Justice

A 5-Year-Old Girl Named Isis Can't Put Her Name on a Jar of Nutella

November 27th 2015

If you’ve been blessed with the curse of a unique name, you’ve lived through the struggle of misspelled Starbucks cups and never seeing your name on a gift shop keychain.

Starbucks Name FailTechblog - techeblog.com

But for five-year-old Isis, the struggle just got real, and she is being denied a personalized jar of Nutella. 

Named after the Egyptian goddess, Australian-born Isis has now been forced to share her name with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - better known as ISIS.

Related: Here’s Why People Aren’t Only Using 'ISIS' Anymore

ISIS is notorious for their extremist militant ways, their takeover of parts of Iraq and Syria, the beheading of innocent people, and most recently the attacks on Paris. 

ISIS screenshot

Isis, on the other hand, is a five-year-old girl.

Photo of IsisThe Sydney Morning Herald - com.au

According to her mother, Heather Taylor, Isis is the subject of dirty looks and audible gaps, simply because of her name.

"'I am starting to get to the point where I don't want to call her name out,' said Isis’s mom. 'Because she's going to start noticing people looking.'"

If that wasn’t bad enough, Isis has now been denied a privilege that no kid should ever be denied—a personalized jar of Nutella.

Nutella has a campaign that allows consumers to slap their names on jars of that hazelnut good-good—unless you share a name with the most globally hated group on the planet.

Nutella name jarSelfridges - selfridges.com

As originally reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, Nutella’s parent company (Ferrero Australia) noted that denied Isis’s label due to her name’s sensitive nature:

"Like all campaigns, there needs to be consistency in the way terms and conditions are applied. Unfortunately, this has meant there have been occasions where a label has not been approved on the basis that it could have been misinterpreted by the broader community or viewed as inappropriate.”

Isis’s mom has several issues with Nutella’s decision:

Firstly, Taylor would understand the backlash if she names her daughter Hitler, being fully aware of the implications of the name. But she chose her daughter’s name years before the rise of ISIS.

"You are actually making my daughter's name dirty, Taylor told Ferrero chief executive Craig Baker. “You are choosing to refuse my daughter's name in case the public refers to it negatively."

Secondly, Taylor, like many others, stands firm that ISIS is not the appropriate acronym for the terrorist organization.

"This is an acronym that is used incorrectly by the media that Nutella are supporting," she said. "We need to be calling the Daesh death cult by their name, Daesh."