I’ve read hundreds of articles about banned baby names, but one I spotted over the summer called 9 Baby Names Banned by Governments really stood out because it claimed that the baby names Maple and Eh had been banned in Canada.
Huh?
Seemed like a silly thing to say, as Canadian provinces (e.g., Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan) regulate and track baby names independently. And the claim was an easy one to debunk, as multiple babies in both Quebec and Alberta have been named Maple recently.
But I was still curious. The article had mistakenly stated that Facebook and Hitler were “banned in Mexico” when they were really just banned in the Mexican state of Sonora, so maybe Maple and Eh had been banned somewhere in Canada…?
Nope — didn’t take much Googling to find Maple and Eh in an article called Illegal baby names: Canadian government bans 5 names, published back on April 1st. The 3 other not-banned names on this April Fools’ Day list were Hudson, Timmie and Mackenzie.
Looks like somebody fell for the joke, eh? :)