I worked for a couple of years as an editor at a company that created multimedia seminars featuring noted professionals from the tech industry. There were a few odd names that passed through, of course, but my all-time favorite was “Ransom Love.” Possibly the most cynical porn name ever conceived.

Now, my question — a few years ago, I read a news article about a pair of parents (in Switzerland or Sweden — I forget exactly where) who gave their kid a name that was more than twenty letters long and contained no vowels. Supposedly, they were subsequently fined by a court for inflicting such an inhumane name on their child. My question to you is simply whether you’ve heard this story or have any way of confirming it. I’ve already tried Snopes.com to see if it’s a reported hoax, but it didn’t turn up, nor have I been able to find it through Google. My hope is mainly that another of your readers may have already brought it to your attention.

And, of course, if the story is true, I’d love to know what the name was.

Thanks,
Alexander

Yep, the story is true, and comes out of Sweden, which has tight regulations on what you can and can’t name your kid. Most recently, Swedish officials rejected a couple wanting give their baby the middle name Superman, and the courts are busy mediating a suit between a family whose last name is the same as the name of the Scandinavian version of Surge soda, Urge. (It’s against the law to use a family name in a trademark iin Sweden so four of the six total members of the Urge family in the whole country are suing Coca-Cola. Makes you wonder about how McDonald’s handles it.)

Anyway, to answer Alexander’s question, according to Whiteboard News, the kid’s name was to be “Brfxxccxxmnpccccllllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116.” Pronounced “Albin.”

A local court last month fined them $750 for failing to register a first name for their child by his fifth birthday.Responding to the fine, the parents, who were not identified, submitted the 43-letter name, saying it was a “pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation.” The court rejected the name.

The parents took their case to an appeal court in Gothenburg, saying their son’s name should be seen in a pataphysical spirit.

Pataphysics was the invention of French absurdist writer and satirist Alfred Jarry, best known for his trilogy of Ubu plays.

It was purported to go beyond metaphysics and was the “science of imaginary solutions” or a logic of the absurd. It was analyzed in his book “Gestes et Opinions du Docteur Faustroll, Pataphysicien.”

The Gothenburg court rejected the appeal and ruled the parents must pay the fine.