While it seems as though you can name kids anything and everything in the United States (and trust us, we’ve seen some rather unique names from celebrity parents over the years), that’s not the case in many other countries. For instance, New Zealand has pretty strict naming rules.
For instance, per the New Zealand Law Society, names should be less than 70 characters long, and it won’t be accepted if it “resembles an official title or rank” or are made up of symbols that aren’t an international character like macrons or umlauts.
Fast forward to 2024. New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs released a series of baby names from 2023 that they legally declined. Specifically, on Jan 18, 2024, they released the “names that were most often declined by the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and Marriages in 2023.”
Along with releasing the list, registrar Russell Burnard shared in the same post: “Names are a gift, and they are an important part of a person’s identity. We encourage parents to think about their child and how they might feel about their name later in life.”
And within the list of names, we saw a very distinct pattern: royalty and names that resemble any rank were the biggest ones rejected. So names like Queen, Royal, Bishop, and more were instantly rejected.
Curious about which were rejected? Here are a few examples below:
And if you want to see the full list, you can check out the original release HERE!
From Illusia to Zillion, here are a few of the most unique celebrity baby names.
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