Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?



You know those Unfortunate Names - Embarrassing First Names, Embarrassing Middle Names, Gender Blender Names, Tomboyish Names, names nobody can pronounce or spell, or that expose the bearer to ridicule by being punny, if not at home then as soon as they venture abroad and other things that drive people to seek refuge in deed polls or Last-Name Basis, or develop a Berserk Button? Let alone names that indicate exactly what the parents hope the child will become ("No, you may not skip your piano lesson, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Jones."), or give away their family background (class, parents' embarrassing choice of celebrity idols) in ways that expose them to all sorts of trouble when they venture into the wider world.

Suffice to say, somebody - usually but not invariably the parents - had to name them that way. They may have meant well. They may have done it out of family pride, or cluelessness, or not thinking about the unwanted Bilingual Bonus they're saddling the kid with. They may have named the kid after their favourite fictional character, or politician, or something even goofier. They may think having a bully magnet name will help the tyke build character. They may just hate kids. They may be rock stars, or hippies, or both, with child-naming habits to match. Or they might just have been hit with the fickle finger of fate when something happened after the child's birth to make the choice much less sensible in retrospect. (Being named Adolf is one thing: being named Adolf in 1928 is another.)

At any rate, the effect is usually to make third parties ask the question: "Who calls their child that?", or in the more light-hearted cases, "I hope he inherited his parents' sense of humor." In extreme cases, may function as a Freudian Excuse, or lead to Calling the Old Man Out, or both. May induce a sense of being Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck - let alone a whole bunch of problems if you've been saddled with a name to run away from really fast and it's not by your own choice. In extreme cases, this trope may also lead others to decide that There Should Be a Law, which in a number of European countries there is, at least as far as the more obvious Unfortunate Names, names leading to Viewer Gender Confusion, or the use of surnames as first names. May also slightly stack the odds against the child's future success.

This might also extend to cases where the kid, however grown-up they get, are never allowed to shake off a family nickname that would only be cute on a toddler, though probably not to embarrassing nicknames acquired in other settings, such as school. Children with names fitting this trope may also take refuge in nicknames or titles.

Obviously, this is very much Your Mileage May Vary - one person's Awesome McCoolname is another's Fail O'Suckyname, and things can get touchy for those of us who have been blessed with names we took a while to get to terms with, or are still working on it.

Please note this is not just a matter of people/characters having Unfortunate Names - this applies only when there is an In-Universe reaction to the fact.

Anime and Manga
"Izaya: My parents are completely ordinary people. Except for when it comes to the taste in children's names, that is."
 * In Narutaru, there is Shiina, whose name means "a husk" or "a seed that will never flower". For this reason, Shiina always writes her name in katakana, which, unlike the original Chinese characters, don't carry explicit meaning. The name is questioned by other characters throughout the series. It is later revealed that her mother gave her that name because she didn't want Shiina to grow up and leave her like her other daughter did.
 * In Durarara!!, the not quite main character's parents figured they should give their kid an awesome name should he ever grow up to become famous or important, so they named him Mikado Ryuugamine. Yes, they named their kid Emperor of Dragon's Peak. This, of course, made him the target of endless jokes and taunting through the majority of his childhood, and nearly everyone feels the need to comment on just how pretentious his name sounds when they meet him.
 * Izaya (effectively named after the biblical propher Isiah) expresses similar sentiments about his name.


 * An interesting variant of this is the basis of one of the main gags in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Intensely depressed protagonist Nozomu's family name of Itoshiki is made up of two kanji that, when written too closely together and combined with the kanji for his first name, look an awful lot like the word "despair". The other members of his family are all shown to have similarly easily-mistaken names as well, such as his Doctor brother whose name can be written as "Death".
 * Better yet, it's heavily implied that the family patriarch does this with the sole reason that it amuses him!
 * In Saiunkoku Monogatari, the thirteenth child of the Ran clan is named Jyuusanhime, which just means "thirteenth princess." She's shown complaining about it in a flashback.
 * In Rave Master, King Gale Raregroove had...questionable taste in baby names. King's first son got the name Lucia, a Gender Blender Name which also means light-which would be an unremarkable detail if his son hadn't grown up to be the embodiement of evil with a dark themed power. His stepbrother did not have it much easier, being named Deep Snow for how much it was snowing outside.
 * The Italian dub of Transformers Super God Masterforce renames the characters with names used for other Transformers from the original series. This includes the Headmasters Jr.s, which are humans. For an example, Minerva is named Phantom. Yes, a girl named Phantom.

