New Zealand couple Pat and Sheena Wheaton were stunned when the government registry of births, deaths and marriages informed them that their original choice of 4REAL was unacceptable as it contained a digit. Undeterred, they eventually settled on the name Superman as an alternative.
The Wheatons decided to call their son 4Real after seeing an ultrasound image of him. It was then they realised that their baby was "for real". And it seems they are more than just slightly attached to the name. The couple plans on fighting the government’s ruling and insists that they will continue to call the child 4REAL in the privacy of their own home.

But the Wheaton's baby faces a definite challenge for the unofficial title of world's weirdest baby name after a Chinese couple attempted to name their newborn child "@". The baby's father claimed that he had selected the email-related moniker because of the global popularity of the symbol and the fact that in Mandarin it translates to "love him".

Celebrity baby names shamed

The Wheaton’s baby (and that's not a photo of him above, by the way, it's a different youngster onto whom we've morphed a superhero outift for comic effect) is not the first child to be the recipient of a superhero-related name. Hollywood action star Nicolas Cage named his second child Kal-El, the birth name of Superman. He claimed he had preferred the name Kyle but his wife Alice Kim had insisted on a longer name.

Cage isn’t the only celebrity to bestow an unfortunate name on his young offspring. Celebrity mockney chef Jamie Oliver named his daughter Daisy Boo while A-list celebs Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin famously called their first child Apple. My Name Is Earl star Jason Lee and partner Beth Riesgraf went one better naming their son Pilot Inspektor. You can only imagine the struggles each of these children will face on their first day at school.