A New Jersey father’s choice to name his children after Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler has prompted a debate over whether provocative names alone should be considered child abuse. The NY Times reports:

Heath Campbell invited the world to share his outrage when a nearby ShopRite supermarket refused to inscribe a cake with his son’s first and middle names — Adolf Hitler — for his third birthday last month.

Instead, outrage at his choice of names for his three children — Adolf’s younger sisters are Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell, after Heinrich Himmler, and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell — exploded on the Internet and in newspapers all over the world.

Mr. Campbell’s choices have prompted a debate over whether provocative names alone should be considered child abuse. The authorities removed the children from their parents’ care on Jan. 9., according to the local police. Kate Bernyk, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, said confidentiality rules prevented her from commenting on the case, but that the state would not remove a child based on a name.

So, it is unclear why they were taken from the apartment they rented in a gray two-family ranch on a forlorn stretch of road overlooking the Delaware River, on the Pennsylvania border, and a hearing scheduled for Thursday was canceled.

Laura Cohen, a clinical professor of law at Rutgers Law School who specializes in juvenile rights, said that, “Looking ahead, you could imagine the state making an argument that the ShopRite rejection is a precursor of things to come,” explaining that the concern would be that the children would be “subject to lifelong ridicule and harassment.”

But Ms. Cohen, who knows of a New York child named for a venereal disease, said: “The question of what you name your kids goes right to the heart of the zone of privacy around the parent-child relationship.”

The Campbells’ neighbors described a family living on the fringe, financially and socially. Mr. Campbell, 35, and his wife, Deborah, 25, do not work and receive disability payments for emphysema and neck pain, respectively. Their landlord, Larry Lippincott, who shares the two-family home, said the family is often up all night.

“I hear the kids playing at 2:30 in the morning,” Mr. Lippincott said. “He told me he was a night person and didn’t like to do anything during the day.”

Mr. Lippincott, a truck driver, said Mr. Campbell went through a Confederate flag phase a few years ago, but was now into swastikas, which decorated the apartment and were etched in skull decals on his car.

Mr. Campbell, a collector of German combat knives, also wears Nazi-era boots and, according to Mr. Lippincott, likes to click his heels together. A neighbor, Robert Heckman, said Mr. Campbell had boasted to him about using government money to pay for his cigarettes. Mr. Lippincott said he had decided — before the cake incident — not to renew the Campbells’ lease when it expired in November because, he said, a relative they frequently argue with threatened to “firebomb the house.” He expects to begin eviction proceedings soon.

“They’re not destroying anything, the house is clean and they pay their rent on time,” he said. But, he added, “There comes a point when you say, ‘Enough is enough.’ ”

The Holland Township police chief, David Van Gilson, said that officers have answered noise complaints and domestic incidents at the apartment, but never received complaints of child abuse, although he said other agencies could have.

Chief Van Gilson speculated that information about the children’s treatment may have surfaced after Mr. Campbell sought publicity about the birthday cake incident from the local newspaper, the Express-Times, in Easton, Pa. “That was his whole purpose — to get sympathy for the cake — and it just snowballed from there,” he said. Indeed, blogs and newspaper Web sites have reported incendiary information about Mr. Campbell’s previous marriage, including a few comments from a woman who identified herself as his former mother-in-law and wrote that her daughter had to talk him out of naming one of their children Satan. Others wrote to say that, to their mind, the simple act of naming children after Hitler and Himmler constituted abuse.

“How in the world do these so-called parents expect these kids to survive in life with monikers like this?” wrote one reader of the Express-Times, which broke the story in mid-December. “The kids were doomed the day they were named.”

Melanie Campbell, who lives in Holland Township, has found her seemingly safe choice of names for her daughter, Heather, now causing problems because of its similarity to Mr. Campbell’s name. Her address and phone number popped up in Internet searches of Mr. Campbell, who does not have a home phone.

Mr. Campbell had at least two of the children’s names legally changed in recent months. He dropped his son’s original first name, Antonio (Adolf and Hitler had been the middle names), so he is now Adolf Hitler Campbell, and fixed his daughter’s birth certificate to correct the spelling of “Aryan.” (He has said that Hinler is the correct spelling of Himmler — that history books are wrong.)

The Campbells, who in recent days have stayed away from their home and could not be reached for comment, have offered different explanations in previous interviews about their interest in Nazi Germany. Mr. Campbell told the Express-Times that swastikas were “symbols of peace and balance,” while Mrs. Campbell asserted that a swastika “doesn’t really have a meaning.”

As for his children’s names, he said: “They’re just names, you know.” Acknowledging that the Nazis “were bad people back then,” Mr. Campbell said. “But my kids are little. They’re not going to grow up like that.”

More recently, Mr. Campbell has been quoted saying that he was changing his views on the Holocaust after watching the History Channel. “He did it,” he said, referring to Hitler. “It was cruel. But I didn’t name my son for the guy who killed all these people.” He added, “My son is going to learn to love. None of my kids are going to have a bone of hate in their body.”

Chief Van Gilson said that Mr. Campbell “broke down” when he learned that his children were being removed from his home. “He loves his kids — there are no ifs, ands or buts about that,” he said. “His kids to him are his future. As he told me, his kids are forever; wives aren’t.”