Comic Books
"Foggy Nelson Thinking: What kind of name is "Flash?" Flash Thompson Thinking: Who names his son "Foggy?""
 * Subverted in a Zatanna special. She wonders how an evil sorceress was able to avoid her spell when Zatanna used what she thought was the sorceress' true name, then suddenly realises that no one is born with a name like "Nimue Ravensong". Zatanna then goes in search of the sorceress' birth name.
 * The Clark Kents of Earth-Prime and Superman: Secret Identity were both named by parents with a weird sense of humour on worlds where Superman comics existed. The Clark Kent of Secret Identity is shown to be pretty tired of all the jokes. It actually works to his advantage a couple of times: he meets one Lois Chaudhari when friends set them up as a prank and they hit it off and ultimately get married, and the secret government agency searching for a strange flying man dismisses published author Clark Kent because it would just be too ridiculous.
 * In Knights of the Dinner Table, Johnny Kizinski names his youngest son Frodo after convincing his wife that it was the name of a relative of his from 'the old country' who died fighting the Russians. His wife is not happy when she learns the truth.
 * In either a Daredevil or Spider-Man comic book, when Foggy Nelson and Flash Thompson's respective girlfriends introduced them at a restaurant, both of them thought of this trope (but didn't say anything):


 * In Gold Digger, a little girl claiming to be Brianna's daughter from the future showed up. Her name? Roquette -- pronounced "Rocket." Someone else said, "What kind of mother would name their--" and Brianna interrupted, "Whoa! Whatta cute name!"

Film
"I'm Charlotte Blackwood. I'm Maverick. Did your mother not like you? No, it's my call sign."
 * In Meet the Parents, "Greg" is short for "Gaylord," which would have been quite bad enough even if his last name weren't Focker. The question of what kind of parents would saddle a kid with that name comes up at the end of the movie when his brother-in-law asks if his name really is "Gay Focker", and is answered in the sequel—they're hippies. They even call him "Gay" for short.
 * Don't forget his cousins Randy and Horny!
 * In Top Gun:


 * Discussed in Hatchet II by unfortunately named men Chad and Cletus.
 * In the documentary Comedian, a number of people react when aspiring comic Orny Adams gives his name, some not even believing that it's real.

Literature
"James Herriot: "Ah well, it could have been worse, there's always Pogner." Siegfried Farnon: "You're right, I'd completely forgotten about bloody Pogner.""
 * In Good Omens, this is basically Mr. Young's reaction to most of the satanist nurse's name suggestions for the baby Antichrist. The American ambassador, whose wife is giving birth next door, is more receptive (or less attentive), and ends up with a son called Warlock.
 * An interesting variant can be found in The Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. One of the patients in the titular cancer ward is a bureaucrat named Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov. He and his wife chose the name Lavrentiy for their youngest son, so that he should get the same name and Patronymic as Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, the leader of the secret police under Stalin. The book is set in the later fifties, young Lavrentiy Pavlovich Rusanov is in his teens, and the old Stalin regime is nothing to be proud of any more. Pavel Nikolayevich is somewhat uneasy about the whole thing, but finds comfort in the fact that all his son's friends just call him Lavrik.
 * After telling the hero her name, Adora Belle Dearheart from the Discworld novel Going Postal adds that as a result "I now have absolutely no sense of humour" (her childhood nickname was "Killer").
 * Some jokes are also made about the fact that the main character's first name is Moist. Who names their kid Moist?
 * The siblings from Hogfather, Twyla and Gawain. Death himself remarked that the latter name, if chosen because it sounded like a good name for a fighter, was most likely a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
 * The "Guards" series of books have a character named "Carrot." According to his adoptive dwarf parents (he's a human), he was named for his shape, not the color of his hair, although that does happen to be red.
 * Also in the "Guards" series is a dwarf named "Cheery Littlebottom." This is made worse by the fact that male and female dwarfs look exactly alike, so in theory this was meant to be a gender-neutral name (Cheery happens to be female). The character is also acutely aware of how ridiculous her name is.
 * A character in Catch-22 was secretly named Major Major Major by his father, who kept the fact from his mother. The army computer misinterprets his name and mistakenly assigns him the rank of Major when he enlists, making him Major Major Major Major. Ex-PFC Wintergreen intercepts any attempts to promote or demote him because he thinks it's funny.
 * Siegfried and Tristan Farnon in the James Herriot books. Maybe not so much now, but back in 1930s Yorkshire, those names, bestowed by their Wagner-loving father, would have stuck out a mile.

