IF YOU thought Jordan and Peter Andre had started sniffing peroxide when they came up with the name Princess Tiaamii for their new baby, spare a thought for the little boy named @.
Yes, couples in China really have started taking inspiration from the symbols you produce when you hold down the shift key on your laptop.
@’s parents’ bizarre choice was highlighted by a government official on Thursday, while he explained the need for bringing his country’s language use into line.
Earlier this year, China banned names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that are not part of Chinese minority languages, but whether @ has been allowed to keep his unusual name has not been confirmed.
Like Jordan’s and Andre’s, the choice was a mixture of originality and sentimentality – the singing Aussie merged the names of the couple’s mothers Thea and Amy, adding an extra “i” on the end just in case it got confused with your common-or-garden “Tiaami”.
In this case, @’s mum and dad were moved by the pronunciation “at” which sounds similar to the Mandarin for “love him”.
Adorable, but unless the Chinese government has stepped in with a veto, the poor kid’s still stuck with a moniker that a lot of people call “that A with a squiggle round it”.
Not that I think the state should be allowed to intervene in the naming of a child.
Apparently, in France they have a list from which new parents are forbidden from deviating. Does anyone else think that’s just a short step away from calling babies by numbers?
In America, naturally, they go the other way and pay thousands of dollars to “nameologists”, who come up with a number of suggestions, depending on what aspirations you have for your child.
Davids are studious, Jasons work hard, Jemmas are creative and balanced, Celestes academically gifted and questioning, according to one professional.
Imagine the fights you would have with a teenage Jason – “it’s not my fault I’m a lazy, under-age drinker who skips school, it’s my name” – or with an underachieving Celeste – “If I’d have thought you’d only get four Ds, I’d have named you Janice”.
Back in the UK, according to the Office of National Statistics, many parents stick to the traditional favourites – Jessica, Thomas, Emily, William, Daniel – but are increasingly being more adventurous.
Last year’s birth certificates were marked with 864 Summers, 95 Myloses, 55 Autumns and six Blades. That’s not to mention the really unusual ones, such as Luna, Cadence, Bronte and Kofi.
Picking an unusual name doesn’t always pay off.
My parents chose Laura for me because it was uncommon.
When I started high school, there were three Lauras in my year group and four in my English tutorials at university.
My middle name, Caroline, I chose myself as a newish baby – I smiled as my Dad read it out from a list of possibilities. However, at that early age, it’s equally possible I just had wind.
Davis was chosen for me – or rather for my grandfather, who was born in Dublin where the registrar recorded the Irish spelling rather than the “Davies” of the rest of his family.
Consequently, he had a different surname from his parents, brothers and sisters.
That’s the way the story goes anyhow, and there’s no way of checking it out because his birth certificate was lost when the post office burned down.
If fate had played a different hand, I wouldn’t have spent most of my life explaining “Davis without an ‘e’” when passing on my e-mail address.
But that’s nothing to what Princess Tiaamii will have to cope with, though at least she’s a celebrity baby so most people knew of her existence before she had even taken her first breath.
@’s got it even worse, particularly when spelling out his e-mail address: “It’s @@hotmail.com, no @@, there’s two @s – forget it, just call me Dave.”
