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Parents of newborn babies should be aware of illegal names both in the U.S. and abroad.
USBirthCertificates.com has a guideline for parents listing U.S. naming laws, as well as examples of illegal baby names in the U.S. and across the world.
The website reports naming laws are "somewhat lax" nationally compared to other countries, but vary from state to state. Parents cannot include a numeral in a child's name in any state, which means a name like "J1m" wouldn't be illegal.
Varying states also limit the number of characters that can be used in a name, as well as "pictograms, obscenity, foreign characters, symbols, emojis, or any offensive language" being included, according to the website.
California is among the states that prohibit accents, but do allow hyphens and apostrophes.
Here are examples of illegal baby names in the U.S. per USBirthCertificates.com:
- King
- Queen
- Jesus Christ
- III
- Santa Claus
- Majesty
- Adolf Hitler
- Messiah
- @
- 1069
Other countries have much stricter naming policies that the U.S., which includes some governments requiring parents to select a name from a pre-approved list and include the chosen name on an official petition.
There are also names specifically banned because they are viewed to be too ridiculous and/or cause the child to experience problems in social interactions.
Here are examples of illegal baby names from across the world per USBirthCertificates.com:
- Chief Maximus (New Zealand)
- Robocop (Mexico)
- Sex Fruit (New Zealand)
- Linda (Saudi Arabia)
- Snake (Malaysia)
- Friday (Italy)
- Islam (China)
- Sarah (Morocco)
- Osama bin Laden (Germany)
- Metallica: (Sweden)
- Prince William (France)
- Devil (Japan)
- Blue (Italy)
- Circumcision (Mexico)
- Quran (China)
- BRFXXCCXXMNPCCCCLLLMMNPRXVCLMNCKSSQLBB11116 (Sweden)
- Harriet (Iceland)
- Cyanide (United Kingdom)
- Monkey (Denmark)
- Thor (Portugal)
- 007 (Malaysia)
- Griezmann Mbappe (France)
- Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii (New Zealand)
- Bridge (Norway)
- Anal (New Zealand)
- Nutella (France)
- Wolf (Spain)
- Tom (Portugal)
- Camilla (Iceland)
- Judas (Switzerland)
- Duke (Australia)