Posting on Facebook, Ms Taylor wrote: ‘We have just been refused permission to have our attractive five year old daughter’s name printed on a Nutella jar label at Myers Shellharbour because she is named Isis.
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Illawarra mother Heather Taylor is becoming accustomed to the odd looks, gasps and uncomfortable silences that accompany the mention of her daughter’s name.
And Nutella confirmed the negative association when Ms Taylor’s sister requested a personalised jar for her niece, as part of a campaign the spread company is running. Both the names were initially flagged as problematic by a computer.
The departmental store told Taylor that the company has its own rules on acceptable names.
Ferrero Australia, Nutella’s parent company, stood by the company position when the rang Ms Taylor.
ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has come into common parlance only in the past two years, an alternative name for IS (Islamic State), Daesh or ISIL (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant).
Taylor said: “I am starting to get to the point where I don’t want to call her name out, because she’s going to start noticing people looking”.
The girl’s mother felt that her daughter had been discriminated against, and so she took to Facebook to address her concerns.
She reportedly said to him, “You are actually making my daughter’s name dirty”. Her daughter’s name comes from the Egyptian goddess of the same name, and her son’s comes from Odin, father of Thor, in Norse mythology.
She added in her post: “A recent article in women’s day published a list of the top names to be made illegal, Isis was the top one”.
In a statement, Ferrero Australia said they needed to apply their rules and restrictions consistently.
“Like all campaigns, there needs to be consistency in the way terms and conditions are applied”, a statement from the company read.
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Ferrero Australia told Ms Taylor there were times when a label could be refused “on the basis that it could have been misinterpreted by the broader community or viewed as inappropriate”.
