When Dweezil was born, Gail decided to have `natural child- birth’. At that time, the only hospital in Los Angeles that would allow this process to occur with a Dad in the delivery room was Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital.
When it was time for the Big Delivery, we experienced a slight delay – we had to fill out a mass of papers before they’d let us in, riddled with irrelevant questions like: “What religion are you?”

Gail looked at me and said “What do we put?” I said, “Musician.”

That was the first thing that upset the admitting nurse. The second thing to spoil her afternoon was when she asked: “What are you going to name the child?” Gail said, “Dweezil.”

Gail’s got a funny looking toe which had been the source of family amusement so often that it had aquired a `technical name’: it wasn’t really a toe – it was a “Dweezil.” I thought then and continue to think today, that Dweezil is a nice name. Fuck the nurse if she didn’t like it.

The nurse pleaded and pleaded with us not to name the child Dweezil. Labor pains and all, she was going to make Gail stand there unless we gave her another name to put on the form. I couldn’t see letting Gail suffer just to argue the point, so I rattled off an assortment of names of guys we knew: IAN (Underwood) DON (van Vliet) CALVIN (Schenkel) EUCLID (James “Moterhead” Sherwood) As a result Dweezil’s original birth certificate name was Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa. The nurse thought that was okay.

In spite of this harrowing experince, we always called him Dweezil. He was five years old when he discovered the `real names’ on his birth certificate.

Dweezil was very upset, and demanded that steps be taken to rectify this tragedy. We hired an attorney and had his name legally changed to Dweezil.

Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso, The Real Frank Zappa Book.