Twins, a boy and a girl, were in care. There was no known respondent father and their mother was both psychotic and schizophrenic. The mother wanted to call the boy ‘Preacher’ (which she described as a strong spiritual name) and the girl ‘Cyanide’ (which she described as a lovely pretty name). In the Family Court, HHJ Sharpe had held that the local authority was permitted to restrict the extent to which the mother could exercise her parental responsibility so as to prevent her registering ‘Preacher’ and ‘Cyanide’ as forenames, and issued an injunction prohibiting her from doing so or referring to either child by those forenames in contact.

In the Court of Appeal, King LJ held that this was one of those rare cases where the court, in the exercise of its inherent jurisdiction, should intervene to protect the girl twin from the emotional harm that she would suffer if called ‘Cyanide’. She further concluded that, though there was nothing inherently objectionable about the name ‘Preacher’, the girl twin's welfare could only be met by neither she nor her brother having the names chosen for them by their mother. The appeal was dismissed. [Frank Cranmer]