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Saturday, July 08, 2006

Teen's Name Changed After Years of Mockery

This totally cracked me up when I read it...and it seems to be quite true. I can think of worse things to be named, though...

(AP)

HANOI, Vietnam (July 7) - After nearly two decades of ridicule, a father has agreed to change his son's name from "Fined Six Thousand and Five Hundred" - the amount he was forced to pay in local currency for ignoring Vietnam's two-child policy.

Angry he was being fined for having a fifth child, Mai Xuan Can named his son Mai Phat Sau Nghin Ruoi after the amount he was forced to pay - 6,500 dong, or 50 cents, said Dai Cuong village chief Nguyen Huy Thuong.

In 1999, local government officials tried to persuade Can to change the name because the boy was constantly being teased by classmates at school. But Can, a former People's Committee official, refused to back down, Thuong said. They appealed to him again recently, and this time it worked.

"I told him that as his son is growing up, he should have another name - not that weird name - and he finally agreed," Thuong said.

The son, now 19, finally got a new name: Mai Hoang Long, which means golden dragon.

7 comments:

  1. For someone who wants to have kids, this guy sure doesn't seem to like them very much.

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  2. Ok, that's just sick. I can see why Jen thought it so amusing, though! Lol!

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  3. I agree--the name was certainly more meaningful beforehand, as far as setting him apart went. Couldn't he just have gone by "Six" or something like that?

    I might have looked rather impersonal on a tombstone, though.

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  4. Anybody here seen that new Robert Duvall movie? Anyway, he ends up with 5 Chinese girls and since he can't pronounce their names, he calls them 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Seemed to work okay.

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  5. In American households with more than five children, it's a known fact that the mother refers to all of the children interchangeably by their own name, each others', the father's name, and the dog's.

    Why do we even worry about it anymore?

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  6. I agree, why worry? My grandmother used to list all 5 kids, the dog, the cat, swear in frustration and then use the correct name. My mother doesn't seem at all traumatized by this method of upbringing.

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  7. Funny. The dad should have made the government refund his money in exchange for changing the kid's name.

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