Call him "Macho," please

Here is the real news from the Eagles' roster:

Macho Harris is his name. Not Victor. Macho.

It says so, right there on the Eagles' website. And the change was confirmed by the club. The cornerback from Virginia Tech whom the Eagles drafted in the fifth round last month has a real first name on his birth certificate, name of Victor, but that's done. The preference now, on first reference, is to use the nickname that his family gave him as a young child. Macho Harris.

The Eagles have done this before. This club has endured more name changes in the last couple of years than the Wachovia Center.  Tra/William/Tra Thomas was one. Will Peterson/William James was another one. Juqua Thomas/Juqua Parker was still another one. Then there is Tank Daniels, who is really Torrance Daniels, except that he is now Tank Daniels. Got all that?

As you are no doubt aware, the NFL can get a little persnickety about all of this when it starts to touch the revenue stream, as it did in the case of the Bengals' Chad Johnson, who wants to be known as Chad Ocho Cinco. The league fought him on this for a while, mostly because of all the jerseys in stores with "Johnson" on the back of them. Now the NFL has relented -- except that, because of the manner in which the official paperwork was filled out, the league is insisting that the official name is "Ochocinco" and not "Ocho Cinco."

But if you want to change your first name, the league apparently doesn't care so much. There aren't any legal documents consulted or anything like that. You want to change your first name, you just change it. In fact, if Macho Harris wanted to change his name again, he could.

Machocinco is still available, for instance.

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Click here for an earlier post about the NFL and the labor hammer is now wields.