Arab News Staff Writer

RIYADH, 5 January 2004 — A Saudi citizen wants to change his son’s name from Saddam Hussein because of the constant banter his son faces at school, Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.

Hussein Mohsen Al-Harithy applied to the Civil Status Department to change the name of his now 14-year-old son following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. However, an Iraqi Scud missile struck the department holding the application in 1991, causing the paperwork to be lost in the rubble.

“After I found out the paperwork was gone, I forgot about the whole thing, but the recent events and the capture of Saddam Hussein forced me to change the name,” Al-Harithy said.

The boy, his father said, was fighting with his classmates at school every day. “My son is angry and frustrated because of this name that has caused him a lot of trouble at school,” Al-Harithy said.

Students made a habit of calling the young Saddam names like Haddam, which means destroyer. “One of my son’s teachers called me and advised me to change my son’s name to avoid the problems he’s facing,” the father added.

The name Saddam, Al-Harithy said, now symbolizes “pessimism, evil, mockery and disappointment all at once.” He wants to change his son’s name to Sitan, meaning the blade of a sword.