There is one huge problem with naming your child after Forrest Gump

Tom Hardy and his wife Charlotte Riley have reportedly named their newborn son Forrest in a tribute to the famous character once played by Tom Hanks.

According to The Sun, an insider close to the couple (always worth taking these sources with a pinch of salt) revealed that the child had been named after Forrest Gump.

The anonymous individual told the tabloid:

The couple are over the moon with the new addition to the family. Friends are already saying that the baby boy looks exactly like Tom.

They’ve been laying low over the festive period so they can get used to having a busier household and adjusting to the needs of a newborn.

They love the name Forrest as it’s earthy and strong. Tom has always found the movie Forrest Gump very inspiring and enjoyable and thinks it fits.

Although there is no doubting that the name Forrest is a nice 'earthy and strong' name for a child, there could be a problem should the inspiration for the name come from the 1994 Oscar-winning film.

Allow us to explain...

In the movie by Robert Zemeckis, which uses the titular character to give a brief history of the 20th century, Gump explains that his mother named him after a distant relative named Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Forrest is then revealed to have been a founder of the Ku Klux Klan and a Confederate general in the civil war. A short clip is then shown of Hanks playing the other Forrest, in full KKK uniform.

Gump jokes that the KKK was a club and mocks their uniforms before saying that his mother named him after this particular relative to remind him that we all do things 'that don't make sense'.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a real general in the civil war and has been admired by historians for being an accomplished military strategist.

However, his place in this history books has been tarnished due to him being an early member of the KKK, during the controversial group's origins in the late 1800s.

Forrest would eventually grow disillusioned with the KKK and other white supremacist groups of the era and, after only a year of being Grand Wizard, attempted to dissolve the Klan and ordered that their robes be destroyed.

After publicly distancing himself from the Klan, Forrest came to the defence of the black community in August 1874, after four black men were arrested for defending themselves against lynch mob who attacked them at a BBQ.

Forrest then wrote to the then Tennessee Governor John C. Brown and offered “to exterminate the white marauders who disgrace their race by this cowardly murder of Negroes".

While an obviously conflicted figure, it's notable that Forrest Gump doesn't go into depth about Forrest's history and his attempts to distance himself from the KKK.

On Twitter, only a handful of users have pointed out the problem associated with the inspiration for the Forrest Gump name.

HT The Sun

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