“Japanese parents have been given government permission to name their children ‘Buttocks’ or ‘Prostitute’ if they wish after a bizarre row over expanding the list of officially acceptable names. Japan’s system of writing, which has evolved from ancient Chinese script, was simplified after the Second World War when the government abolished thousands of characters. In recent years, however, the authorities in Tokyo have been under pressure to reinstate obscure and archaic characters so that more interesting and original names can be created. Traditional ones such as Hanako, a girl’s name meaning ‘Flower Child’, and Manabu, a boy’s name meaning ‘Studious’, have fallen out of favour. As a result, the justice ministry proposed an additional 578 characters for names, but included dozens that most parents might view as poor taste, such as ‘Piles’, ‘Vagina’ and ‘Slur’.” —The Telegraph (UK)

(Thanks to alanr for the link.)

You’ve all met the kid whose hippie parents gave him a grand symbolic name like Harmony or Love. The poor kid then goes around feeling vaguely ashamed, mumbling his name to strangers, “Hi, I’m Foster Goodwill.” Inside he longs to be called Bill or Tom.

Somehow parents never learn, though, and so they continue to torment their children by naming them after abstractions. What’s interesting, though, is to see the turnover in symbols — how some names fall out of favor and others come in. Nobody uses those peacenik names from the sixties anymore. Gwyneth Paltrow, though, just named her baby daughter Apple, which is kind of cute and certainly better than onomastic monstrosities such as Tu Morrow (the daughter of Rob Morrow and Debbon Ayre) or Jermajesty (son of Jermaine Jackson).

But then again, if you think those are bad, imagine being named Hooker or Butt Cheek. “Hi, I’m Scrotum Jones.” In what seems like an act of enlightenment, the language review panel working for Japan decided that it had no place to make moral judgements about what parents could name their children, so they made available such winners as Piles, Vagina, and Slur. And no doubt in this day and age some fucked-up parent somewhere will probably give one of the names a try. Imagine them gaga over their little baby, Glans Okomota.

Interestingly, the Japanese ministry did bow to public pressure by withdrawing a couple of names from contention. So if you’re a parent who wants to name his child Rape or Excrement, you’re out of luck. Weirdly, Cancer was also on the short list of nine banned names, which makes you wonder why they removed one ailment and not all the awful others. Apparently you can still name your baby after a sexually transmitted disease, for example. You can hear the parents cooing now. “Isn’t little Gonorrhea cute?”

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