Given the amount of unwanted foul muck that comes out of the back end of a baby, surely Volkswagen would've been a more appropriate choice.
Wheels come off parents' plan to dub sprog 'Mini Cooper'
A French couple's plan to dub their daughter "Mini Cooper" looks to be heading for the breaker's yard after officials referred the matter to court. According to L'Indépendant, the town hall in Perpignan alerted the public prosecutor's office to the name, which in turn asked judges to rule against the moniker. French law allows …
COMMENTS
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Friday 16th October 2015 15:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Another similarity to VW
FYI the VW Diesels actually pass dynamometer emissions tests. They only emit excess pollutants when the software reduces operation of the emissions controls to a point slightly below requirements. It's a simple software fix for a minute issue. The test detection software was a stupid inclusion and illegal, all for a tiny improvement in mpg and performance.
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Sunday 18th October 2015 03:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Another similarity to VW
They only emit excess pollutants when the software reduces operation of the emissions controls to a point slightly below requirements.
"As a result, emissions of NOx increased by a factor of 10 to 40 times above the EPA compliant levels, depending on the type of drive cycle (e.g., city, highway)."
http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov-caa-09-18-15.pdf
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Friday 16th October 2015 17:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
"What is Blank-Reg's gender and what should it be corrected to?"
Assuming that's a request for edification?
The French language denotes all things as being either masculine or feminine. There is no "neuter" gender. There are different spellings for effectively the same word depending on that gender. A bit like the English use of "actor" and "actress". Except that's as far as English spelling differences go - and modern English is gradually eliminating even those differences.
In French the adjectives, articles, and verbs have different spellings too - to agree with the gender of word they describe. A small boy singer is a "petit chanteur" - a small girl singer is a "petite chanteuse"
Everything has a defined gender - even if there are not two sexes. eg a "table" is female. A small shop is female (boutique) but a large store is male (magasin).
The name of the country is assigned to be feminine and its definite article is therefore the feminine form "La" to make "La France". The male form for "the" is "Le".
The use of the definite article with a country's name is not so rigorously used in English. We say "The USA", "The Czech Republic" - but we've stopped using "The Ukraine" as it was seen as a slight on Ukraine's new sovereignty after the collapse of the USSR.
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Friday 16th October 2015 12:04 GMT DavCrav
"The latter name would, according to the court, "inevitably attract mockery", such as its use in the phrase "ramène ta fraise" or "move your arse"."
Interesting justification, that it appears in a rude slang phrase, so shouldn't be a name. How would they feel about, in no particular order, "Dick", "Fanny", "Thomas", "Roger", "Jack", and so on?
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Friday 16th October 2015 12:24 GMT Amorous Cowherder
L'Indépendant notes that the powers that be in Valenciennes, northern France, have previously rejected "Nutella" and "Fraise" (Strawberry). The latter name would, according to the court, "inevitably attract mockery", such as its use in the phrase "ramène ta fraise" or "move your arse".
My real name is George...you any idea how many variations there are of a certain nursery rhyme with my name in it? Well I bet I probably heard most of them while I was sat school. The stupidity of all this is that kids will find a way to rip the piss out of any name, no matter how sensible it is. I had a mate with a surname Bogard, he had a number 2 cut all the time I knew him at school, Bogard somehow transformed into "Bogbrush" as in what his hair looked like as it grew out each time.
The one thing human memory needs is cues, so we look for traits in someone's appearance or habits in order to link their abstract name with their image. The only difference is that kids don't internalise it, they voice it openly in order, as a group, to ensure they remember it and maintain the pecking order kids often set up amongst themselves.
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Friday 16th October 2015 17:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
"The stupidity of all this is that kids will find a way to rip the piss out of any name, no matter how sensible it is."
Friends named their son before they saw the obvious contractions of forename and family name that could result. Everyone in their peer generation agreed it was inevitable. Surprisingly it never happened.
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Friday 16th October 2015 17:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
"I'm off to weep for society now [...]"
A name is a distinguishing label - possibly denoting a sympathetic magic hope for a particular quality - or describing an obvious feature of the person. Over time the meaning becomes lost and it becomes a largely arbitrary word used as a recognised name.
