A French court has barred a couple from naming their daughter Nutella after the popular hazelnut chocolate spread.
The unusual choice of name by the couple from Valenciennes, in northern France, was noticed by the registrar who recorded the baby’s birth in September last year. He alerted the local prosecutor who referred the case to a family court judge.
The parents have now named their baby Ella, after a court ruling stipulated that “the first name Nutella, given to the child, is that of the commercial brand of a spread.”
The court ruled that such a name was against the girl’s interests as it would cause “mockery or disobliging remarks.”
The days are long gone when a French child would be named according to the saint’s day on which it was born. In 1993 the law was changed to enable parents to freely choose their baby’s name — unless it is deemed contrary to the child’s interests.
The Voix du Nord newspaper said a separate case in the region concerned a child who had been given the name “Fraise” (Strawberry).
The parents told a judge this month that they had wanted an original name. However, the court decided that she would face mockery from other children, who might have called out to her “ramene ta fraise,” a colloquial expression meaning “get over here,” or “butt in.” The girl was renamed Fraisine, which was popular in the 19th century.
In 2013, a boy named Jihad caught the notice of school authorities, when the three-year-old was seen wearing a T-shirt displaying the words “I am a bomb” on the front, and his name and date of birth, Sept. 11, on the back. His mother was later acquitted of supporting terrorism.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing