Nova Scotia — The province’s Department of Public Safety is teaming up with Nova Scotia Whitepages, the company that publishes the phone book, to keep the public safe from last names that the public could potentially deem as inappropriate or offensive.
“No more Dicks or Willies,” explained Public Safety officer Carl Neman of Halifax. “No Peters, no Anitas — because there’s too much potential for an offensive last name combination. No Buck, or Dixon, Jack or Harry, Hugh, Ima, Ilene, Ivana or Ophelia… and plenty more, too.”
The announcement comes after CBC reported that Lorne Grabher of Dartmouth had his vanity licence plate, which displayed his actual last name, cancelled as it was considered “too rude for the road.”
Newman continued to list off names to be wiped out of the new phone books for the public’s benefit.
“Last names are taking a real beating,” he confirmed. “No Johnson, or Dickinson, Dickerson, Hawk, Deep, Wetmore, Vulva, no Wang or Yang, Hung — really the entire Asian community is taking a huge hit.”
The Manatee reached out to some of those affected to garner their reaction.
“How is anyone ever going to find my phone number now?” questioned Harry Woody of Truro. “And what about my children? They’ll never see their names in the phone book — that was a big deal when I was a kid. I think the government should issue a personal apology to each of my four kids: Anita, Long, Ivana and my youngest son named after my military father, Major.”
Our reporter reached out to Premier Stephen McNeil to ask his opinion on the matter.
“We need to do what’s responsible here,” he declared. “We need to protect people from getting too offended by things they have no need to be offended by — no matter how stupid it is. Being offended is someone’s right and we’re going to protect that right unless people get too offended by the way we’re protecting it.”
Seymour Butts, a Dalhousie student, claims he’s proud of his name and the heritage it represents, and he vows to fight this ban.
“I come from a long line of Butts,” he proudly stated. “Our family is filled with English Butts, French Butts, big Butts, small Butts — all sorts of Butts. And we’re not going to sit by and let the government kick our Butts out.”