Few will object to this week's New Zealand court ruling that freed a nine-year-old girl from being officially known as Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. The judge made the embarrassed child a ward of court and took a sideswipe at other invented appellations he'd heard of - including Number 16 Bus Shelter, and, for twins, Benson and Hedges.
Gratuitous wackiness has its dangers, but so too do attempts at control. France has ditched the traditional list from which every name once had to be picked, but officials can still object to the weirder ones, and the lingering propensity of Jeans, Jean-Pauls and Jean-Lucs makes for bland conformity. Distinction can bring advantages: Madonna's unique profile surely owes something to her unusual - and genuine - name. Celebrities Peter André and Jordan mixed up their mothers - Thea and Amy - to come up with Princess Tiáamii for their daughter, achieving a neat feminist counterbalance to patrilineal surnaming (though they may not put it that way).
The reflexive rebranding of thinktanker Perri 6 may have been cringe-worthy, but by cheating the alphabet he has topped many a list of academic citations - and he still uses the name. In A Boy Named Sue the father explains: "Ya ought to thank me, before I die / For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye / Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you Sue". Would Big Daddy have wrestled so well if he'd never had to fight his way through school after having been named Shirley?
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