IN THE season that brings us Baby Jesus, it’s perhaps not a bad time to ponder on what you might call a new baby. After all, a name is a life sentence.
Jesus is a common enough name in Mexico but not in Ireland obviously. We just go for all the saints and leave the man himself alone. You would never dream of calling anyone Jesus, nor indeed, Satan. But stranger things do happen according to the Indy100.
At recently tweeted a list of names that are banned around the world. And no, mine doesn’t figure. This may be because I’m not Strawberry or Apple or Kylie or Smelly Head.
Still, sometimes I think my mother could have thought twice. She cursed me with a name that was quite unusual in 1960s Ballymena. It is amazing how many people twisted their tongues around that one. Every year, at the verse speaking and dramatic art festival, it was the same.
That’s me in my little wine pinafore, waiting to be called to the stage.
The lady who announced the competitors’ names before they trotted up the steps, would sit at the green baize table, studying her programme and I would eye her nervously. Soon, it would be my turn to say a poem or act a little Shakespeare.
“God, don’t let her say it wrong, don’t let her say it wrong,” I’d pray but God was too busy talking to important people like the Pope... he was anywhere but in Ballymena’s minor hall.
And my little heart would plummet into my boots when my name was called out to the audience. It might be “Nu Ah la”, it might be “New La” and once, owing to a typo in the Ballymena Musical Festival programme, it was “Maula”.
Yes, there were winces and a crimson face. But I always thought it could have been worse. I could have been a Plunkett. Here’s the things. All of us girls in our family have “Mary” as a second name, it came with the religion.
But be assured, I know boys who have “Mary” too. And I also know of a Plunkett – and that’s a name that does nothing for me. Naming a child is a major responsibility. In the season of Christmas, naming babies is important. It is a matter that should not be taken lightly.
In the 1980s when hair was big and Frankie went to Hollywood, we all sat in our student dives huddled around the one single source of heat, the fire, and watched Neighbours of an evening.
That soap spawned a legion of Kylies and Jasons. The name chimed with sunny Melbourne but it did nothing in downtown Belfast.
And after a certain Polish Pope made it to Ireland, the place was teeming with John Pauls.
Personally, I always believed in the doorstep challenge. If you open your front door, look out and yell: “John Paul come in your dinner’s ready,” and nobody winces, then that’s fine.
“Kylie come in for your tea,” doesn’t quite work.
Famous actors have a reputation for calling their offspring odd names like Trumpet, Cushion, Apple – you know who you are.
Jamie Oliver may cook up a storm but he has also ensured his kids won’t fade into the background in the school playground. Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo, Petal Blossom, Buddy Bear and the latest, River Rocket – yes, that’s the lot.
Elsewhere in the world, such naming might not be tolerated. According to the Indy, Saudi Arabia has banned names including Alicia, Maya and Abdul Nasser.
In France, you cannot get away with unusual names. You could get reported to the courts for calling your daughter Strawberry or maybe that’s Fraise.
It seems quite natural that calling your child Adolf Hitler would never be tolerated. Although clearly Adolf was once a popular name.
But some names are just child cruelty. The Indy reports that in Denmark the name Anus is forbidden – why would you have to?
Rambo is out in Mexico, and so is Scrotum – all in the interests of child welfare.
The Swiss would not permit you to name your baby Judas and Lucifer is out in Germany.
Brands are also out. But this begs the question as to who in their right mind would call their child John Lewis or Mark Spencer?
The Indy100 reports Facebook, Ikea, Nutella and Mini Cooper are all banned names in some corner of the world.
Suddenly Nuala is not that bad.