"Cherry: Ponyboy's an original name. Ponyboy: My parents were original people."
 * In one of the Callahan's Place books, there's a mention of a couple who were both afflicted with punny names by their parents, and decided to swap surnames when they married. Those original names: Les Moore and Merry Glueham (pronounced "gloom"). They now enjoy being Merry Moore and Les Glueham.
 * There's also passing mention of the child of Star Wars fans named Lahey and Hu, and the report that little three-year-old Yoda Lahey-Hu has already learned how to fight dirty.
 * In Anne's House of Dreams, Miss Cornelia comments approvingly on Anne's choice of baby name (James Matthew), and mentions in passing that another new mother in the neighborhood has decided to call her baby Bertie Shakespeare.
 * The poor kiddy is always known by the whole thing: Bertie Shakespeare Drew. And let's not forget Anne's classmate Moody Spurgeon McPherson, who is last heard of at college, studying to be a minister. "He couldn't be anything else with that name." (Moody and Spurgeon were two famous preachers.)
 * The Namesake features the Indian main character Gogol Ganguli, named for Nikolai Gogol. He hates his name for most of the book, changing it to Nikhil for a while.
 * In Bruce Coville's Aliens Ate My Homework YA series, the villain is named BKR. Seriously. He's an alien, though it doesn't help that all the numerous other aliens of the series at least have names with vowels in them (Madame Pong, Grakker, Tar Gibbons, and Phil). Even better, when the protagonist asks the aliens for the correct spelling and pronounciation - presumably so he can write the book - it turns out to actually be pronounced Bee-Kay-Are!
 * The Outsiders:

""I always wished I had one of them names like Dirk or Steele or Rock. Pinkus Ghort. My momma ought to be spanked. What the hell kind of name is Pinkus Ghort?" "You tell me," Hecht had responded. "You made it up." "You want to know the sick, sad truth, my friend? I didn't. It really is the one my momma hung on me. Though nobody never believes me when I tell them." Hecht remained firmly established in that class. He was sure that Pinkus Ghort would be wanted in more than one principality farther north, under other names."
 * In Robert A. Heinlein's Glory Road the protagonist isn't too thrilled with the name his deceased father gave him, "Evelyn Cyril Gordon". He reflects that he understands his father's attempt to honor their heroic ancestor by naming him that, but he wound up learning to fight before learning to read.
 * The Native Star has Dreadnought Stanton, whose sisters are named Euphemia, Ophidia, and Hortense. "My father is the fool in question. He is a man who feels the need to publicly memorialize his esoteric and obsessive passions--passions which have included the later history of Rome, reptiles, eighteenth-century Flemish aristocracy, and clipper ships."
 * In Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night series, a major character frequently complains about his name, but his friend the main character is certain it's an alias.

