"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Well, that may be so, but names are very personal. Parents normally give it a lot of consideration what they want to name their offspring. In the US, that’s quite straightforward. This has its downside – famous children have to go through life which first names such as “Moon Unit”, “Apple” and “Aleph”. Not all countries are as liberal as the US.

In Sweden "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb111163” (pronounced Albin) was submitted by a child's parents in protest of the naming law and was rejected. The parents later submitted "A" (also pronounced Albin) as the child's name which was also rejected. Other rejected names include Metallica, Superman, Veranda, Ikea and Elvis. Funny enough, accepted names include Google (as a middle name) and Lego.

In Germany, the child’s first name must indicate the child’s gender and must not negatively affect the well being of the child. Many German parents prefer to give their traditional names such as Maximilian, Alexander, Marie and Sophie. “Matti” was rejected for a boy because it didn't indicate gender. However, approved names for boys include "Legolas" and "Nemo".

In China, babies must be named based on the ability of computer scanners to read those names on national identification cards. Numbers and non-Chinese symbols and characters are not allowed. Furthermore, Chinese characters that can not be represented on the computer are not allowed, which limits them to 13,000 out of 70,000 Chinese characters. “Wang @" was therefore rejected, although the parents chose it since the @ symbol in Chinese is pronounced "ai-ta" which is very similar to a phrase that means "love him."

A similar issue emerged in Iceland. A teenager is suing thegovernment since her given name “Blaer” (which means “light breeze” in Icelandic) was rejected since it is not in the list of 1,712 male names and 1,853 female names officially allowed. In Iceland, given names are significant since everyone is listed in the phone book by their first names. Even the president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, is addressed simply as Olafur. Furthermore, names such as Cara, Carolina, Cesil, and Christa have been rejected since the letter "c'' is not part of Iceland's 32-letter alphabet.

Will Blaer be successful? I hope so!

 

(Image courtesy of crazyyetwise)

Funny Response from a Lawyer

Mrs Rita Littlewood
26 Underhill
Worsborough Bridge
Barnsley
S70 5DR
5th of March 2004

Dear Mrs Littlewood,

We have recently received intimation of a claim against us from your solicitors Raleys in connection with your slipping on some pigeon shite and doing yourself an injury.

From my knowledge of the area, I would have thought that anybody walking under a
railway bridge in Barnsley would have been a bit more careful (especially a person of your
age and life experience) but that really isn’t relevant.

This company doesn’t have any interest in any property in Barnsley. Although I did once
have a pint with the late Dr Liam Lannigan who you may remember used to hold his
surgeries (if one could call them that) in a local public house with the car parked on a
yellow line outside. Nice chap - shame he took a header down the stairs in one of his rare
moments of sobriety.

I’m afraid that your numpty bunch of ambulance chasing solicitors have been incompetent:
they’ve written to the wrong company.

They have managed to get Railtrack Limited (a Private Limited Company incorporated in Scotland on 8th of May 2003) confused with Railtrack PLC (a Public Limited Company incorporated in England and Wales on 28th of February 1994 and now, following re-registration as a Private Limited Company on 3rd February 2003, known as Network Rail Infrastructure Limited).

It’s a fairly elementary mistake to make and one that the Law Society would probably snigger at.

So, you aren’t going to get a penny from us.

If you really want some free money from the bridge owners, I suggest you get yourself a
decent firm of solicitors (if such a thing exists in Barnsley).

Yours sincerely,

J White
Secretary

(Source: Railtrack Ltd; image courtesy of lawcartoon)

Dutch House of Representatives Vote for Net Neutrality Law

The Dutch House of Representatives approved a tough net neutrality bill that will become law. It will prevent mobile phone operators to charge extra for using services such as Skype and WhatsApp. Operators are also forbidden to block or slow down traffic of such services.

Telecom companies KPN (AMS:KPN), Vodafone (NASDAQ:VOD), and T-Mobile (ETR:DTE) lobbied against the bill. Vodafone stated that the law will "lead to a large increase in prices for mobile internet for a large group of consumers". KPN said that it regretted "that parliament didn't take more time for this legislation".

Chile is the only other country in the world to have passed a net neutrality law; theirs came into force in May this year.

The Bill (translated into English) forbids communications providers from hindering or delaying any services or applications on the internet, except where doing so is necessary to stop congestion or block spam, or to otherwise maintain the integrity and security of the network.

The law would also force operators to provide a minimum level of quality for their internet services. They are, however, allowed to offer different tiers of bandwidth at varying prices.

The Dutch House of Representatives passed two more laws: one law would stop operators from employing deep-packet inspection (DPI) techniques; the other forbids the disconnection of internet users for any reason other than fraud or failure to pay their bills.

(Image courtesy of Kurt Griffith ©2004 KG/FRE)