Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Can You Not Have A Name?

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Is it legal to live without a name? Is it even possible? Find out today in this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. [♪ music playing on the radio, with a jazzy beat and a jazzy beat. Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, setting the tempo, and this is Stuff You Should Know, Short Stuff. That's right, I guess you could have said there's mm and I'm mm and there's mm. I wish I had now.

Maybe we should retake the whole thing. Nah. We're too far in now. A dumb joke because what we're talking about is naming and specifically sort of like the rules and laws about naming somebody and having a name and if you need a name legally. This is so in our wheelhouse, man. We've been talking about this stuff since basically day one of Stuff You Should Know. Yeah, this seemed familiar enough to where I thought we might have done it.

No, we haven't done this particularly, but we've talked about, I think in some of our videos maybe, about people who gave their kids weird names, like I will never forget, yeah Detroit. You remember? Sorry, I forgot about that, yeah. But what we're talking about today is- Which was a name, by the way. Yes, somebody tried to name their kid, yeah Detroit. Right.

One word, and there might have been an exclamation point, I don't remember. You gotta have one. The best name, or at least a tempted name I've ever heard. Or maybe an interrobang. Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about something a little more specific today though.

We're talking about can you live without a name? Is it something you could possibly do? And the short answer is no. The bigger answer is even more interesting than just being told no. Yeah. I mean, it's not illegal to not have a name, The bigger answer is no. The bigger answer is even more interesting than just being told no. Yeah, I mean, it's not illegal to not have a name, but try getting through life without a name. It's gonna be a big pain.

We dare you. Yeah, getting a job, getting a driver's license, just almost anything that you do these days might require some form of identification. And if you don't have a name, it's gonna make it challenging. Yeah, I mean, like you just could not make it through life, at least in the United States and most other countries,

probably just about any country, because you just, like no one can say you're you. That's how we do it. That's the first way we do it is with a name. I think when you're named, even before you're named, even before you get your social security number, you have your name. That's how you're identified. That's how they keep up with you, who's who, at the hospital even. Yeah. You can change your name and, you know, depending on your state, there's different

ways you can go about that. You can just start using a different name and even without making it like the official legal way, like on formal documents even, Emily changed her spelling of her name and it was just unofficial for many, many years until she finally had it officially changed, which is interesting. – Nice. – Yeah, she went from Y to IE. – I always loved the IE on the end of her name. I thought that was nice touch.

I didn't realize it was her own choosing. So, man. – It was like a teenager thing. She keeps getting better and better, you know? I think so too. Well, she's in her 50s. So, there are some rules. I should say not everybody has rules. Usually, in the United States at least,

the laws about what you can or can't name your kid are, it's by the states. And there's at least a dozen states that don't have any laws. They're basically like you can name your kid whatever you want. But plenty of other states do have laws. One of the big ones that you'll find

not just among the states that have laws about what you can name your kid, but also internationally, is that you can't name your kid a number. Although there is a workaround, you could spell out that number. So you can't do the number three, but you could name your kid T-H-R-E-E.

Right, or you could name your kid Plan Nine, but you'd have to spell out nine. Yes, would you do it all one word or two words? Plan Nine Bryant, I think that'd be pretty fun as one word It's a that's a great name, man. Yeah What else you can't use vulgar words? Yeah make sense can't be can't be Jesus Christ or What Adolf Hitler's on the list too, right? Yep. Same with Santa Claus in some places. Yeah, Nutella is another one

Nutella. Yeah, that's is it Nutella is another one. Nutella? Yeah. That's funny. Is it Nutella? I always say Nutella. I've always said Nutella, but it probably is Nutella. I don't know. Who's to say who's right in this topsy-turvy world? Any kind of racial slur you can't use, or if it's a name intentionally used to commit fraud, like to get out of a debt or something like that, you can't change your name for that reason.

