Abuses of Power I Can Get Behind: New Zealand

As reported by the Associated Press, a family court judge in Wellington, New Zealand, has made a nine-year-old girl a ward of the court so that they could change the girl’s legal name against her parents consent. On the surface, this seems like a ridiculous abuse of power and a violation of those parents rights and that girl’s liberty, all of which might actually be true. At the same time, I fully agree with it because of the details of this case, which I will lay out for you in a moment.

In the book “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner - an excellent book and an enjoyable read - they devote an entire chapter to the phenomenon of parents giving their children unusual names, and how often those names correspond to that child’s future success in life. Some of the names are just strange or incorrect spellings of common names, and in other cases they are ludicrous names like Moon Unit or Dweezil. Ultimately, through rigorous standards of analysis and compelling argument, they conclude that it is not the name that most affects the child’s future success, but that the intelligence and quality of their parents that both determines their future success and also the quality of their name. A child with well-educated parents will read to them and help them with their homework, while a child with dumb parents will feed them nothing but junk food and name them Yeah Detroit (a real example).
In this case, the New Zealand parents had named their child Talula...not so bad on its own, but wait, there’s more. He legally given name, as chosen by her parents is “Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii.” Yes, her name is actually a full sentence with a verb, a rhyme, and references to both a dance and a U.S. state.
For reasons of privacy, the last name was not released but there’s not a single name I could think of that would mitigate such an absurd first name, unless it was Rockefeller-Einstein, and then only because the wealthy and famous are often excused from the names they give their children.

A person’s name will follow them for most of their life, and can greatly affect the amount of ridicule they receive during their formative years before they themselves are allowed to change it. For that reason, I think most parents put far too little thought into the naming of their children. They pick something that will sound cute for a baby, or that honors a family member or historical figure, without really considering the fact that this child will have that name for the rest of his or her life presumably, and that it will affect how other people treat them or base their first impressions. When people go out of their way to give the child a name like the one in this case, or other real examples from New Zealand such as “Violence” and “Number 16 Bus Shelter,” that’s not merely a sign of their own need for attention or their own stupidity, it is frankly a form of child abuse. The reason parents have all the legal rights when it comes to their children, and the children have few, is because it is assumed that the parents will have better judgement. In this case, it was the opposite.

The little girl in question hated the name, and was so embarassed by it that she didn’t tell anyone what her real name was, not even her closest friends, and rather than even shortening it, she went by “K.” That’s right, she asked to be addressed by an initial and not even the one that started her name, that’s how much anguish and suffering her birth name brought her. If you were in her shoes, you would probably do the same, because unless you the most beautiful, funny, charming, and smart girl in the world, every other child would mock her real name without mercy or hesitation. In this case, the judge was protecting the girl from the shame and embarassment that her parents were causing her, and was honoring the child’s wishes, two things that I can get behind. When people talk about “activist judges” who interpret laws far beyond the mere letter, I’m reminded that there are so many ways that people can be harmed that no one would ever think to write a law for, and that real judges should be able to follow the spirit of laws when the actual laws are lacking.

Under the laws of New Zealand, Name Registration officials must reject names that would cause offense to reasonable people, such as curse or derogatory words. A name like “Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii” is offensive to me, not because of what it says, but because of what it does. It hurts this little girl who has spent nine years of her life ashamed or her own name, something that defines us in many ways. While I believe that its a precarious slope when courts are taking away the decision-making rights of parents, this is inarguably a case in which the courts did exactly the right thing and, possibly, should look into whether these parents can be trusted to raise a child. If the first and most basic decision was so disastrously wrong, chances are they’ve been making a lot of other terrible decisions when it comes to this child.