An Italian couple that named their child Friday has been subjected to a court order to name the boy a different name. When they refused, the court took matters in their own hand and called him Gregory, after the saint on whose feast day he was born.
The boy was born 15 months ago in the Italian town of Genoa and his mother Mara Germano, was totally outraged at the decision. Their family lawyer, Paola Rossi, also taunted the legal authorities in the country, saying that it was a most ridiculous case.
The Italian judge presiding over the case, ruled that the couple should be refrained from calling their son Friday and ordered that he instead be called Gregory.
A Reuters journalist read the story on the front page of a national Italian paper and interviewed Mara Germano who told the news agency that the case had started after a city hall clerk tipped off a legal tribunal. In the first instance, the tribunal contacted the family saying that it was their duty to inform them of an administrative norm prohibiting parents from giving their child a ridiculous and shameful name.
The ‘norm’ is part of Italian rules and regulations aimed at protecting kids from being constantly reminded of their name in a negative sense. A child called Friday would not be able to develop "serene interpersonal relationships", is what the tribunal told the Germanos.
Earlier this month, the family’s case was referred to court because the parents appealed against the tribunal, but they lost the case. The result is that the court’s judge got to pick the kid’s new name!
Just to show you how far the Italian administrators take their sense of duty; they even said it was odd that the family priest’s baptism of the boy was carried out. apparently the Catholic church insists on first names that are of Christian origin.
So it’s bye bye thumper, eye wink, BlueRay. Just how the name Gene goes down would be interesting to know. Ms Germano said that she believed that had they been rich and famous, they would not have been hassled. Likely so; to give ‘thingy’ names to kids is the trend among the rich and famous nowadays.
But Friday’s parents attach a lot of importance to their choice and said that even if they had been blessed with a baby girl, they would have picked this name. “We named him Friday because we like the sound of the name,” the boy’s mother Mara Germano was quoted as saying. "My son was born Friday, baptised Friday, will call himself Friday, we will call him Friday but when he gets older he will have to sign his name Gregory."
The court’s concern? Friday is considered an unlucky day by many Italians. Also, it’s the name of a servile savage in Daniel Defoe’s racist novel Robinson Crusoe.