Reddit<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve run into something weird and I\u2019m honestly not sure what to do. My baby girl was born last week here in Alabama, and we picked out a unique name that means a lot to us: Xfrgolszzzxy (we say it like Zurf-golz-ee). I know it\u2019s different and that was the whole point.<\/p>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t grow up with much and always felt like people looked down on me because of where I\u2019m from and the kind of name I had. I wanted something special for my daughter. Also, my dad is a surfer so I wanted to include that in her name.\u201d<\/p>\n
But what she expected to be a routine birth certificate process quickly became a dispute.<\/p>\n
According to the mum, a hospital registrar paused after seeing the proposed name before delivering an unexpected response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry but names can\u2019t start with an X followed by a consonant. That\u2019s not allowed in Alabama.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman said she immediately challenged the claim.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked her if she could show me where it said that and she just pointed at this big binder and mumbled something about naming standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe couldn\u2019t give me a straight answer. I tried calling the county office later that week and basically got the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said our name didn\u2019t \u2018meet system requirements\u2019 but couldn\u2019t say why exactly. At least they promised me to look into it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frustrated by the process, she argued the name complied with state rules because it contained only standard English letters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way I see this – the name only uses English letters. No numbers, no emojis, no weird accents or anything.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve looked up the Alabama rules and all it says is names have to be made with English alphabet letters, hyphens or apostrophes. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said officials told her she would either need to choose another name or pursue legal action.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo now they\u2019re telling us we either need to choose a different name or leave it blank and go to court to \u2018petition\u2019 for it. I don\u2019t have the money or time to fight the state just to name my own kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the dispute sparked sympathy in some corners, much of the internet took a less supportive view.<\/p>\n
One commenter wrote, \u201cFinally an Alabaman law I can get behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another said, \u201cIf I was that baby, once I aged to an adult, my first stop would be to legally change my name to something my parents wouldn\u2019t know and start a new life. What is wrong with people?\u201d<\/p>\n
A third added, \u201cI would genuinely hate my parents for naming me something as absolutely insane as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the sharpest verdict came from another user, who wrote: \u201cSupposed to give a baby a name, not a password.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new mum\u2019s attempt to register her daughter under an eyebrow-raising name has sparked an online firestorm after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40,1720],"class_list":["post-703588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}