"My name is Case. Philodendron Case. Thanks to my Ma. I've never even told Raven about that. That's why I joined the army. To get away from the kind of potato diggers that would stick a name like that on a kid."
 * Black Company series: the narrator of "The Silver Spike" got a really short straw:


 * A purely in-universe instance occurs in The Wheel of Time, where Min Farshaw's real first name is Elmindreda, the name of a character from an in-universe story who spent all her time sighing over men and trying to get them to write songs about her. Min, herself, is a highly independent, tomboyish young woman who feels uncomfortable in a dress and is somewhat of a bookworm. No surprise that she would refuse to go by her full first name (or that she would resent her mother over the name).
 * In the Teenage Worrier series, Letty (Scarlett) and Ashley were named by their mother, a fan of Gone with the Wind. At one point Letty claims they teamed up to stop their brother from being named "Rhett".
 * In The Hunger Games, at one point Katniss Everdeen, the main character, reflects on how the people from one section of the country call their children odd names, such as "Glimmer".
 * Inspector Endeavour Morse. To be fair, his mother was a devout Quaker (they have a tradition of "virtue" names) and his father was an admirer of Captain James Cook, whose vessel was HMS Endeavour. He often tells people that his first name is "Inspector".
 * In the Warrior Cats novel "Crookedstar's Promise", Rainflower's decision to rename Stormkit to Crookedkit is met with dismay and anger by Stormkit's father.
 * In the Xanth series book Ogre Ogre, we get John the fairy, apparently there was a mix-up and she got someone else's name, meaning not only does she have to put up with having a boy's name, but some man has to deal with whatever her true name is. Fairies apparently cannot change thier names in this world.
 * Actually, just the letters were mixed up, so there was a female fairy named "John" and a male fairy named "Joan." But they met up and exchanged letters so the female was named "Joan" and the male was named "John."
 * Who names their kid Ima Hooker? A mostly absent junkie with a sick sense of humor, that's who.
 * Keys to the Kingdom has a brother and sister example. In his life as an Ordinary High School Student on Earth, Arthur's best friends have hippie parents who called them Leaf and Branch. Leaf seems pretty happy with her name. Branch has a reaction more similar to the title of this trope, and prefers to be called 'Ed'.
 * Most of the names in Gone (novel) are, while diverse, justifiable, as the kids come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. But Duck? Really? And Zil? What kind of parents give their kid a name that means nothing? Used to effect in the case of the island kids, though, whose adoptive parents gave them names like Peace and Virtue and Pixie because they're insensitive.
 * Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: Final Justice introduces a very distinct character named Cosmo Cricket. Ted Robinson asks Lizzie Fox "Who names their kid Cosmo Cricket?" and she responds "His parents did."
 * In The Vatican Cellars, one character decided to name his girls after plants, and not saints, for the sake of atheism. The firts two have it good - Véronique and Marguerite - but the third one is named Arnica.

Live Action TV
"J.D: Who's called Lady? Janitor: She is! She has a brother named "Him"."
 * The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Sarah and John spent a lot of time moving around, so on one occasion they had to switch from a rural pig farm to a hippie commune which could easily be characterised as the place where the kids are named after tree species.
 * Lampshaded in the Leverage episode "The Fairy Godparents Job."
 * Chris Carter does this twice:
 * Fox Mulder of The X-Files deals by staying on a Last-Name Basis as much as he can.
 * Jimmy Bond of The Lone Gunmen, being a well-meaning if not overly bright guy, doesn't seem to get why anyone thinks there's anything out of the ordinary about his name.
 * In The Tenth Kingdom, Tony has to guess the name of the blind woodsman before he chops Wolf's head off. When the name turns out to be "Juliet", Tony says "No wonder he grew up to be a psychopath."
 * Stargate Atlantis' Rodney is ashamed of his first name, and goes by his middle. The other characters respect this and continue to use the name after they know it's not his first. Except for his sister who seems to take a kind of joy out of calling him 'Meredith'.
 * In Bones, Angela changed her name as soon as she turned 18, but it is never revealed what her real name is. Her father suggests she name her son "Staccato Mamba", so it must have been pretty bad.
 * A girl on A Different World was teased about being named Cougar, until she revealed that it was the car her father would have been able to buy if she hadn't been born.
 * In Scrubs, the following exchange takes place when J.D. meets the Janitor's girlfriend:

