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Thursday, December 20, 2007

List of Approved Baby Names

Of all of the freedoms I enjoy in this wacky country of ours, one I hold most dear is the freedom to name our children strange, awkward-sounding, and just plain dumb-ass names. Let freedom ring around all of the Bumquesha's, Sunshine's, Brooklynn's, America's, and all manner of pretentious baby names.
Actually, I kind of have a thing for alternative baby names. Amidst the many less-than-masculine tendencies I have (affinity for musicals, indifference towards sports...) is an odd obsession for the name(s?) of my future child(ren?). I've never had any desire to name my child John, Michael, Matthew, or any of the typical names of my generation. Now, while I'm not going to name my child Starlight Express or anything, I've thought a lot about finding a unique name and the experience the child would have with the unique name. My brother has had good ideas for baby naming, his three girls are named Paige, Sadie, and Livi.
But, all of these creative ideas would fall short if you happen to live in the country of Denmark, where there is a list of approved baby names, which, if your fancy name ain't on it, you're out of luck. There are a good number of names, but something tells me Bumquesha isn't on there.
I learned this courtesy of Mental Floss and an extra-courteous commenter left some instructions on viewing the seemingly exhaustive list.
Here they are:
1) Go to familiestyrelsen.dk/navne/ (add the www, etc. to the front)
2) On the left, click on Navnelister (”lists of names”)
3) The following options appear as Radio Buttons:
A) Godkendte drengefornavne (5552) - (”authorized boys’ first names”)
B) Godkendte pigefornavne (7662) - (”authorized girls’ first names”)
C) Frie efternavne (165) - (”Free surnames.” A list of of surnames held by 2000+ people, can be taken by anyone)
D) Firma- og kunstnernavne (52) - (”Company and business names”)
E) Udenlandske navne (6318) - (”Foreign names” - traditional foreign names)

Select HTML or CSV format and click on “Vis liste” to display the list.



The best is the name of the governmental bureaucracy that governs this:
The Names Investigation Department and the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs
Don't fuck with them. Seriously, take your Jim, Jane, or Bjorn with a smile and exit swiftly.

1 comment:

Guy Davis said...

The popularity of names falls off pretty quickly as it follows a power law distribution. If you avoid any of the top 50 boys and girls names given in Denmark last year you'll be getting a reasonably unique name. Check out the Baby Name Map and click on the Denmark marker to see the popular names there.