I am an atheist labelled as "Christ carrier".
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Friday 16th October 2015 18:02 GMT x 7
Re: Mini Cooper - er NOT
Of course its Paris
thats the only place other than Turin where you'd get a Mini with those oversized bolt on bumpers
In Italy some of the Innocenti Coopers had the "wrong" radiator grille like the one in the photo, but thats not an Innocenti Cooper. Looking at the 1970's style "Mini" badge on that grille I'd gamble on it being a Belgian Seneffe built one? Thoughts anyone?
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Friday 16th October 2015 12:41 GMT Efros
The King
Kid at the training centre I worked at in Scotland was christened Elvis, he was fortunate in one respect, he had a very high forehead which meant he was dubbed Tefal by his contemporaries and escaped any jibing about his name. Clip of Tefal ad for those too young to remember.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsNwtBv3PI0
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Friday 16th October 2015 17:50 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I knew an expectant father called Maurice
"We were concerned his kiddie could become called Maurice Minor"
In the public school system they distinguished concurrent siblings at the same school by a standard suffix to their family name. So "Morris, major" would not be a problem - his younger brother would be "Morris, minor".
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Friday 16th October 2015 12:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Having worked in a school I can attest to the oddness of some parents' sprog naming
There is a definite trend for giving one's special little stars 'unique' names, frequently involving the addition of random zeds and totally made up words. And what is it with giving your offspring a surname as a first name, especially when the family name could also be a first name? E.G. (made up by me to show the sort of thing) Smith Graham.
I'm personally in favour of giving them all a unique ID number at birth, it'd make life a lot easier from a data analysis perspective.
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Friday 16th October 2015 13:38 GMT SW10
Re: So you can attest to the oddness of some parents' sprog naming?
And what is it with giving your offspring a surname as a first name, especially when the family name could also be a first name?
Oi!
I have a first name as a surname and a surname as a first name. Some people write it the wrong way round, some imagine it's double-barrelled, some get it right.
I quite like both and they're essential to my identity even though I chose neither.
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Friday 16th October 2015 15:01 GMT d3vy
Re: So you can attest to the oddness of some parents' sprog naming?
There is a girl at work who has an unusual spelled first name and her last name is paul...
Because the work exchange server shows names as Last, First
A lot of people assume she has a funny second name and email her saying "Hi Paul"
I once also had a Customer Called Mr David.. Or Mr Emmanuel... We never got to the bottom of that (it was Mr David in the system and thats what he seemed go with... but was that just because he had given in explaining to people??!!)
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Friday 16th October 2015 17:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So you can attest to the oddness of some parents' sprog naming?
A Scottish colleague was stopped by the police one night as he was driving home. They asked where he was going from and to. So he named the two towns of his journey.
Then they asked his name - which happened to be the same two names as the respective towns. I remember one was "Hamilton".
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Friday 16th October 2015 18:50 GMT Mark 85
Re: Having worked in a school I can attest to the oddness of some parents' sprog naming
I'm personally in favour of giving them all a unique ID number at birth, it'd make life a lot easier from a data analysis perspective.
Unless you're dyslexic... then that might be a problem. OTOH, we could see going back to the early days of LED calculators and writing things with numbers that made words. Unintended consequences and all that.
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Saturday 17th October 2015 21:23 GMT John Brown (no body)
"the Geldof's for instance have three daughters, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Pixie..."
I was listening quite recently to Bob Geldof on Desert Island Discs (all existing episodes are on the BBC website) and IIRC the very young Peaches said the new baby looked like a Pixie so that was the name she got. I think there was almost reasonable sounding reasons for the other names too.
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Friday 16th October 2015 13:08 GMT Doctor Syntax
It's surprising how stuff can escape your attention. After carefully selecting a couple of attractive names for our daughter we never cottoned onto the significance of the initials until they caused a certain amount of confusion about her status when she was a post-grad. It's all resolved now as she's Dr DR ...
