No dot-com for son, says China

A registry office has banned a computer programmer in Xian, central China, from giving his son a name with the dot-com suffix, according to a report on Thursday.

The father, Mr Zhao, said there was a good linguistic reason for using Zhao.com as 'com' sounds like the Chinese word kang, meaning 'healthy and safe', said South African news service Independent Online . It reported that the local registry office refused his request because the name was 'unacceptable'.

Mr Zhao is not the first parent to attempt to name their child after a computer term. In February this year, an American named his son version 2.0, according to the BBC. It reported that the father Jon Blake Cusack did not want to name his son 'Junior' or 'II', so instead decided on the name Jon Blake Cusack 2.0.

Cusack 2.0 is joined in version number by Linux creator Linus Torvalds' daughter. Although Torvalds has spared her the permanent suffix 2.0, instead naming her Patricia Torvalds, on his personal Web page he refers to her as Linus v2.0.