"Hawkeye: What kind of parents would name their kid B.J.? B.J.: My mother...Bea Hunnicutt, and my father...Jay Hunnicutt."
 * In Rumpole of the Bailey, Wagner buff extraordinaire Claude Erskine-Brown names his son "Tristan" and his daughter "Isolde," to likely eye-rolling by his wife Phyllida.
 * On Boy Meets World, Cory Matthews actually asks this question when a substitute teacher reads to the class from Beowulf: "Who names their baby Hrothgar?!"
 * The Middle: Frankie regrets naming her youngest son Brick, thinking that an unusual name would make him cool (which Brick is anything but).
 * In Neighbours, there was the Gottlieb family, whose parents were hippies. Their three grown-up children were:
 * Cosmic Gottlieb, who renamed himself Mark.
 * Freedom Gottlieb, who renamed himself Stephen.
 * Serendipity Gottlieb, who was commonly known as Ren (and was a bit of a free spirit quite like her parents, apparently).
 * On M* A* S* H, B.J. Hunnicutt's given name is apparently B.J. Leads to this exchange:

"Cerie: If it's a girl, "Bookcase"... or "Sandstorm"... or maybe "Hat", but that's more of a boy's name. Liz: Yeah, I was gonna say."
 * Six from Blossom. According to her, that's how many beers her father said it took.
 * On 30 Rock, Cerie thinks up some baby names after she gets engaged:

"Chandler Muriel Bing. Boy, your parents never even gave you a chance, did they?"
 * Also on 30 Rock, there is one Kenneth Ellen Parcell.
 * "Buffy" the Vampire Slayer. Contrary to some fan opinion, it is not a diminutive form of "Elizabeth." That's her name. This is pointed out when Spike asks who calls their kid Buffy (in response to Buffy insulting his name, to be fair). Buffy then gets rather offended at this insult to her mother, so she's probably not bothered by the name.
 * "Buffy" was actually a fairly common name in the late 70's when the character would have been born, probably inspired by the character of the same name from Family Affair.
 * In Friends, when Ross learns Chandler's middle name:

"Annie: Of course you think that, Britta. It's obvious from your name that your parents smoked pot."
 * Britta on Community.


 * Weeds: Nancy regards her new neighbor's young son's name, "Rad", with some skepticism.
 * In the soap opera Las Juanas, there is Doña de Salguero, most usually called "Doña Doña". To wit. in English, the equivalent is naming a girl "Mistress" or "Ma'am".
 * On Modern Family, all of Mitch and Cam's friends have stereotypical "gay" names. One of them, Longinus, remarks that his mother forced him to become gay with it.

Music

 * An example of Calling the Old Man Out on the back of this trope is, of course, the old Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue". Of course, in this case the bad name was intentional — as Dad explained, he gave his son a name that would make his childhood a living hell precisely so the boy would be forced to grow up mean and tough, to compensate for growing up without a father figure. Sue appreciates the logic behind this decision and forgives his father, but makes it clear that he wouldn't dream of doing something like that to his own son.
 * Word of God from songwriter Shel Silverstein is that he got the inspiration for the song after hearing a (male) judge named Sue K. Hicks speak at a judicial conference in Gatlinburg (a town which is also mentioned in the song). Hicks was named after his mother, who died in childbirth.

Newspaper Comics
"Wanda: "Bunny, your babies are named Green and Purple!" Bunny: "I prefer Teal and Puce.""
 * Matt Groening's Life in Hell has a "What not to name your kid" installment, including suggestions such as "Oral" and "Onan"
 * Baby Blues: Bunny named her twin babies Wendell John and Wendell Jon. Before she settled on those names, she referred to them by the colors of their hospital bracelets.


 * 5 from Peanuts was named that because his father had strange ideas about where society was headed. His siblings were likewise named after numbers.

Theatre

 * The titular Mother Courage names her youngest son Schweizerkas - "Swiss cheese". Well, nobody said she was the best mother.

