Listen as man with world's longest name reads it out - but be warned it takes ages

Do you want to hear the man with the world’s longest personal name reading it out? Then settle in, because you might be here for a while.

Laurence Watkins (Australia) has more than 2,000 middle names, meaning he holds the unusual record with a whopping 2,253 unique words making up his moniker.

He’s had the name since March 1990 when he decided to legally change it.

We asked Laurence to tell us his full name, and it took him over an hour to reel it all off.

And unsurprisingly, he had to read it off a bit of paper because even all these years later, he hasn’t quite managed to commit it to memory.

Before he started reading, Laurence admitted he might not be able to pronounce some of his names correctly.

Some are old English, some Latin, some biblical… but he said: “I’ll give it my best shot.”

Laurence with an old passport - where his forenames had to be listed elsewhere

Laurence also told us that it took the celebrant 20 minutes to read out his full name when he got married, but that it would probably take him “a little bit longer”.

He began: “So, here goes… Laurence Alon Aloys Aloysius Alphege Alun Alured Alwyn Alysander Ambie Ambrose Ambrosius Amias Amiot Amyas Anders Andre Andrea Andreas Andrew Andy Aneirin Anguish Anleifr…”

Okay, that’s not even all the As! If you want to know the rest of his name, you’re just going to have to get comfortable and watch the video.

Laurence previously told us: “I was always fascinated by the quirky unusual records that some people went for and I really wanted to be part of that scene. I read the Guinness World Records book from cover to cover to see if there was a record I could beat and the only one I had a chance at beating was adding more names than the current holder.”

Actually changing his name was a lengthy process, and involved him paying someone a few hundred dollars to type the name up for him.

Read more stories about amazing people on our Human Body News page.

His application was accepted by the District Court but rejected by the Register General.

Laurence didn’t give up though and took his case to the High Court in New Zealand, who determined he should be allowed to change his name as he wanted to.

But not long after that, they changed two laws that would stop other people doing something similar in future.

Laurence, who worked in the city library at the time, chose his names from books, although some were chosen for him by his co-workers.

He said: “My favourite name is AZ2000 meaning I have names from A-Z and I have 2000 names.”