The election polls are closed. The votes have been counted. The result is indisputable. Officials from the Maryland Zoo are pleased to announce that the winning name for the newborn baby giraffe is “Willow”. Chosen by 32% of the nearly 30,000 voters, the name Willow beat out the names Dottie and Imara which each received 21% and 17% of the public vote. Click to learn more about the 6’1″ female calf.

Pabu, Pagu, Porto, Mida, Moona, Ruka: Incantation? Or buzzy restaurants that opened recently around Boston? Hint: These days, if you have no idea what a word means, go with hot restaurant. This recent article in the Boston Globe looks at the spate of “Dr. Seuss”-type restaurant names in Boston, as well as the plethora of ampersand-laden monikers. And they even talk to a baby-naming expert, Laura Wattenberg, on why naming a restaurant is like naming a child.

Did you know that Mario’s last name is also Mario? He’s not alone. Apparently, it’s an ongoing gag spanning multiple games over at Nintendo HQ, where they jokingly give characters silly full names. In a new interview at Kotaku for Game Informer, legendary game developer Shigeru Miyamoto and Breath of the Wild producer Eiji Aonuma answer 51 fun questions about life, Link, games, and names. NB: If you’re not a gamer, you’ll still enjoy it!

Georgia residents participating in Moral Monday March for voting rights and civil rights. Photo credit: Stephen Melkisethian / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

How does your name affect your right to vote? Many US citizens have already lost — or could still lose — their right to vote as a result of schemes put in place by Republican lawmakers in states they control. But following a lawsuit filed by the NAACP, Georgia recently agreed to correct its voter registration verification system, restoring the registration of over 42,000 purged voters in the process. It is a major victory for voter access. However, the case also illustrates that states that put in place voter suppression laws are not reversing them without a fight. Read about the intersection of names, IDs, and voting records, and how it’s more important than ever to protect voting rights.

At some point in its history, Covent Garden lost an ‘n’ (Credit: Alamy)

London’s Underground has some unusual station names. They names are curiously, even bizarrely, whimsical. Some seem suited better to a medieval fantasy (Knightsbridge, Queensway) or a children’s book (Piccadilly Circus, Elephant & Castle) – and others still make Londoners giggle (Shepherd’s Bush, Cockfosters). But these names weren’t chosen simply to give city-dwellers an alternate world to imagine as they hurtle beneath the capital. Some of their origins, in fact, date back millennia. The BBC looks at 10 of their favorites to find out where the names really come from.

Credit: Olivia Howitt

Forget choosing the correct password – what if you can’t even enter your name into a computer system? This BBC report from 2016 shows how difficult life can be for people with names like Jennifer Null and Janice Keihanaikukauakahihulihe’ekahaunaele. Forms often can’t deal with people who only have one name, or a single-letter surname, or names that are longer than expected. Find out how technology is slow to catch up with these “edge cases” – that is, unexpected and problematic cases for which the system was not designed.

Rachel Dolezal, former NAACP leader of Spokane, WA, who was embroiled in controversy after identifying as black despite being the biological daughter of white parents, has changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, court records showed on Thursday.

Dolezal’s new name comes from two different countries in Africa. “Nkechi” originates from the Igbo tribe in Nigeria, and it means, “gift of god.” “Diallo” is Fulani and can be traced back to Guinea and Senegal. It means “bold.”

Dolezal’s memoir, “In Full Color,” is due out in March.

Does your name suit you, or do you suit your name? A new study reveals that when presented with random names and faces, participants were significantly better at matching the name to the face than would be expected by random chance. This research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, also showed that the scientists were able to train a computer to match names to faces even more accurately than the human volunteers.

Are you a Tim? Does your name doom you to a life of inconsequentiality, or even failure? Science writer Tim Dowling talks about recent research on Tims, which claims that the “Tim face” is “pinched and reserved”. Do people like Tim Berners-Lee (who invented the World Wide Web) succeed in spite of their name? What about Tim the Enchanter? And does the same go for Timothy?