What's the Worst Name You Could Give a Child?

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The best thing about becoming a parent is that you basically have free rein to call your kid whatever you want. Unless it's something like Hitler or Milosevic, in which case I'd imagine someone would step in and have a word. Or, it turns out, if you live in New Zealand, where officials have recently banned a bunch of baby names.

V8 is one outlawed name, 4Real is another. Someone was even banned from calling their child "." (as in, full stop), which is probably a good thing because people would have called them Period and that's inevitably going to be damaging. There are no laws surrounding the naming of children in the UK, but there is common sense. I wanted to see where people from London draw the line at baby names so I asked some strangers a question: What's the worst name you could give a child?

Rebecca, 24, playwright: I did hear of somebody who called their child Spider. I was not impressed with that.

VICE: Do any other insect names work?
I think the only insect that could make a good name would be Beetle. That would be quite cool. It's better than Spider, at least.

You'd have to have the right amount of charisma to pull it off.
You would. You'd have to be very interesting.

Marc, 25, intern: I'm not English. I think all your names are strange.

My name's Tabatha, do you think that's strange?
No, it's cool.

Thanks.
People called Summer or April – that's weird.

OK.

Charlie, 51, managing director: Peaches. Peaches is an awful name.

Are all fruit names bad?
Yeah, fruit names are a definite no-no.

How about Apple?
No, I wouldn't go there. I’d buy an Apple computer, though.

Plum?
No, that’s awful.

William, 27, unemployed: Keith. Keith is the worst name you could give a child.

Why Keith?
I think the answer to that question is in an episode of Family Guy.

Do you have any friends with terrible names?
No. You’re so mean. Don't be so mean.

Sorry.

Julia, 33, marketing consultant: I think Sharon is the worst name you could give a child.

Why?
It's very naff, very dated, very 80s. It's tacky, you know?

What about other old lady names, like Cheryl?
Cheryl's been tainted by Cheryl Cole. Otherwise, it's actually quite a nice name.

Mary?
I quite like old, granny names generally, but Mary isn’t very sexy.

I dunno – Mary J Blige is pretty sexy.

Previously - Why Are Kids So Fat?