What’s wrong with passport offices? Here in the states I tried to get my passport in my teen years. I filled all the paperwork paid for it and everything when it came time to get the passport they were just like"you don’t exist your social security number isn’t real" and that’s b******* since my mom had been literally filing taxes with that number as a dependent my entire life. The passport office said tough s*** fax me all your ID information maybe we can do something. So I literally hooked up a fax machine in 2014 and sent everything off but still nothing.
Tl;Dr US passport office told me I’m not a person and took my money anyway.
Worth mentioning that the UK and Ireland is the easiest country to change your name in. All you need is two friends and a printer. Although it may be more complicated for children, especially if the parents aren’t together (I still think it’s pretty straightforward if they are together, just both parents need to approve it as well)
Realistically you also need 35 quid to have your drivers license re-issued which you can then use as an initial form of ID to get everything else changed.
In a perfect world, me. But it would probably be better if there was a body of 100 or so individuals of diverse backgrounds to make sure we aren’t excluding names for cultural reasons. Names could be submitted for approval. To weed out the Everleighs, the Sexiannas, the Khaleesis. And any names Jamie Oliver would pick.
I don’t know why people think it is acceptable to treat names like an opportunity for creativity, or fun. Names are serious business. And they aren’t a medium for self expression. If I name my dog after a type of pasta, who cares? But imagine having to give someone a business card with “Fusilli Feet” on it. I love Waterworld, but my kid will never have to put down “Mariner Feet” on a resume. My kid is not an extension of me, or my interests.
The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error. While officials said they’d now be able to process little Khaleesi’s passport, Lucy said she believes the problem was only solved because she complained on social media.
Sounds like the passport office didn’t understand how trademark works.
Doubt the “whole office” was even involved. More likely it was one incompetent employee. We’ve all been there. It depends on who answers your call as to what answer you get.
Yup. This is the boring but likely true response. You get the one Gareth/Dwight who remembers that memo about not using trademarks in marketing materials and decides they know how this all works and that the rights of Warner Brothers have to be respected before putting their intellectual property on a published document. “Just get the appropriate permission on corporate letterhead and notarized, and this will all be fine.”
Social media is one way to fix it, but I tend to think a couple of layers of escalation would have worked as well, if a bit more slowly.
I’m pretty sure we’re going to keep hearing about people with Game of Thrones names a lot over the next few decades lol I know I’ve read a few articles saying that Arya and Khaleesi were the most popular girls names for a few years before the series ended
“Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”
The last three, maybe (though I’m sure you could find someone with at least one of those as a first name), but everything before that are used at least irregularly.
At least Khaleesi sounds pretty normal still. I’ve heard about people naming their kids with names they basically made up so their kid’s is unique or really weird names otherwise. Unfortunately here in the states you’ll hear about some that have named their kid after Adolf and other worse choices.
Zappa’s kids are fine since they’re children of a famous person (not to mention talented in their own right) and have the privilege of not having to live like a normal person with a weird name.
Sure… Walter is a regular first name, and there’s lots of people with the last name Disney. It’s from “de Ysini”, and lots of people lived and live in the Ysini region. Company is from the French compagnie, from Latin companio, where we also get companion.
So “Walter of Ysini, Friend” AKA “Walt Disney Company” is a perfectly legitimate name.
Excluding laws in certain places meant to protect children from a life of ridicule, you can name your child whatever you want.
The issue of trademark, which is what this article highlights, only concerns applications where there is a business conflict. For example, it is normal for an actor/musician/artist to trademark their name as their “brand,” which means I can’t just form a thrash metal band called “Taylor Swift” to profit off of some confused music listeners. And even if my legal name was Taylor Swift, I could still be required to change my “stage name” to something else when promoting myself as an artist to avoid any confusion/conflict with Tay-Tay.
Last I checked, Warner Bros is not in the passport industry, so this is a dumb argument that should never have occurred. If I had to guess, it was probably just some random disgruntled government employee who felt the need to play armchair activist and “punish” a parent because they didn’t like the name they chose for their child.