Parents named their baby Xfrgolszzzxy, pronounced "Zurf-Golz-Ee", and the hospital said No

The story that's taken the internet by storm this week began with a newborn, an old Reddit post, and a name that looks less like a name and more like someone fell asleep on a keyboard. A new mum in Alabama posted to social media following the arrival of her daughter, explaining she'd chosen an unconventional name she believed would help set her child apart in life. That name? Xfrgolszzzxy. Pronounced, apparently, "Zurf-golz-ee."


And the hospital, for the record, wasn't having it.

Why she chose it

The motivation behind the name is actually quite moving, even if the name itself is... not. The mum explained she didn't grow up with much and always felt people looked down on her because of where she was from and the kind of name she had. She wanted something different for her daughter. Something that couldn't be looked down on, because nobody would even know how to say it long enough to form an opinion. She also wanted to honour her father, who is a surfer, by incorporating that into her daughter's name. Hence Xfrgolszzzxy, a tribute to surfing, distinctiveness, and a mother's hope that her child would move through the world differently than she did. The intention is genuinely sweet. The execution, as the internet has pointed out at length, is another matter entirely.

What the hospital said

A hospital worker told the mum that names beginning with X followed by a consonant are not permitted on birth certificates. So Xfrgolszzzxy,which begins with X and is then immediately followed by f, hits that wall pretty hard. The mum pushed back, arguing that the name only uses standard English alphabet letters, no numbers, no emojis, no special characters, and that Alabama's naming rules simply require names to be made with English alphabet letters, hyphens, or apostrophes. Technically, she's right about the letters. The hospital told her she'd need to either choose a different name or leave the birth certificate blank and go to court to petition for it.


"I don't have the money or time to fight the state just to name my own kid," she wrote. Which is an understandable position, even if the name that triggered the legal standoff is Xfrgolszzzxy.

What the internet thinks

Reddit, as is its nature, did not respond with nuance. One commenter wrote: "Supposed to give a baby a name, not a password." Another said that when the child grows up, her first stop will be the courthouse to legally change it to something unrecognisable to her parents. A third added: "I would genuinely hate my parents for naming me something as absolutely insane as that." Even the handful of comments that sided with the mum's right to name her own child tended to stop short of actually endorsing the name itself. The lone comment that landed best, arguably: "Finally an Alabaman law I can get behind."