I’m speaking from experience here, don’t give you child a weird name:

Metallica may be a cool name for a heavy metal band, but a Swedish couple is struggling to convince officials it is also suitable for a baby girl.

Michael and Karolina Tomaro are locked in a court battle with Swedish authorities, which rejected their application to name their six-month-old child after the legendary rock band.

“It suits her,” Karolina Tomaro, 27, said Tuesday of the name. “She’s decisive and she knows what she wants.”

Although little Metallica has already been baptized, the Swedish National Tax Board refused to register the name, saying it was associated with both the rock group and the word “metal.”

(via)
OK, confession time. I was reading a sci-fiction book (it was about amusement parks of the future, it was actually pretty good) while I was pregnant with Sarah and one of the main characters was named Cherokee. I thought, “Wow! That’s a great name! You don’t meet too many people named Cherokee. Maybe we should name our daughter Cherokee.” Well, needless to say that my husband was adamantly opposed to the name and fought me for many months but he prevailed and we chose a name that turned out to be the number one pick that year. There are 5 girls in her grade that have the same name.
When Sarah is bummed that there are so many girls with her name, I remind her that she could have had a more unusual name if her dad had listened to me. Her response is always thankfulness to her father for not allowing me to name her Cherokee and wonder at how I could have picked such a stupid name (maybe I should find the book and let her read it).
BTW, I am against officials telling parents that they can’t use a particular name. Parents should have the freedom to destroy the future of their child, it gives them an understanding of the responsibility that they have in being a parent and the knowledge of how quickly they failed at the task. Maybe it will sink in by kindergarten when their child comes home crying everyday that the kids made fun of her because of her name.
I guess it’s a good thing that my husband understood the responsibility we had not to undermine our daughter’s future and handicap her before she even got started.