Daniel Varela had been on a mission to name his firstborn son for Lionel Messi after first seeing the Barcelona striker play for Argentina's national youth team.
After having two daughters and waiting eight years, Varela was not about to let the law stand in his way.
He petitioned authorities in the central city of General Roca to grant them an exemption from a 1969 statute that forbids parents from giving their babies a surname as a first name.
City officials accepted the request, and issued a birth certificate for baby Messi Daniel Varela.
"I saw Messi play on the under-17 team and he seemed like an amazing player. Later I learned he was a humble, good person and I thought, when I have a boy I'm going to name him Messi," Varela, 35, told daily newspaper Clarin.
"It seemed good to me because of the kind of person he is, and when we had our son we named him Messi because there are already tons of Lionels," said the boy's mother, Lorena Sanchez.
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