Per NBC:
A Tennessee judge has ordered a baby boy’s name to be changed from “Messiah” after deciding it is a title that has “only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ.”
NBC station WBIR reported that the parents of the 7-month-old went to a child support hearing in Cocke County Chancery Court because they could not agree on his surname.
However, Child Support Magistrate Lu Ann Ballew decided Thursday that the baby, Messiah DeShawn Martin, should be renamed “Martin DeShawn McCullough.
“The word Messiah is a title and it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that one person is Jesus Christ,” Ballew said, according to WBIR-TV.
She said she made the decision in the best interests of the child.
That’s the role of Tennessee judges is it — to decide who has “earned” their name and who hasn’t, and to make naming decisions in the “best interests of the child”? Personally, I can’t imagine calling my child “Messiah.” But there are an awful lot of things that I can’t imagine naming my child. Besides, it’s not as if this baby is to be the second person given that moniker. As Brian Doherty notes over at Reason:
Messiah was No. 4 among the fastest-rising baby names in 2012, according to the Social Security Administration’s annual list of popular baby names….
There’s a particular irony in the judge’s arguing that “Messiah” is unacceptable because of the spiritual connotations but conferring on the child the name “Martin,” which happens to be the genitive case of the name of the Roman god “Mars.” If “Messiah” has “only been earned by one person,” then why is it open season on plucky little Mars? And, while we’re on this, what about poor old Saint Martin of Tours, the 4th-century bishop who is currently suffering a life sentence as the patron saint of France?
Call me a fusty old constitutionalist, but it’s almost as if these are questions that judges really shouldn’t be addressing in a republic. . .