A woman was left “devastated” after her daughter’s passport application was rejected because she was named after a Game of Thrones character.
Lucy, 39, from Swindon in Wiltshire, said the Passport Office initially refused the application for Khaleesi, six.
Officials said they were unable to issue a passport unless Warner Brothers gave permission because it owned the name’s trademark. But the authority has since apologised for the error.
I don’t know, man. It may sound stupid because we know of the show. But if you separate the show from the name, Khaleesi doesn’t sound half bad.
Even its other meaning, which I think means “queen” or something (right?) is okay. The name “Reina” (literally “Queen” in Spanish) is acceptable - sort-of old-fashioned, but acceptable.
Having said that, yeah, I usually roll my eyes at parents giving kids names because of some show, movie, song or celebrity with a weird name.
My son will be named Barack, as God intended.
What I find so dumb about naming children Khaleesi is that:
a) It’s not the name of a character anyway. Apparently a lot of casual fans thought Dany’s actual name was Khaleesi because several other characters often addressed her by her title. So there’s a good chance that either these parents are casual fans who nonetheless then misnamed their child after a character, or they are serious fans who named their child in a way that will lead other people to infer her parents were casual fans. (Nothing wrong with being a casual fan, but I’d find it a bit dumb to name my child after an IP that I was only loosely into…)
b) The child is six years old. The final episode aired only five years ago. That means they named their child before Dany’s story had even concluded. George RR Martin had been dropping hints throughout the book series that Dany might or might not end up as a genocidal mad queen like her father (the TV show had laid the groundwork for this less effectively, which is in part why the abruptness of her turn was so unpopular) and I find it bizarre that a parent would name a kid after a character who might still end up as a murderous tyrant
I think about the amount of thought and research that many of my friends have conducted when naming their children (including looking up famous real and fictional people with that name, doing word associations, etc). Then these guys come along and just say ‘fuck it, let’s just call her after that blonde girl off TV, Khaleesi I think?’
What’s funny is that back in ancient days, nobody gave a damn about how to name their kids. “Got a baby? My name is Paul. Let’s call him Paul McPaulson. Ok… back to the fields.”