A French couple has been banned from naming their baby daughter 'Liam'

A French couple have been banned from naming their baby girl, Liam, after a judge warned she could get confused about her gender.

The unnamed parents wanted to give their third child, born in November, the traditionally-male name, but French prosecutors stepped in.

According to The Sun the prosecutor said the name “would be likely to create a risk of gender confusion” and “therefore contrary to the interest of the child and could harm him in his social relations”.

The baby’s mum had already been advised by the registrar to give her daughter “a more feminine” baby name.

Now, the prosecutor has asked a judge to ban the parents from using the name ‘Liam’ and to force them to choose another moniker for their daughter.

The prosecutor cited examples of famous Liams to support the argument, including singer Liam Gallagher and actor Liam Neeson.

The date of the trial hearing is yet to be announced, but the parents, from Morbihan, Brittany, have requested a lawyer and reportedly postponed the date of their daughter’s baptism.

This isn’t the first time a French family has had their baby name debated in court. Last October a family in France who named their son ‘Jihad’ had to go to court to find out if they would be allowed to keep the name.

The parents chose the controversial baby name for their little one when he was born in Toulouse last August and officials immediately alerted the public prosecutor.

The French Civil Code says children can be given any name unless it is against the interest of the child, but with France currently on a high terror alert it’s likely judges will seriously question whether the family should be forced to change the moniker.

Also in France, a court ruled a couple could not use the moniker Fañch that they’d chosen for their baby boy.

The court in Quimper, north west France ruled that the new parents would not be able to use the character ñ (called a tilde) in their baby’s name.

Instead Jean-Christophe Bernard and his wife were told that they would have to find an alternative.

“The principle according to which babies’ names are chosen by their mothers and fathers must have limits when it comes to using a spelling which includes a character unrecognised by the French language,” the court ruled, according to the Guardian.

Google dictionary describes the character as an accent (~) placed over Spanish n when pronounced ny (as in señor) or Portuguese a or o when nasalised (as in São Paulo).

In 2015 a court in Valenciennes, decided that a couple would not be allowed to name their daughter ‘Nutella’.

The judge decided that it wouldn’t be in the child’s best interest to be named after a chocolate spread.

“The name ‘Nutella’ given to the child is the trade name of a spread,” the court’s decision read, according to a translation.

“And it is contrary to the child’s interest to be wearing a name like that can only lead to teasing or disparaging thoughts (sic).”

Back in the UK, in April last year a Welsh mother was banned by a high court from calling her baby twin daughter Cyanide (her brother was named Preacher).

She also argued that she had the right to name her own children. However, Justice Eleanor King ruled that the name could cause emotional harm to the child in the future.

“It is hard to see how…the twin girl could regard being named after this deadly poison as other than a complete rejection of her by her birth mother,” she said.

Meanwhile though not officially banned, the Internet has been letting its feelings know about the baby names they really aren’t loving.

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