While most are plagued with bog-standard names, one man has earned the title of having the world’s longest. 

But it wasn’t an easy feat, he had to endure a lengthy legal battle to land his title. 

In March, 1990, Laurence Watkins from New Zealand changed his name to include over 2,000 middle names. 

As a result, he won the Guinness World Record title for the longest personal name with 2,253 unique words in total. 

His legal application was accepted by the District Court but it got rejected by the Registar General. 

Determined Laurence eventually took his case to the High Court in New Zealand, who sided with the record breaker. 

Even though they rewarded Laurence they did change two laws to prevent others from doing the same. 

Speaking to Guinness World Records he said: ‘I was always fascinated by the quirky unusual records that some people went for and I really wanted to be part of that scene. 

In March, 1990, Laurence Watkins from New Zealand changed his name to include over 2,000 middle names

Pictured: The first page of a document showing all of Laurence’s 2,253 names

‘I read the 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.’

Laurence worked at the city library when he decided to elongate his name and so he picked them out of books and took recommendations from co-workers. 

His favourite is AZ2000 because it references his record. 

They cover a huge range of cultures from Europea to Maori and even Samoan. 

But one things for sure there are a lot of them, it even took his wedding celebrant over 20 minutes to recite them at his wedding.  

The biggest challenge he has faced is with government departments because his full name doesn’t fit on any forms of identification. 

But he is proud of his achievement, because no one else on earth has accomplished it.