Over at HuffPo, there's a lively discussion going on whether giving one's kids awful names constitutes child abuse. The occasion is the case of three-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell from New Jersey and his sisters, whose names aren't much better.
Adolf Hitler - the three year old, that is - is back in the news. According to New Jersey police, the state's Division of Youth and Family Services took Adolf and his two sisters, one-year-old Joyce Lynn Aryan Nation Campbell and 8-month-old Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, from their parents' home Tuesday night.
Little Hilter and his parents got their first fifteen minutes of fame after a New Jersey supermarket refused to put his name on a birthday cake. Little Hitler's incredulous parents talked to the press about the ordeal in December:
"I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," Heath Campbell said Tuesday in an interview conducted on the other side of the Delaware River from where the family lives in Hunterdon County, N.J.
"There's a new president and he says it's time for a change; well, then it's time for a change," he continued. "They need to accept a name. A name's a name. The kid isn't going to grow up and do what (Hitler) did."
The reason why authorities took the children is unclear. According to NBC news, little Hitler's parents are scheduled to appear in court Wednesday.
When I first read about the Campbells and the birthday cake incident, I was thinking that the parents wanted to make a statement with their choice of name. I mean, who puts someone's middle name, awful or not, on a birthday cake? These people want the world to know that their little boy's name is Adolf Hitler. So obviously they have a screw loose, and it is conceivable that there is a legitimate reason, other than the questionable choice of names, that Child Protective Services took the kids. Until more information is released, it's too early to speculate.
Anyways, as a college instructor, I have seen a lot of names on a lot of class rosters, and sometimes I wonder what goes on in parents' minds when they get "cutesy" naming their kids. They have to know those children will be teased. The three varieties of weird I've seen the most is A) strange spellings of common names (favorite so far: Kortknee), B) historical figures' names as first and middle names (I haven't encountered any Adolf Hitler or any other Nazi name yet), C) picking the first name of a celebrity with the same last name.
This semester I have a student whose name sounds like Renee but is spelled Rae'Nei. I've never quite understood that concept. It's not creative; it just condemns the kid to lifelong spelling. In the same class, there is also Julio Cesar Lopez. Delusions of grandeur on the parents' part? Yes, America is the land of opportunity, but you can't become a Roman emperor. In another class, I've got Eric Estrada. During roll call, I could tell he was waiting for some kind of comment, but I didn't bat an eyelash. No highway patrol or motorcycle references from me. My god-awful maiden name made me the target of many a supposedly "clever" joke, even from teachers, and I swore to myself that I wouldn't do that to a student.
I went to school with a Stefanie Graf, but she doesn't count since she is older than the tennis player. I also had a classmate named Mary Magdalen, but very few people were aware of her full name. Not even her parents, who had bestowed that name on her, used it. She was called "Magda" at home and by the teachers (even her official school records said "Magda") and "Maggie" by everyone else. We didn't find out until 10th grade when we went on a school trip to Italy and an insensitive customs officer looked at her passport and had a giggling fit.
In Germany, where I grew up, courthouse clerks have the right to veto a name that they feel will be a burden for the child. The criteria for what is acceptable as a name have become more and more flexible over the years. Nowadays, if a name is rejected, it's usually because it either has a sexual or fecal connotation, is strongly associated with the opposite gender (no boys named Sue), or is the name of a criminal (in 2002, a Turkish couple tried to name their son "Osama Bin Laden" and got vetoed). When I tell American friends about this practice, they are usually horrified and tell me how grateful I should be to live in a country where I can name my children whatever I want. Well, if I had children, I wouldn't give them a name that met the above stated criteria of rejection anyway.
What I found interesting is that several posters said they wouldn't have a problem with using the name Adolf (sans "Hitler" of course) to acknowledge one's German heritage. Well, ironically, if a parent went to a courthouse in Germany to have "Adolf" put on their baby son's birth certificate, they'd be met with the question, "Are you SURE you want to do that?" I don't know any German Adolf (only an American one with Texas-German parents) born after 1945. Older Adolfs usually go by "Adi" or their middle name. There are plenty of German names to pick besides that one.
Any thoughts and comments on the issue? Any interesting experiences with names? Should a name even matter?