But I mean would you be dumb enough to go and change your name and tell like the people at the Vital Records like, yeah I'm doing this because I owe a lot of money. Yeah. Emojis are out pretty much across the board. Oh good. And that's the United States, and you're like, well that's kind of strict, if you do think that that's kind of strict. But around the world it can be even stricter. Like Portugal is very strict. Not only do they have some serious naming laws,

there's a list of approved names that you have to select from. I think Iceland and Denmark also have similar lists, and in Portugal it has to be what they consider gender appropriate. Oh interesting, still. And they will kick your door down if you try anything different. Wow. Yeah Portugal's hardcore about naming. Maybe we should take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about naming that

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I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So in the United States, when a birth happens, the parents are legally obligated at some point in time to register that birth with a government entity, Vital Records Department or Department of Health and Human Services, something like that. And every country has a version of something like that. And on that form, you got to fill out the name, but it depends on what state you're

in as far as like how long you have to decide that. You don't have to name your baby before you leave the hospital. No, that's a pretty common misconception, at least according to Kristin Conger, who hats off, wrote this one originally from House of Forks. Yeah. Former colleague, Kristen Conger, and host and founder of Unladylike, a great podcast. That's right. So Conger points something out that I thought was pretty smart, that if you do leave the

hospital when you're baby unnamed, because that's got to be a lot of pressure. Yeah. If you don't have it done beforehand, you don't want to just be thinking of it like right after you give birth. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Especially if you weren't aware you're pregnant and this was a surprise birth. You need a little time, right?

Yeah. The hospital's still going to be like, we need to be able to keep up with that baby so that baby goes home with you. Right. So they might name it something like Baby Girl Smith, if your name is Jane Smith. But there was a study that was conducted, probably the most obvious study I've ever heard, that was like if you actually use something

a little more specific, like say this is Jane Smith's daughter, you would name it Jane's Girl Smith. You're probably gonna have fewer mix-ups at the hospital, which is just alarming that anybody even needs to study that because that even happens. Yeah, for sure. If you do wait and you haven't decided in the hospital and you decide, like, let's say the state you live in lets you, like, wait a few months or whatever, it depends on that state again on the procedure for adding that in.

Like in California is the one Kristen mentions, you have to fill out a supplemental name report with the health department and fill that in and say, all right, now we have our baby's name. And they're like, great, now you can get your birth certificate. Yeah. What do you think? Do you think it's a good name? It's a pretty good name, huh? Pretty good name. And I think you have a year in California. So again, it varies. Yes. I did not realize this, but the United Nations has a pretty stern stance on kids' names. In particular, in the Convention on the Rights of a Child, they said that all children have a right from birth to a name. There's an asterisk next to that.

They said, if you ever find yourself in a highly stressful bird box type situation, you can just name your kid boy or girl. But other than that, that kid deserves a name. I didn't see that. That was the Sandra Bullock thing that... It's excellent. I've seen it twice now. Caught the world by storm during COVID, right?

Yes, it's really good. Okay, I haven't seen it. You should check it out. All right, I'll dust that one off. Yes. So Chuck, let's move on to a little extra, what we call a lagniappe, if we wanted to sound really obnoxious, on middle names. Yeah.

Middle names haven't always been a thing. I think the modern idea of a middle name started in the Middle Ages, it seems like, but it was pretty specific back then. They would just give the first name on, you know, whatever they wanted to personalize it. But then the middle name would be a saint's name and then a surname. But then that eventually fell out of favor over time to where non-religious middle names became a thing. Yeah. A lot of times it was the mother's maiden name, her family name. It could just be like the parents were like,

I really like McGillicutty so that's your middle name. And it just kind of picked up by, I think World War I was the first time where the U.S. government at least officially recognized the existence of middle names when the enlistment forms for the military asked for a middle name. Yeah. And within, I don't know, a couple of decades, a handful of decades, as computers started to be used for documentation of individuals like tracking people, big brother type stuff, they were programmed for three names, first, middle, last. And what would happen, Chuck, if you did not have a middle name?

If you don't enter that, they would insert NMI, no middle initial, because not everyone has a middle name. And some people have many. I know that my friend Justin from England, he is three, two middle names. So three names and a surname. No, it's just I think it's more common in the UK to do something like that. So he's Justin Neil Alexander Stewart. So two middle names, one first name and his surname.

Very nice. And his social security number is You got anything else I got nothing else I don't either I guess I mean short stuff is out Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio Visit the I heart radio, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.