HOLLAND TOWNSHIP, N.J. — A self-proclaimed Nazi who drew national attention when a supermarket refused to decorate a birthday cake for his son wants to change his surname to Hitler.
Isidore Heath Campbell submitted a request Feb. 14 to Hunterdon County Superior Court to change his name to Isidore Heath Hitler, according to a legal notice.
Though Hitler is an uncommon last name, especially since World War II, it is not unheard of.
The 2010 Census recorded fewer than 100 people across the USA who have it; 133 people spell it Hittler, according to a Newsday database. And the Social Security death index logs a dozen people named Hitler who died since 1965, 52 spelled Hittler, and had Social Security cards, according to the Ancestry.com database, which covers 1935 to 2014.
Campbell has faced legal problems in the past.
Last year, he was arrested on a fugitive warrant in Pennsylvania for an aggravated-assault charge in connection with a domestic-violence incident. In a plea deal, he was sentenced to 180 days in jail and two years probation on obstruction of justice charges and resisting arrest.
Campbell also was the leader of the pro-Nazi group Hitler's Order that he founded in 2012. The next year he marched into the Hunterdon County Courthouse dressed in a Nazi uniform to petition a family court judge to allow him to see his youngest son, Heinrich Hons Campbell, who had been removed from his father's custody shortly after he was born in 2011.
Campbell gained national attention in December 2008 after a supermarket bakery refused to write, "Happy Birthday, Adolf Hitler" on a cake for the third birthday of another son, Adolf Hitler Campbell. The father complained that the refusal constituted discrimination.
About 10 other people appear to have the first and last names Adolf Hitler nationwide, public records searches show. Adolf hasn't been a common first name for American kids since the 1930s, according to the Social Security Administration, which also keeps track of baby names.
When the notorious Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor in 1933, 17 newborn boys were named Adolf across the USA, tying it with 61 other male names for 1,707th; more than 9,000 male names are on the list. By 1942 after the United States entered World War II, fewer than five babies were named Adolf, dropping the name off the list.
dolf is not on the 2015 list, the most recent available, nor did it show up on the agency's 2005 list when Adolf Hitler Campbell was born.
Before Heinrich Hons Campbell was removed from the Campbell home, New Jersey officials had placed older siblings Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honzlynn Jeannie Campbell in foster care because of alleged violence in the family's home. Court papers say that Campbell refused to comply with an order that he seek counseling because "the psychologist was Jewish."
Campbell will return March 24 to Hunterdon County Superior Court for a hearing on his name-change application.
New Jersey law has few legal restrictions on names, and the state's Office of Vital Statistics and Registry can reject a name only because it contains an obscenity, numerals or symbols or a combination that is "illegible," according to a 2014 blog entry from the Philadelphia law firm of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel.
