Friday 15 February 2013

Odd Names 2: KentuckyFriedCruelty.com & Goldenpalace.com

Hello and welcome to the second weekly episode of "Odd Names". This week will be about 2 persons instead of one. These two people actually changed their names to 'KentuckyFriedCruelty.com' and 'Goldenpalace.com'. And they did it voluntarily and legally.

Chris Garnett, was 19 years old at the time, when he legally changed his name to 'KentuckyFriedCruelty.com'. He did this to protest KFC's treatment of chickens. Chris is a dedicated PETA member and in January of 2006 he decided to change his name. He promised his mother he would change his name back once the PETA campaign against KFC was over, which he did a few months later, in July 2006.

In an interview Chris said people around him were very supportive, and when he would show his ID somewhere he would be able to tell people about PETA's campaign once they saw his name on his ID. "They think it's odd at first. It definitely is. I mean, I did change my name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com  after all." Garnett said.  The PETA website shows a copy of KentuckyFriedCruelty.com's drivers license bearing what was his legal name.

Garnett's drivers license at the time

One year earlier, a girl named Terri Iligan from Knoxville posted an eBay ad saying: "RIGHTS TO NAME ME! LEGALLY CHANGE MY FULL NAME FOREVER! RARE, LIFETIME ADVERTISING IDEA 4 YOUR COMPANY/WEBSITE!" It was an offer internet casino GoldenPalace.com couldn't refuse. Iligan got paid $15,199 to legally change her name to 'GoldenPalace.com' in March 2005.

"I was driving one day and I told my husband, I don't think anyone's tried to sell their name on eBay yet. So I put it up for auction and I got all kind of responses within 24 hours of it being listed," Terri Iligan said. The at the time 33-year-old mother of five, was inspired to go through with it, after seeing the internet casino spend outrageous sums of money on other bizarre internet auctions.

Terri Iligan


Here are a few examples of some other weird internet auctions GoldenPalace.com won:

- In 2004 GoldenPalace.com won it's first bid, buying a David Beckham missed penalty kick ball (€28,050)
- Later that year, they bought a grilled cheese sandwich purportedy displaying Virgin Mary ($28,000)
- In 2005 Karolyne Smith was paid to tattoo 'GoldenPalace.com' on her forehead ($10,000)
- In 2006 the site bought William Shatner's kidney stone ($25,000)

Source 1
Source 2
Source 3

1 comment:

  1. I really wish I was rich enough to buy weird stuff like that, even a persons name. It's the closest I'll get to actually owning someone.

    ReplyDelete