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Friday 16th October 2015 13:17 GMT DavCrav
"It's surprising how stuff can escape your attention. After carefully selecting a couple of attractive names for our daughter we never cottoned onto the significance of the initials until they caused a certain amount of confusion about her status when she was a post-grad. It's all resolved now as she's Dr DR ..."
There's a famous mathematician called HSM Coxeter. His two middle names were swapped from their original position after the unfortunate abbreviation was pointed out by a Godparent.
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Friday 16th October 2015 14:12 GMT Anonymous Custard
Reminds me of a couple of similar examples, like Mr and Mrs Peacock who christened their child Andrew, but being American always referred to him as Drew, at least until he grew up and other kids at school started taking the piss and calling him Viagra.
Also the noted (by some) French Physicist d'Arsonval (or Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval to give him his full name and double the sniggers), compounded by having his most famous work being d'Arsonval's Movement (as exhibited in moving-coil galvanometers and similar meters).
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Friday 16th October 2015 13:38 GMT John Savard
More to It
While this sort of thing might make sense, that France prevents Breton parents from giving their children Breton names, or Norway disallows children being given Swedish names, and so on is completely contrary to civilized norms, and therefore should be prohibited by the human rights codes of the European Union.
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Friday 16th October 2015 14:23 GMT Uncle Slacky
Re: More to It
That French naming policy ended about 15-20 years ago - they now only rule out obviously silly names. The first test case was for a boy called Zebulon (known in the UK as Zebedee, as in the Magic Roundabout) - it was disallowed.
Restricting names to those of saints did however have the advantage that you'd get additional presents on your saint's day, as well as on your own birthday.
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Friday 16th October 2015 13:59 GMT Alistair
wear mine proudly
Despite the fact that growing up it caused no end of teasing. I can't get over the number of teachers that over the years told me I should use my middle name instead. I have to ask, what in the name of ${DEITY} is *wrong* with giving your child a unique name? Certainly, there are those that have reached into truly bizarre territory to do so, but it really isn't *wrong*. I don't think calling someone Hashtag would be wise, or perhaps naming your daughter Fart, but I see nothing wrong with finding something that fits your child, and your sensibility.
I think Frank Z's kids did just fine with their names, and Dweezil and Moonunit are just about as far out there as one might go.
I know of a teenager who goes by the name Mini Cooper. I rather suspect, with her sense of humour, she'll be looking to get one to drive.
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Friday 16th October 2015 14:31 GMT Turtle
@Alistair Re: wear mine proudly
"I think Frank Z's kids did just fine with their names, and Dweezil and Moonunit are just about as far out there as one might go."
You can't really judge that from a distance. Maybe they "did just fine" with their names. Maybe not. How would you really know?
Also, you need to take into account the fact that Frank Zappa himself was looked at as (and was, I'd say) kind of eccentric, and that's the milieu in which the kids with the weird names were raised. If someone says "What kind of name is that?" and the answer is "My dad is Frank Zappa" - that's really all the answer that's needed, and the matter is closed and everything is, if not understood, then accepted. That in itself makes the Zappa kids' situation different from that of an average kid in average surroundings.
Also, look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUisSrkHT0k and note that, at the very beginning, he actually kind of stops the interview in order to say a few things, one of which is that he does not want anyone to mock his kids' names. That's just bizarre. One might think that Frank had more difficulties with the names than the kids did.
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Sunday 18th October 2015 00:28 GMT Vic
Re: wear mine proudly
what in the name of ${DEITY} is *wrong* with giving your child a unique name?
It means they have no choice whether or not to stand out from the crowd; they will do so by your volition, not their own.
As a child, I resented my parents' decision to give me a relatively unusual name. As an adult, I have become accustomed to it - to the extent that I rarely use my surname.But the transition between those phases involved quite a bit of aggravation; I believe my life would have been much simpler if I had had a more commonplace name - although it might have been less lucrative...
Vic.
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Friday 16th October 2015 14:05 GMT Anonymous Custard
Could be worse
When my missus was at the hospital having our firstborn (named Amy, for any who think this may relate to her) I overheard at least three midwives talking another new mother out of wanting to call her child "Anus"...
I think they succeeded, or at least I bloody well hope they did for the sake of the little girl involved.
