What’s In A Name? Occasionally Too Much.

There has been a weird news item making the rounds lately about kids being given bizarre names by idiot parents in New Zealand. Example: A 9-year-old girl who was named Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. Fortunately, a judge stepped up and made the poor kid a ward of the court, then gave her a new, legal name. What that new name is we do not know, in deference to the youngster’s privacy.

I hasten to add that kiwis certainly do not have a monopoly on adults with no brains who insist on procreating. I wrote recently about a mother who got off an Amtrak train in Montana somehow forgetting that her two children were still on board. Fortunately, the train attendant did remember.

Anyway, the unusual-name phenomenon is not something new. Way back in my youth, I knew a young man whose legal name was Twig Branch.

And just the other day, while looking for a new truck here on Maui, I noted the name of the car dealership’s sales manager: Ivan Ho.

Years ago, I knew a professional baseball player named Dave Hirtz. When his wife became pregnant, I asked him what they were going to name their son.

“Anything but Dick or Peter,” he said.

Good call.