Australian court gets to pick girl's name

Oct 20, 2011, 3:06 GMT

Sydney - Parting couples fall out over all sorts of things: property, money, possessions, pets and, most grievously of all, their children.

An Australian couple - he was from Kuwait and she was from Lebanon - ended up in court because they could not agree on what to call their 2-year-old daughter. The child - one of two children - was born after the couple separated. She took her father's surname, but the couple were at odds over a first name.

'It is to be hoped that these two parents will now be able to move forward in their parenting, with certainty as to their roles in the lives of their children,' Justice Colin Forrest said in his Family Court ruling that the child should take the name her mother gave her.

'I expect that the father will be extremely disappointed with my findings and the orders that I have determined to make,' the judge said. Forrest decided for them because the spat over naming rights resulted in the child still being without a birth certificate two years after her birth in Brisbane.

Mum wanted 'A' but would have settled for a hyphenated 'A-H' while Dad was insistent that 'H' alone was the name his daughter should go by. Forrest was not convinced that the father would submit to the will of the court and would continue to insist on 'H' along with the rest of his family.

'I am drawn to the conclusion that the father's opposition to the name 'A' is yet another example of his determination to control the mother and her parenting of these two children,' he said.

Forrest decided that the father was telling fibs when he argued that the name his wife picked was blasphemous in his Islamic faith. The judge called in an imam from the local mosque who said the mother's choice had no particular meaning in Arabic.

Judges aspire to have the wisdom of Solomon; whether they do or not does not distract from the power of their rulings.

Justice Forrest declared that 'it is my intent that the child is known to the rest of the world as 'A.'