Code4SA are great. The number crunching NGO does wonderful things with open data, and has a very serious mission to educate the public about the interaction between data and democracy and how to get information from your government.

But they’re also a lot of fun. Along with maps of electoral boundaries and voting results from 2009, its published a gem today: the top ten legal name changes of April 2014.

The site has trawled through the government gazette to pick out the most surprising or odd applications for legal name changes and came up with the following list (this is our top five – for the full list you’ll need to go to Code4SA here):

• Jacomine Cotzee of Panorama decided to go with Rogue-Alaric

• Resign Nthani wasn’t happy her name and changed her name to Shirizane

• Elizabeth Mahlalo Modiba become her favourite car Fortuner

• Mistake Martha Bilankulu, after 60 years became plain old Martha

• As an early birthday present before his 29th birthday, Worst Cynette Monashane understandably changed her name to Lebone Cynette.

The purpose of the exercise is, of course, to show that there’s some really interesting stuff published in the government gazette, which almost no-one actually reads. A lot of what you want to know about South African affairs is hidden in plain sight.

[Image – Celia21gtfour, CC 3.0 sharealike, Wikicommons]