It’s a boy! It’s a girl! It’s a schedule 1 drug? When well-known Australian news anchor Kirsten Drysdale recently gave birth to her third child, a son, back in July, the ABC anchor decided to see just how speedy the New South Wales Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages would be to prevent her from naming her bundle of joy Methamphetamine Rules.


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“We thought we would submit the most outrageous name we could think of, assuming it would be rejected,” she recalled of her son’s methy-moniker. Yet much to her and her hubby’s surprise, the government agency evidently had no qualms about naming her child after a highly illicit substance, letting the name pass through the system.


“Unfortunately Methamphetamine Rules slipped through the cracks,” she said, noting that she and her husband had also considered naming their child “Nangs Rule”, the Aussie slang for whippets, but were concerned a street name wouldn’t get flagged.


Though Drysdale is now working alongside the registry, who said they have since “strengthened” their policies, to name her child after something other than a highly addictive substance, her experiment may not be entirely inconsequential.


“A name registered at birth remains on the NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages Register forever, even if the name is formally changed,” a spokesperson for the registry explained to The Guardian.


Yet the new parents are taking their child’s apparently permanent penchant for drugs in stride.



“My husband said maybe his nickname should be ‘Speedy’, but I’m sure he will develop his own nickname that’s appropriate to his real name and his personality,” she said, noting that her “beautiful baby boy” is “not anything like a meth user.”


So take it from Drysdale — naming your child Methamphetamine is probably much like doing methamphetamine: Not even once.