When first being introduced to Laurence Watkins, you might not immediately notice anything record-breaking about him.
That is, until you catch a glimpse of his ID and see his more than 2,000 middle names.
Laurence said he was ‘always fascinated’ by the weird and wonderful Guinness World Records people around the globe have set or tried to beat.
He explained: ‘I really wanted to be part of that scene.
‘I read the book from cover to cover to see if there was a record I could beat and the only one I had a chance at beating was adding more names than the current holder.’
After deciding to break the world record for the longest name, Laurence took recommendations from friends, family and coworkers over what new names to add.
It took him a while, and his middle names come from a wide range of cultures.
The list also includes words like ‘love’ and ‘math’, names of fictional characters like ‘Sherlock’, ancient gods like ‘Dionysus’, and foods like ‘tofu’.
Plus, this happened back in 1990 when computers were far less commonplace, meaning eventually he paid someone a few hundred dollars to type up the full list for him.
Laurence, from New Zealand, won the Guinness World Record for the longest personal name after racking up 2,253 unique words in total.
His application was accepted by the district court, but was rejected by the registrar general.
In response, determined to succeed, Laurence took his case to New Zealand’s High Court.
The court sided with him, allowing him to keep his extremely lengthy name.
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But it also changed two other laws to prevent other people from doing the same thing – making it pretty difficult for any other New Zealanders to try and break his record.
Having a very lengthy name comes with challenges.
Laurence’s full name doesn’t fit on any forms of identification, and it took his wedding celebrant more than 20 minutes to recite them all at his ceremony.
His favourite of all his middle names is AZ2000, because it means ‘I have names from A-Z and I have 2,000 names’.
But despite the admin difficulties, Laurence is still proud to be a world record holder.
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