Video Games

 * In the video game of the anime series Afro Samurai, Ninja Ninja wonders "What kind of father names their kid 'Afro Samurai' anyway?"
 * Battler in Umineko no Naku Koro ni spends a fair amount of the Visual Novel's introductions mocking his family's naming habits, particularly when it came to his own ("My parents are the first on my 'to kill' list").
 * In Nation States, one of the issues revolves around a man who was named an incomprehensible string of characters changing his name to John and campaigning for a law to restrict names. Arguing in favor of this change is a man named Insert Name Here, while the other side is argued by a woman with a rather hippie-ish name who named her baby daughter [expletive deleted].
 * Pokémon Gold and Silver include a character who is actually named Dude. No, seriously. The remakes removed the character.
 * Meta example: Bethesda offered a prize (free Bethesda games for life) if somebody would name their child "Dovahkiin". Somebody did, and Bethesda paid up. I am not kidding.
 * Years earlier Acclaim tried a similar stunt by offering to pay 10000 dollars to whoever named their child Turok. No one did.
 * In the visual novel Lamento -beyond the void-, Bardo suffered so horribly from this he went right ahead and changed it to something less-bad. Not only was it a painful name, it was a girls' name. Literally. His mama called 'im Cheryl. And she's still the only person that does, going by the end of his route.
 * The Postal series features The Postal Dude.... snippets seen around in Postal 2 reveal is legal name is actually The Postal Dude, Jr., as it's what's on his driver's license when he goes to pay a parking ticket and his father's grave says "T. Dude, Sr".

Tabletop Games

 * Deadlands: Lost Colony: The narrator is a woman named Debbi Dallas. Apparently, her dad was a marine with an appreciation for... 'classic' films.

Web Comics
"Gil: "Chump"? Zeetha: A great warrior. And yes, I know what it means in your language."
 * Pyroduck from Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures. He was named by phoenixes, a rather eccentric race of oracles who are notorious for answering everything with vague riddles. When he explains his backstory, Alexsi comments that she "always wondered why someone would call their kid Pyroduck".
 * In Girl Genius, Zeetha's father was named Chump. Since she's from a reclusive warrior culture deep in an unknown jungle, Bilingual Bonus probably wasn't considered during the naming process.


 * The Foglios revealed, or at least heavily implied,
 * There's also Moloch von Zinzer. Finally, the mystery of his name is explained.
 * In Bad Machinery, Mr. Beckwith wonders, "Who calls their child Mildred? Cursed to live a life of one sock pulled up higher than the other."
 * Kolfinnia Kokokoho "KK" Titching
 * The same comic also has Arcady. Her hippie parents decided that she was a child of Arcadia, and decided to name her such, but they were too stoned out of their gourds to write anything correctly on the birth certificate.
 * Bug shows us that names like this are the reason we need the stupid baby name police.
 * xkcd has discovered a way to weaponize this trope.
 * In The KAMics Nikki comments on Clem's name & we learn how this could lead to joining the Pun Police
 * Kestrel of Queen of Wands ("Parents were hippies, huh?"). When her close friend offers to name her daughter after her, Kestrel suggests providing the middle name.
 * Discussed by Jake English and Dirk Strider in Homestuck regarding the last names of the demonic Lord English and the alien Betty Crocker, due to the last names in question being matters of personal selection.

Web Original
""My parents hated me!""
 * Florence Bakura in Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series.
 * "Who names a boy Florence?! Idiots, that's who!"
 * Monkey D. Luffy from None Piece.

"Luffy: "Wait, your name is Zorro Zolo?" Zolo: "YEAH! MY PARENTS HATED ME!""
 * And then Zolo...


 * Not Always Friendly got a case when this was weaponized.

