Khaleesi, 6, a passport was denied — with officials telling her she needed Warner Brothers’ approval because it owns the name’s trademark.
Typical capitalist brain rot.
Shouldn’t they also use the same bullshit excuse when issuing an ID card? At least make the dumb rules consistent.
By this logic, everyone named Mickey should be paying Disney a royalty…
Wait shit retract delete delete DISNEY I DID JOT SAY ANYTHING DONT GET ANY FUCKING IDEAS NOW.
Mickey is a real name, though. It wasn’t invented by Disney.
Not that their lawyers would care lmao
Yeah if anyone ever expected copyright law or lawyers to be even remotely logical or sane, they’ve got another thing coming to them…
Disney just announced a new IP, Empire of Love. No relation I’m sure.
OH FUUUUUUUUUU-
This comment has been removed due to a copyright claim by Walt Disney Corporation of America
Aren’t they aware that the TV series is based on a book series…? If anyone owns the name it’d be George R.R. Martin…
Did he trademark it? Did he sign that away when HBO did the TV series?
Not that it matters for a passport. But it’s entirely likely a media company owns the trademark for a book character rather than the author.
I think it would be more likely that grrm licensed the trademark and IP to HBO/Discovery rather than sell it. But I don’t actually know
https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00917519208
HBO owns it in the UK. Weirdly, I couldn’t find an active entry in the US database.
Thanks for actually doing the research.
The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error.
They screwed up, and have admitted they screwed up. Did nobody read the article?
I got half way before the pop-ups became too much.
Fair enough.
Holy shit you weren’t kidding. And I’m on Firefox Focus behind a PiHole with a multi-million blocklist.
Does the WB even own that trademark? You have to manually apply for each one. Also, trademarks are specific to commercial operations and two companies are allowed to share if they aren’t in the same business. I don’t think trademark laws even apply here.
I still believe her actual name was Hodor.
Shouldn’t they also use the same bullshit excuse when issuing an ID card? At least make the dumb rules consistent.
To be fair, ID cards aren’t common in the UK and passports are very common. This is quite probably the first time she’s applied for any form of ID. Not agreeing with it, just saying.
The idiocy of naming your kid Khaleesi aside, the UK just decided that a corporation can own your name and prevent you from enjoying the rights of your citizenship.
That’s pretty fucked.
Edit - Apparently they did backtrack. But it’s still amazing that anyone even thought that was a thing.
Khaleesi is a nice name aside from the fact that I think it’s a title…
Khaleesi is a title, not a name. In the fictional world of “Game of Thrones,” it means “queen” in the Dothraki language and is given to the wife of a Khal, the leader of a Dothraki tribe. The character Daenerys Targaryen is often referred to as Khaleesi. - chat gpt
Ya… It’s a title.
I’ve had students named Happy, Classic, Diamonds, Epiphany, Scorpio, you name it. I wouldn’t even cock my head to the side with a Khaleesi on my roll sheet at this point.
You name it is the weirdest of them all.
A-aron?
Classic? Who in the right mind!
Hippies.
I once met a female stripper named Adonis.
You know the Gilmores?
There are literally people named “Princess”. Not that I think that does wonders for their life either.
The idiocy of naming your kid Khaleesi aside
It’s nice sounding as a name though, I wouldn’t be in a rush to condemn someone for it. Now when it’s the 5th “unique” spelling of Madison that starts to get a little ridiculous.
It’s a nice sounding name if you don’t know where it comes from. Considering how well known Game of Thrones is it sounds like “I’m sorry your parents are idiots.”
Fair point!
The Passport Office reportedly later called Lucy to apologize for the error.
No, they can’t. That’s not how copyright works. Read the damn article.
But how can I be outraged then?
I am glad to hear they’re not officially taking corporate feudalism for a ride.
It seems that there is only two restrictions in the UK on naming a child at birth. That is that it must fit on a single line on the birth certificate and not contain numeric characters except things like ii to refer to the second.
If you want to change your name later in life there is a lot of restrictions but as far as I know copyright enforcement is still not one. You can find a list here if you are interested.
Regina, Adelina, Cesare, surely there are other names.
Zoltan, Rex.
Rex ~ Regina, but thanks for Zoltan, made me remember Basil by association.
EDIT: And Despina. EDIT2: There don’t seem to be many people called Despot, but Tiran (not Tigran) is a name one can sometimes encounter among Armenians.
Zoltan?
Isn’t that a race in FTL?
Used to work with a Zoltan.
Bread.
I dated a girl named Mercedes.
Mercedes is actually an old Spanish name too though.
Mercedes was the name of Emil Jellinek’s daughter, Emil has the idea to develop sports cars, he designed and commissioned cars from an engineering company and named the model-line after her.
Are you saying they should just use lojban?
Presumably they won’t get sued by IP (“intellectual property”) trolls.
Until they register in that language too
Perhaps you’re correct.
I tried looking into copyright status of Lojban and found nothing.
I’m pretty sure wp:Láadan was released into the public domain.
Láadan word for “queen.”
http://www.laadanlanguage.org/l2e.html
unáhizh
Fwiw, the passport office also backtracked. But now I have a new Internet rabbit hole, so thanks for that!
The kid doesn’t deserve this, but she doesn’t deserve that name either.
Second of Her Name, Rightful Queen of the Bratz Dolls, The Breaker of Bedtimes…
Nice!
I’m pretty sure we’re going to keep hearing about people with Game of Thrones names a lot over the next few decades lol I know I’ve read a few articles saying that Arya and Khaleesi were the most popular girls names for a few years before the series ended
At least Arya is a name; Khaleesi is a title
So is Christ, and therefore Christine and Christopher. Or Rex. Or Duke… Or Earl… Or Lady… Or Baron.
Bishop.
Pope.
Smith.
I’m sure there are more.
Don’t care. Gonna name my firstborn Right Honourable
“Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”
most of those aren’t first names
Lemmy needs a confidentlyincorrect
Earl is a real name. However, for this one, they explain in the series that he was supposed to be named Carl like his father, but due to sloppy handwriting he ended up being named Earl
But Earl is a title, as is Carl.
The last three, maybe (though I’m sure you could find someone with at least one of those as a first name), but everything before that are used at least irregularly.
Smith is a profession more than a title, and is also generally a surname. I’ll give you Christopher and Rex though
Thank you for pointing this out. It drives me crazy.
At least Arya doesn’t go full speedrun genocidal maniac because the showrunners are bored and think they have Star Wars money coming.
Never name your kid or your dog after a character until the who is over, folks! Cats? It’s fine.
I disagree, as cats are longer lived than dogs; wanna give your dog a stupid name, go for it
This may or may not have anything to do with the fact that I have three cats and zero dogs
LOL, it’s more that I’m less concerned finding out a cat is named after a woman who just wanted to watch the world burn, and I presume the cat would be too.
Arya is a normal name though. Khaleesi was specifically made up title for GoT.
At least Khaleesi sounds pretty normal still. I’ve heard about people naming their kids with names they basically made up so their kid’s is unique or really weird names otherwise. Unfortunately here in the states you’ll hear about some that have named their kid after Adolf and other worse choices.
Hopefully no one named their kid Dickon
Here is a list. Moon Unit is first. Child of Frank Zappa.
