Meet The Man With The World's Longest Name

Laurence Watkins has the unusual distinction of having a whopping 2,253 unique words that make up his moniker.

Credit: GWR

“I was always fascinated by the quirky unusual records that some people went for and I really wanted to be part of that scene. I read the Guinness World Records 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.” Clearly he didn't fancy his chances in breaking a record in juggling, knife throwing, eating, fire-breathing or any of the other archaic options available to him - apart from going for the world's longest name. So, he went for it.

Changing his name transpired to be a lengthy and expensive process, starting off with paying someone a few hundred dollars to type the name up for him. He then submitted his application and it was accepted by the District Court, but rejected by the Register General. So, he took his case to the High Court in New Zealand (more expense) and won. The court determined that he should be allowed to change his name as he wanted to.

However, to stop such legal frivolity occurring again, the authorities changed two laws in order to stop other people doing something similar in future.

So, how did he go about selecting his mountain of middle names? Laurence, who worked in the city library at the time, chose his names from books, although some were chosen for him by his co-workers. He said: “My favourite name is AZ2000 meaning I have names from A-Z and I have 2000 names.”

GWR asked Laurence to tell them his full name, and it took him over an hour to reel it all off. And unsurprisingly, he had to read it off a bit of paper because he hasn’t quite managed to commit it to memory yet. Before he started reading out his name, Laurence admitted he might not be able to pronounce some of his names correctly, as some are old English, some Latin, some biblical… but he said: “I’ll give it my best shot.”

Do you want to hear the man with the world’s longest personal name reading it out? Then settle in, because you will be here for a while.