Western Animation
"Sheriff: Crimanelly, now I know why yer momma calls ya "Nutsy"."
 * Farmer John from Sheep in The Big City: "His name is Farmer? They must have laughed at him at school." An episode reveals that is name is actually "Far Mer John" (the reason being that his mother wanted him to go "far" and his father wanted to name him after his aunt Mer), which is arguably worse.
 * Nutsy from the Disney's animated Robin Hood:

"Kent Mansley: Hogarth? What an embarrasing name. Might as well call him Zeppo or something. What kind of sick person would name a kid Hoga-"
 * A Christmas special made by DIC called A Hollywood Hounds Christmas (it appears on Shout Factory's DIC Christmas Blast DVD) in which the main character is actually named "Dude". A running gag in the special is how people are able to (accidentally) guess his name. At one point, he even goes "is there anybody who doesn't know my name?..."
 * In The Iron Giant:


 * In a Shout-Out to "A Boy Named Sue," the animated version of Baby Blues had a one-shot side character named Sioux, pronounced "Sue." Apparently his parents were hippies. Later after his parents pick him up from prison (long story), an officer mutters to himself "A boy named Sue...what were his parents thinking?"
 * Bessie Higgenbottom from The Mighty B is stuck with the middle name, because her mother is the only one in the entire universe who doesn't think it's colossaly stupid. Which might explain why her mother is also the only one who is never struck by the curse that comes with mentioning the name.
 * Beavis and Butthead.
 * In the 2012 adaptation of The Lorax, the Once-ler's name actually is Once-ler, despite having two brothers named Brett and Chet. This is in contrast to the original, where Once-ler is hinted to be more of a title/nickname than anything.

Real Life

 * This article from Slate details instances where judges or courts blocked certain names, one of which was so bad it was considered an act of child abuse.
 * The beginning of the article refers to a child that was named "Talula Does The Hula in Hawaii". The parents got away with it for most of her childhood, but a judge later ruled that she be made a ward of court so she could change her embarassing name.
 * Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116. (Pronounced "Albin".) Luckily for the kid, the courts blocked the name. Apparently he was given that name specifically to protest the law banning bizarre names.
 * Apparently some parents in New Jersey gave their kids "Nazi-inspired" names. Specifically, there was three-year-old Adolf Hitler Campbell and his little sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell. The kids wound up in custody of the state and apparently got attention after a bakery refused to put little Adolf's name on a birthday cake. One can only hope that the parents were making a valiant effort to keep their kids out of politics, otherwise there are some rather Unfortunate Implications.
 * There was an article from New Zealand about parents wanting to name their kid 4real. The government refuses to let them legally name the child 4real. The government didn't object to 4Real because it was stupid; they objected to it because it contained a numeral. The parents named the kid Superman instead (but they say they're still going to call him 4Real).
 * Frank Zappa was forbidden by Hospital officials from naming his son Dweezil, opting for "Ian" instead. Unfortunately, the officials didn't tell Frank they'd changed the form name to Ian. Frank didn't find out for five years, and he got really mad when he found out what had been done. At that point he had the name legally changed to Dweezil.
 * This. Let's hope the kid can really use dragon shouts, or the bullies are gonna give him hell.
 * At least he gets all Bethesda games free for life, right? Ah, who am I kidding, that kid's going to hate his name with a passion.
 * Parents named their child "like" after the button on Facebook. No, seriously.
 * This poor Egyptian girl was named Facebook, I am not kidding.
 * During the late nineteenth century, two Swedish parents wanted to show their support for the continued union between Sweden and Norway by naming their newborn daughter "Sverige och Norge Förenade" ("Sweden And Norway United"). The priest insisted that the child must have at least one regular name, and the poor girl ended up with the name "Sweden and Norway United Petronella".
 * A few years ago in Sweden, the parents of a young boy wanted to name him Pripps after the Pripps Brewery because his maternal Grandfather had worked there, the brewery said no.
 * A white woman was fired from her job as a judge over an issue where she forcibly changed the name of a black male child from Messiah to Martin on the grounds that Jesus is the only one allowed to have the name. When the family learned about what the now-former Child Support Magistrate did, they sued over it since there were no laws in the US banning religious names and it was protected by the First Amendment.
 * This All Time 10s video has a video on illegal baby names.