A child in Shanghai, China, could not be issued a birth certificate and scheduled for vaccinations one year after his birth because the parents couldn’t settle on a name.

The Pudong New Area People’s Court in Shanghai recently heard a divorce case involving a couple who registered their marriage in 2023 and had a healthy baby boy the following year. Everything started going downhill from there because they couldn’t settle on a name for the child. Each party insisted on naming the child according to their own wishes and demanded that the other provide the original documents and a power of attorney, but neither of them gave in. Evidence presented in Court showed that they went to the hospital separately to try to have their preferred name registered for the child, but both attempts were rejected due to non-compliance with regulations.