LuciferWhen it comes to the government getting involved in child rearing, I'm usually of the step-away-from-the-kid school of thought, but sometimes intervention is necessary for the sake of the kid. Take baby names for instance. While deciding what name to bestow upon one's child is a parent's right and privilege, when parents want to call their kid "Lucifer," they really should be stopped.

Some names are just stupid, but others are mean and really could border on some kind of mental abuse. In New Zealand, at least, the government is putting a stop to such nonsense. Currently, there are 102 names on the government's list of those it has rejected in the past two years, including Lucifer.

Others that haven't made the cut in New Zealand include names like: "89," "/" (Slash?), "Mr.," and "Messiah." All pretty good calls I'd say. Countries around the world have banned all sorts of names as well, most of which seem like merciful rulings. The problem, however, is that when you try to regulate names, there's huge room for interpretation in what's good taste.

It seems New Zealand has also rejected names that sound too much like titles such as: "Baron," "Bishop," "Duke," "General," "Judge," "Justice," "King," and "Knight." That seems a little too aggressive in my opinion. The council also balked at, though later accepted, names like "Fanny" and "Nevaeh" (heaven spelled backwards), which seems crazy as they're pretty popular names.

And I guess that's why even though I'd like to see some people stopped from giving their children ridiculous names, it seems more problematic to start determining what a ridiculous name actually is. I suppose a couple little Lucifers running around is a small price to pay for the freedom we have in this country to name our kids "Apple" and the like ... for those not named Lucifer at least.

Which baby names would you like to see outlawed? Do you think governments should outlaw certain names?


Image via Omar Omar/Flickr