A family in the United States is battling for the legal right to name their daughter 'Allah'.
Elizabeth Handy and Bilal Walk, who live in Georgia, have been denied a birth certificate for their daughter, now aged 22 month, because of the last name the couple have chosen for her, according to The Atlanta Journal.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia is taking legal action on behalf of the couple who say they can't get a Social Security number and they are worried about access to health care, schools and travel.
State officials say the girl's full name, ZalyKha Graceful Lorraina Allah, breaches the laws around naming and that her last name should either be Handy, Walk or a combination of the both.
Michael Baumrind, the family's attorney, told the Journal: 'There are numbers of parents who have selected a name for their children. The state has no business determining if a name is satisfactory. The parents get to decide the name of the child. Not the state. It is an easy case.'
ZalyKha was born May 25, 2015. Her parents named her Allah because the name is 'noble' and not for any religious reason.
Allah is the Arabic name for God.
Walk said: 'Simply put, we have a personal understanding that we exercise in regards to the names. It is nothing that we want to go into detail about, because it is not important. What is important is the language of the statute and our rights as parents.'
Handy, who is six months pregnant, said: 'We don't want to go through that process again. We are still in the process of coming up with a name, and we don't even know if it will be a girl or a boy. But the child will definitely have a noble title. Something to live up to.'
