Back in the old days of the Internet, before Twitter contests and the like became all the rage, Web companies used to promote themselves by convincing various entities to rename themselves after their brands. (For example, one town in Oregon named itself after the resale site Half.com.) One of the odder stunts, however, involved the Internet Underground Music Archive, a.k.a. IUMA: It promised $5,000–or $100 worth of free downloads, for life–to any couple that would name its child after the site. And people actually did it!


The most written-about parents to take the bait were two people in Hutchinson, Kan.,, who named their baby boy Iuma Dylan-Lucas Thornhill in August 2000. IUMA went belly-up shortly after, a casualty of the first dot-com bubble bursting. (Good thing the parents didn’t take the “$100 dollars of free music download per month for the child’s entire life” option!) But what happened to the kid, who would be almost nine years old now? Did he keep his name, or did his parents figure that since the company had gone belly-up, they could rechristen their child with a more traditional name and not have to give back the money? Obviously Iuma is too young to be on Facebook, and I don’t want to go around harassing nine-year-olds in the Midwest. But in this still-bubbly time, I’d love to see just how a long-dead Internet company’s marketing stunt that actually, y’know, affected someone’s life panned out.


It’s a boy.com! [BBC]