A woman was left “devastated” after her daughter’s passport application was rejected because she was named after a Game of Thrones character.
Lucy, 39, from Swindon in Wiltshire, said the Passport Office initially refused the application for Khaleesi, six.
Officials said they were unable to issue a passport unless Warner Brothers gave permission because it owned the name’s trademark. But the authority has since apologised for the error.
The idea that corporations could own your name is positively dystopian.
All the women named Madison suddenly owe royalties to the rightsholders of the 1984 mermaid-in-Manhattan comedy Splash. Also, anyone named Wendy has to pay the J. M. Barrie estate or change their name to Gwendolyn.
Now I wonder if that would require a lawsuit between the J. M. Barrie estate & the Wendy’s restaurant chain.
“Son Of Matthew” Is a pretty name for a girl though.
This has been pissing me off for so long!
In fact anyone using surnames as first names. Stop it.
But Go back far enough, and a surname is just the given name of your father, or the town you live in, or the trade you do.
More accurate to stop using given names as surnames!
Absolutely. We need to throw off these 11th century traditions and make sure our children’s entire names sound like a double barrelled surname.
what a timely reference that everyone will get right away
don’t get me wrong- I watched Splash on HBO once a summer for half a decade- I got chu
owned the name’s trademark
People really don’t understand trademark despite it being in the name. It’s a trade mark. It’s a mark on something you trade. It only applies to commercial products. Unless Warner Brothers sells children there’s no trademark violation.
Unless Warner Brother’s sells children
With the way the world is lately, it wouldn’t surprise me if they did.
Although, if any one company was going to that, it’d probably be Disney.
When they age out of the It’s A Small World cast, Disney sells them to Nestlé.
I’m prepared to believe this, so won’t be fact-checking it.
Oh are you a journalist
I sometimes pretend to be one at home. “Hold the front page!”, “this story is too good not to be true!”, etc.
Aha but the passport office knew something we didn’t.
Clearly this is proof they sell children overseas.
Poor kid gonna grow up and watch the show where she was named after right before the final season.
There’s a final season? I’m pretty sure they decided to wait for GRRM to finish the books as it would be silly to just go off the map and start making things up, as that could go awfully wrong.
I sure hope they don’t rush it just because they want to go do some other projects!
That’d be disastrous.
No way in hell HBO would allow such a profoundly cultural phenomenon just go to shit. That would be insanely shortsighted for a company that takes such pride in their filmmaking.
My name is alarmingly close to one of the characters (my mate who was reading the books when they first came out thought it was hilarious), but at least I’m not the newsreader Jon Snow.
Imagine the number of times people have smugly said to him, “you know nothing!” Ina bad Scottish accent.
Ygritte was meant to be Scottish?
Well, no, but the accent was.
First season is heavy enough isn’t it? Life lessons:
- get abused by your family
- get burned
- get fucked
Well I think the lesson is that after all the hardship she still fights her way to the top. That is at least inspiring. Then the last season happened.
Official explained there had been a misunderstanding and the guidance staff had originally given applies only to people changing their names.
It’s still fucked
Mental how many people actually thought Khaleesi was the character’s name.
Do you think maybe it’s just the fictional version for all the people that named their children Earl, Princess, Queen, Duke, or any of the other titles that became names?
Add Caesar too. Although it has declined in popularity.
Originally in my list then dropped because when I’ve offered this counter in the past I’ve had people argue that was originally a name. Regina and Reginald should have been in my list as well.
You mean they named their dogs that, right?
How to tell if your parents are morons…
This girl is going to call herself “K.” by the time she’s 14.
Or Sarah.
I don’t know, man. It may sound stupid because we know of the show. But if you separate the show from the name, Khaleesi doesn’t sound half bad.
Even its other meaning, which I think means “queen” or something (right?) is okay. The name “Reina” (literally “Queen” in Spanish) is acceptable - sort-of old-fashioned, but acceptable.
Having said that, yeah, I usually roll my eyes at parents giving kids names because of some show, movie, song or celebrity with a weird name.
My son will be named Barack, as God intended.
What I find so dumb about naming children Khaleesi is that:
a) It’s not the name of a character anyway. Apparently a lot of casual fans thought Dany’s actual name was Khaleesi because several other characters often addressed her by her title. So there’s a good chance that either these parents are casual fans who nonetheless then misnamed their child after a character, or they are serious fans who named their child in a way that will lead other people to infer her parents were casual fans. (Nothing wrong with being a casual fan, but I’d find it a bit dumb to name my child after an IP that I was only loosely into…)
b) The child is six years old. The final episode aired only five years ago. That means they named their child before Dany’s story had even concluded. George RR Martin had been dropping hints throughout the book series that Dany might or might not end up as a genocidal mad queen like her father (the TV show had laid the groundwork for this less effectively, which is in part why the abruptness of her turn was so unpopular) and I find it bizarre that a parent would name a kid after a character who might still end up as a murderous tyrant
I think about the amount of thought and research that many of my friends have conducted when naming their children (including looking up famous real and fictional people with that name, doing word associations, etc). Then these guys come along and just say ‘fuck it, let’s just call her after that blonde girl off TV, Khaleesi I think?’
I think about the amount of thought and research that many of my friends have conducted when naming their children (including looking up famous real and fictional people with that name, doing word associations, etc). Then these guys come along and just say ‘fuck it, let’s just call her after that blonde girl off TV, Khaleesi I think?’
