Byron bay blogger announces unusual baby name, and it may be illegal

Choosing the perfect baby name is no easy task, especially with all the creative options coming out of the woodwork these days.

But for Byron Bay mum and Instagrammer Claire Alexander-Johnston, known online as jetsetmama, things were particularly difficult fourth time around, as she already had her three older children’s extremely unique monikers to contend with.

The Alexander-Johnston brood are named Atlas, Everest and Zephyr, and Claire and her husband Rich laboured over what to call their fourth baby, before settling on something very different indeed; Citizen.

The mum announced their chosen name on Instagram ten days after the baby boy was born, saying they ran into a slight legal hiccup when finalising things.

“We had a bit of a curveball when we announced your name to our family, as someone pointed out, it’s possibly illegal to name you that in Australia,” she wrote.

And in fact, the family have a point.

There are a number of names that Births, Deaths and Marriages consider unacceptable, including swear words and unpronounceable names - like names that include numbers or symbols.

Another category of contentious names are those that can be considered a title, for example, ‘Commissioner’, ‘Inspector’, ‘Bishop’, ‘Queen’ or ‘Prime Minister’. ‘Citizen’ may fall into that basket.

“We tried to change it. ‘Disco’ even came back into play! But nothing else felt right for you as a Libra, with a [very sensible and grounded] Capricorn moon,” Claire said.

“So Citizen you are, and always will be- a Citizen of the world.”

They settled on ‘Sage’ as his middle name, a reference to burning, cleansing, healing and the wise.

While deliberating over his name back in August, Claire explained that she uses a simple test to see whether a name would fit into their family,

“When thinking about names we like, Rich and I would put it through the ‘can they be a rockstar or an accountant?’ test. [not that I particularly want either of these professions for any of my children, but you get the drift- ‘an adaptable name’!],” she said.

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