The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Bucharest

By his own admission, Barack Obama was "a skinny kid with a funny name," but that isn't stopping proud parents from Romania to Indonesia from naming their newborns after the U.S. president-elect.

Romania's downtrodden Gypsies - once enslaved, like African-Americans, yet still struggling to overcome deep-seated prejudice - seem particularly inspired.

"When I saw Obama on TV, my heart swelled with joy. I thought he was one of us Gypsies because of his skin color," said Maria Savu, whose infant grandson - Obama Sorin Ilie Scoica - was born in the central Romania village of Rusciori. Little Obama is the third child of a poor family that barely gets by on 200 lei ($66) a month in welfare benefits.

He came into the world on Nov. 4, the day Americans voted in their new multiracial president-elect, and Savu, 43, told the Evenimentul Zilei newspaper she hopes his name will bring him luck.

Obama's victory also moved Sugiarto, a 36-year-old security guard in Jakarta, Indonesia, and his wife, Sularsih, to name their new son after him.

Indonesia, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation made up of more than 18,000 islands, is unabashedly Obama-crazy - in part because Obama spent four years there as a child.

"He's great, isn't it?" said Sularsih, 34, rubbing the cheek of their sleeping 1-month-old, Husein Obama. "I think it's a beautiful name for him. And who knows? Maybe one day he'll be president of Indonesia."