Topic: Review
What's in a Name? Plenty, if It's Saddam
Tue Jan 27,10:37 AM ET Reuters
By Dean Yates

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The strapping Iraqi shepherd hardly looks like someone whom people would dare to insult.

But Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) Nasaar, 24, has been taunted and teased ever since American troops toppled the Iraqi dictator last year. Now he's had enough, and plans to change his name.

"I'm finding it difficult to get a full-time job. I've been offered several but they won't take me until I change my name," said Nasaar, as he watched over two dozen sheep owned by his brothers near the outskirts of Baghdad.

"People think I'm associated with him. They start swearing at me, they tease me. Before no one dared to insult me," he said, wearing a red and white headdress and leaning against a tall cane.

For many Iraqi men and boys, being called Saddam no longer carries respect and privilege, and increasing numbers are officially changing their names.

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Sabah Nori Al-Azawi, manager of a dilapidated government office in Baghdad where Iraqis can change their names, said growing numbers of men and boys were shedding the Saddam tag now that government services had begun to function again.

Azawi said up to 25 men and boys had changed their name at his office in the past month.

"The majority are children. Other children make fun of them at school so their parents bring them here," said Azawi.

Sahar Khalil, head of records at the Al-Alwaiya maternity hospital in Baghdad, said up to five babies each month were named Saddam before the U.S.-led invasion last March.

"Since the fall of Baghdad, we have not had a single Saddam, and we have 300 births a month," she said.

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NB:
I read that there was a distant cousin of Adolf H who lived in the US and actualy fought in WWII (on our side, natch), and had his name legally changed to avoid the stigma, and he was the last know surviving Hitler. After him the known world knew no more Hitlers.

You know the family of the man who invented the guilletine (that would be Dr Guilletine, of France) changed their names after his invention, which incidentally was meant by the good doctor to prevent unnecessary cruelty - more humane than hanging - became the symbol of the Reign of Terror.