Legal News

Name changes cases gone wild!

By Jason Siegel

The California Court of Appeal has made several contributions to a UCLA law professor's favorite hobby - finding weird name change cases.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh shared his list of fun name change cases in an article on Slate.com on Wednesday (here).

The California Court of Appeal provided several cases that made his list. From the list, we now know that:

• Names can't be numbers or symbols, such as Roman numerals. For both reasons Thomas Boyd Ritchie III wasn't able to become III (pronounced "Three").
• Names can't be confusing, offensive and have the potential for violence. As a result, Russell Lawrence Lee wasn't able to change his name to Misteri Nigger (the second "i" is silent).

• Names! can! have! exclamation! points! You can thank Darren QX Bean!, who recently sat for the Oregon State Bar.
• Names can be changed to the names of websites. Three animal rights activists became "GoVeg.com", "Kentucky fried cruelty.com" and "Ringling beats animals.com"

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 01, 2008 (boomark / email).