Yup, that’s right, you can’t name your child (or yourself, presumably) “Lucifer” in New Zealand, per this report in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Naming your new bundle of joy Lucifer has been effectively banned by New Zealand’s names registrar after three parents had the odd request knocked back.
The country’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has been cracking down on mothers and fathers getting too creative with their children’s names, ruling out punctuation marks such as . (Full Stop), * (Asterisk) and / (presumably ”Slash”).
The list of 102 names rejected in the past two years includes Baron, Bishop, Duke, General, Judge, Justice, King, Knight and Mr, all deemed too similar to titles.
Messiah was also turned down, as was 89, and the single letters, C, D, I and T, although Q and J were accepted after being queried.
It’s a new hard line for the agency that made headlines in 2008 when it was revealed to have approved a series of strange monikers, among them Benson and Hedges, twins named after the cigarette brand, and Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter, both for boys…
[continues in the Sydney Morning Herald]