What’s funny is that back in ancient days, nobody gave a damn about how to name their kids. “Got a baby? My name is Paul. Let’s call him Paul McPaulson. Ok… back to the fields.”
This seems fucking daft. How do you refuse a name? Unless your name is a literal blank then you should be allowed any stupid name you desire.
Here in Germany, they can decide to refuse a name for a child if it’s overly krass or might make the child’s life unduly difficult. While one can argue about whether they like that, at least it only happens once. If you have a name, you can get as many passports with it on there as you want.
some twonk at the passport office invented this rule.
hence the apology. The Uk passport office has no right or duty to enforce trademarks.
Official explained there had been a misunderstanding and the guidance staff had originally given applies only to people changing their names.
Even that doesn’t make sense. Trademark law doesn’t apply to peoples personal names.
Sooo many people didn’t read that article.
In Malaysia same rule apply, but the only gate is from the National Registration Department, where they might reject name including joke name and stupidly long name, the other department have no such power.
At least no child have to live with the name Biggus Dickus or Incontinetia Buttocks for 18 years.
I met a guy who had no first name. He had to be entered into systems as “NFN.”
There’s nothing wrong with not having a name that’s literally blank.
No first name and no name are two different concepts.
Morally, sure, there’s nothing wrong with having no name. Socially and practically there absolutely is.
Depends on the society and what it considers practical.
One of my friends from church growing up was from Nigeria, and apparently there’s a culture within Nigeria that doesn’t believe in naming their kids until they come of age. He had no first or middle name, just his family name. He went by Cory, which is apparently what his parents planned on naming him once he was (iirc) 13, but it wasn’t “officially” his name. But apparently it caused all sorts of problems for them when they immigrated, and the US makes it much more complicated than they expected, because they were used to more informal/traditional/less legalistic systems around it.
Caveat, I was like 9, so I may be misremembering some detail. I’m also only, like, 80% it was Nigeria. I know it was Africa, but I’m not entirely positive it was Nigeria, but I think it was.
The Passport Office has admitted that it was a mistake and have sorted this out. The interesting question is how this happened. I’ve known a few people who work their and they aren’t beyond dicking about - back in the day they might mess with famous people by sticking their photograph on upside down. I could see them doing something like this is they thought someone had a stupid name.
It is a stupid name. Why lumber the kid with an unnecessarily daft name? It’s not even easy to spell.
I’ve got a somewhat odd name (at least I’m not named after a character from a book), and I do wish my parents would just have gone with Tom or something.
It’s also not actually a name in the source material. It’s like watching a story about 18th century France and naming your daughter “Dauphine”, or about 1st century BC Rome and naming your son “Consul”.
smith, cobbler, tanner. look new names exist somehow, naming people after characters in stories is as old as names.
A Danish couple went court to be allowed to name their child Christophpher. That’s not a typo.
People are stupid.
A Danish couple went court to be allowed to name their child Christophpher. That’s not a typo.
What’s their surname? Hfuhruhurr?
Even a blank name can work for some; https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ is a fun read if you’ve never encountered it before.
I’ve only quickly read that. Kinda funny with reference to the Klingon Empire.
However this doesn’t say anything about blank names. The closest it comes is point six.
- People’s names fit within a certain defined amount of space.
But I believe that is talking about an upper limit rather than a lower limit.
If your first and last name (or any combination of however many names you have) is literally blank then how do you expect to function in society? Let alone modern society.
You’ll end up with an alias (which is essentially nickname) that someone assigns you that will become your de facto name… and now you have a name .
Point 40: “People have names”.
Every country has guidelines and rules on names.
I’m pretty sure the UK doesn’t.
We probably should but I don’t think we actually do which is why it’s kind of daft that this was refused.
The UK does indeed have certain limitations on what a name can be.
Names that contain obscenities, numerals, misleading titles, or are impossible to pronounce are likely to be rejected by the Registering Officer, when registering a child.
There are no restrictions on adults assuming any new name, unless the purpose of the name change is fraudulent.
This doesn’t make any sense. The colour brown is a trademark of UPS, yet I’ve known people with the last name Brown who were able to get passports.
that’s probably why they apologize for it
That is definitely why they apologized for it. Because they royally fucked up.
While completely daft on part of the passport office, I suppose this is a cautionary tale about naming your kids after popular TV characters (particularly those with unique names). Turns out it can cause you a spot of trouble
Especially if their character arc hasn’t run its course yet. They might turn into a genocidal maniac that has sex with her estranged half brother or something like that.
Now I’ve never watched this programme but now I’m assuming it’s set somewhere below the Mason-Dixon Line, yes? 😉
So many good names in that show and she chooses Khaleesi (which just was the title of her, right?)
Yeah, it basically means “Queen”
“My son’s name is also Joffrey.”
That’s an easy one to shrug off in years to come as a poorly spelled Jeffrey. Khaleesi just says “My name is one is a long line of bad mistakes my parents made.”
Reading through the comments to this and all I kept thinking was, “Mrs Yeti Goosecreature, you’ve got a funny name, haven’t you?” “Yes, yes, it’s Simon.” Anyone else that old here ? 😀
Anyone else that old here ? 😀
Oh crumbs no, at least not first time around.
