.”

Teachers treat children with “linguistically low-status” names differently to their peers – they are more likely to be referred for special education, less likely to be recognized as gifted and they perform poorer on tests, according to America’s National Bureau of Economic Research.

Names may even effect children’s career paths. When Figlio studied sisters who were both good at maths, he found that those with more linguistically feminine names were more likely to shy away from maths and science and stick with humanities classes compared to their siblings with linguistically androgynous names.

And Figlio warns against giving your son a girlie-sounding name: according to Figlio’s 2006 study in Education Finance and Policy, boys with names such as Ashley, Shannon, Jamie and Courtney tend to have more behaviour problems at intermediate school.

There is a whole heap of hurt in this article. The poor guy was doomed, his girlfriend’s name was danger enough but when they picked the name for the kid that sealed his fate.

Zekaiya Biddle has the eyes and chin of a father she will never meet.

Hugh Biddle, 17, was buried in a landslide at his Ohope Beach home, leaving behind his pregnant girlfriend Cherize Kutia, 16.

After a 12-hour labour, Cherize gave birth to a 3.8kg baby girl 10 days ago, 103 days after Hugh’s death.

They chose the name together, and Cherize says she sees her late boyfriend every time she looks into her daughter’s eyes.