Osama Vinladen is a 22-year-old football player from the Peruvian first division who has been making more headlines because of his controversial name than his professional career.

Osama Vinladen Jimenez Lopez’s name first raised eyebrows in his home country of Peru in 2017, when he was called up to be a part of the South American country’s U-15 (Under 15) team. He made his debut for a professional football club in 2018, when he was signed by second-division club Union Comercio. Last year, the club made it into Peru’s first division, and Osama once again found himself in the news because of his name. Despite his namesake’s terrible reputation, the young football player has always said that he doesn’t have a problem with it, adding that his brother is named Saddam Hussien and that his father wanted to name his third son George Bush. He didn’t get the chance, because his third child turned out to be a girl.

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A 12-year-old boy from Indonesia’s South Sumatra province recently made international news headlines because of his bizarre name – ABCDEF GHIJK.

Yes, you read that correctly, someone actually named their son after the first 11 letters in the English alphabet. The bizarre discovery was made accidentally when the 12-year-old boy took part in a vaccination drive organized by the local police in Muara Enim district. Health workers originally thought the boy’s name was a joke when they saw it in the appointment list, but their smiles turned to utter disbelief when they saw the same name, ABCDEF GHIJK, on his official ID. Photos of the boy’s documents and a name tag embroidered on his clothes went viral online this week after a police officer shared them on social media.

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A couple in Belgium has become famous for giving their 11 children first names based on different variations of just four letters from the alphabet – A, E, L, and X.

Gwenny Blanckaert and Marino Vaneeno are the proud parents of eleven children – seven girls and four boys – all of whom have four-letter names, the same four letters, in fact. Despite having 26 letters in the alphabet to work with, after making their first to children Alex and Axel, the two parents had a revelation and decided to use just the letters A, E, L, and X to name their other kids. And because they both wanted a big family, they ended up having to use variations of those four letters to name their next nine children as well, and plan to do the same when their twelfth child is born next year.

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An Indonesian man loves his workplace so much that he has named his son after it. His 5-month-old boy’s name is Statistical Information Communication Office…

Even before he got married, Samet Wahyudi knew that if he ever had a son, he wanted to name him after the department he worked in as a civil servant. He made that very clear to his fiancé before they got married, and she accepted his condition. Their first child was a girl, so Samet agreed on a more conventional name for her, but when his wife, Linda, gave birth to their second child, a boy, in December of last year, he knew exactly what his name would be – Statistical Information Communication Office.

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It’s not uncommon for Mexican parents to give their children unique, extravagant names, but even by these standards, the name Zero Zero Three stood out like a sore thumb, making its bearer an overnight internet celebrity.

It all started when Casera Pizza, a well-known pizzeria based in Merida, the capital of Mexico’s Yucatan State, announced a contest for weird names, with the winner eligible to benefit from of its enticing promotions. People named Vercingetoriz, Nivea, or Bahtzibadi all made the final list, but none could hope to win against a young man named “Cero Cero Tres”, Spanish for ‘Zero Zero Three”. He won the coveted prize – two large pepperoni pizzas for just 49 pesos – and became an instant online sensation.

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A baby in Indonesia has been awarded the title of “world’s strangest name” after it was revealed that his parents legally registered him as “Google”; no surname or middle name, just Google, just like the search engine.

The eight-month-old boy’s father, 31-year-old Andi Cahya Saputra, told Indonesian media that he first contemplated the idea of giving his child a tech-related name when his wife was seven months pregnant. Before that, he had considered more common names, like Albar Dirgantara Putra, or names mentioned in the Quran, but in the end he decided that none of them were quite right. So he ended up looking at names of technology companies and products like “Windows, iPhone, Microsoft and iOS”, and ultimately settled on Google. Although the mother didn’t really like the idea at first, she ultimately agreed and now they have a boy named after the world’s most popular internet search engine.

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