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Friday 16th October 2015 17:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Christian names
Well, calling a child "Jesus" using Western pronunciation is historically considered in bad taste (as Elton John touched on in "Levon"). At least the Hispanic pronunciation ("HE-soos") or the alternate name Jesse doesn't draw the instant association that makes the name "Jesus" uncomfortable.
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Monday 19th October 2015 11:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: @ Anonymous Coward Christian names
No, I had it right the first time: I studied Spanish and frequently speak with Hispanics. First, unless there's an inflection mark, the emphasis in any Spanish word is on the penultimate syllable. Second, unless it ends the word (eg. José), the "e" is pronounced the way we would pronounce a short "e" in English, closer to the schwa than "ay".
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Friday 16th October 2015 16:40 GMT Peter Simpson 1
Turns out, it doesn't mean "move your ass" at all, it means "to butt in", as to a conversation:
On dit d'une personne qu'elle "ramène sa fraise" lorsque, dans une discussion, elle intervient souvent sans que le sujet de conversation ne la regarde ou sans qu'on lui demande son avis. Ici, la "fraise" n'est autre que la tête. En effet, il s'agit d'un vocabulaire argotique désignant le visage. En réalité, "ramener sa fraise" signifie tout simplement s'"approcher", ce qui a également donné l'expression "la ramener". Quant à ce verbe "ramener", il pourrait provenir des plus anciens "ramoner" et "ronchonner" qui signifiaient familièrement "râler".
Bad translation:
We say someone "ramene sa fraise", when, in a discussion, she intervenes frequently in a discussion that doesn't concern her or which hasn't asked her for her opinion. Here, "sa fraise" refers to her head. It's an argot term referring to the face.
Perhaps also "come over here"...when used as "ramene ta fraise", literally "bring your [face] here"
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Friday 16th October 2015 16:02 GMT Anonymous Coward
While we're using bad car puns as a sub-title (Wheels come off plan to name kid Mini Cooper)
A moment in literary ignominy, from a past Bullwer-Lytton contest:
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven—fueled by a single accelerant—and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.
—Rachel E. Sheeley, Williamsburg, Indiana (1988 Winner)
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Friday 16th October 2015 16:12 GMT Simon Harris
Belgium wisely prevented Mr and Mrs Renault from calling their daughter Megane
However, the French courts wouldn't stop Renault calling their car Zoe, after some Mr. & Mrs. Renaults complained that it was already their daughters' name.
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Monday 19th October 2015 12:00 GMT Charles 9
Re: Belgium wisely prevented Mr and Mrs Renault from calling their daughter Megane
I know the name Mercedes is pretty valid in most Romance languages (it's also a valid Spanish name, and I think you can have it in Italian, too), but this hint of it being Jewish makes me wonder which came first. Did the name come from Israel during Roman times becoming incorporated into Latin and so on, or did it come later?
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Monday 19th October 2015 18:54 GMT x 7
Re: Belgium wisely prevented Mr and Mrs Renault from calling their daughter Megane
Not quite true
Mercedes is a Spanish derived name, originating from the Spanish title of the Virgin Mary, María de las Mercedes, meaning "Mary of Mercies". It is ultimately from the Latin word merces meaning "wages, reward", which in Vulgar Latin acquired the meaning "favour, pity".
(see http://www.behindthename.com/name/mercedes)
However the young girl the car was named after had a Rabbi as a grandfather - see
http://jalopnik.com/5791169/the-secret-jewish-history-of-the-mercedes-name
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Friday 16th October 2015 16:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
A few odd ones
Parents who liked the name Simeon, but unfortunatly spelt it Simian
A Winston which wouldn't be too bad apart from the last name was Castle
A Yipping Song (in fairness anglicisation issue not naming issue)
Seren Moon - seren is Welsh for star, though I've never met a Bryn Hill, but have seen it on a street sign
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Friday 16th October 2015 18:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
"[...] William and Benjamin"
Did they have an older sister?
My parents never thought about the combination of my forename and family name. Suffice to say I grew up hating Uncle Mac's Saturday request programme playing the song about Alice taking a small boy to the Palace to see the changing of the guard.
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