Battle Over Bizarre Baby Name Is “4Real”
Posted August 9, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
When a little boy in Wellington, New Zealand eventually goes to school, he can answer the question “Are you 4Real?” with an affirmative ‘yes’. That’s what the parents of the new baby want to call their son, despite resistance from officials in the country.
Pat and Sheena Wheaton came up with the moniker after an ultrasound scan showed their baby in waiting was “for real”. So they decided that would be a fitting name for the newborn, who arrived in the world two months ago. The bitter battle’s been raging ever since. The folks at the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages have refused to certify the request. The problem: the parents want to use the spelling “4Real” and the rules state any legal name has to be a sequence of characters.
What are two parents to do? These geniuses came up with a solution that only a mother could love. They’re planning to call their kid “Superman” on his birth certificate – but they’ll still refer to him as “4Real”. And they could take the case to court. “I’m not a quitter,” Pat Wheaton, obviously a man of steel, told a local newspaper.
The kid will likely need to be as strong as the superhero if he winds up with either name.
