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Regret Your Baby’s Name?
Imagine having a four-year-old named Paris. Or a toddler named Tiger. Or maybe you just gave in to family pressure before the pain medications wore off, and woke up with an adorable little one named after Great Aunt Eustis.
Would you feel a little regret? Lots of parents do.
The New York Times reports that 3 percent of parents regret their baby’s name, and would change it if they could.
Sometimes it’s a celebrity scandal that taints your darling’s name. Sometimes, the moniker just doesn’t seem to suit. In other cases, as happened to Alexamdra Jacobs, the world just isn’t ready for “Seymour” to become a trendy baby name.
What other names do people live to regret? Famecrawler is offering up a list of the Top 10 Most Regrettable Celebrity Baby Names.
I actually have some regrets about my kids’ last names. My husband’s last name is Hunter, which I think is beatiful. But when the time came, neither of us could swallow our feminist pride enough to have me take his name. We talked, throughout my first pregnancy, about changing both our last names to some new, hybrid name, but never got it together to do that. So our kids got saddled with Hunter Black on their birth certificates.
It’s not bad as these things go. I just shudder when I imagine either of them marrying someone with a clumsily doubled last name. Will my grandkids need to note, “See attached pages” at the bottom of any contracts they sign to make room for the last names they’ll be lugging around?
Have you ever felt any regret about your child’s name? Wished you had a do-over on that one? Been embarassed by a literary or pop culture reference you didn’t know when you chose it?
Photo: Molly Tomlinson
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popular baby names | Trxnd commented on May 07 10 at 6:16 pmTC commented on Apr 08 10 at 6:47 pmSort of. When I named my daughter, I picked it as it wasn’t a common name. It was antiquated, feminine, and just stood out for me for the women in history I admired that bore the same name. Afterward, three of my friends named their child after mine as they loved the name so much. And, more and more, it’s becoming a very popular baby name. I still love the name, just wish that it weren’t so popular and well loved.
DKM commented on Apr 08 10 at 8:54 pmI kind of regret naming my son Ryan. I love the name (still do), but every other boy his age is named Ryan and now there are also a bunch of younger girls named Ryan. Poor kid thinks his name is Ryan M because there is always another Ryan around. And when you go to the playground, he constantly hears people calling his name – very frustrating.
Anon commented on Apr 09 10 at 12:31 amWell, what IS it, TC? Such a tease! I’m always so curious, but people rarely actually say the name.
Eric commented on Apr 09 10 at 9:15 amWell Sierra, at least you got your last names in the right order. Could have caused some serious problems the other way round!
GtothemfckinP commented on Apr 09 10 at 12:59 pmI don’t get the whole aversion to taking a husband’s name…after all, before that, most Western women have their father’s name, anyway. I do like the sound of “Hunter Black” though.
Meghan E commented on Apr 09 10 at 2:39 pmGtothemfckinP– you could probably overcome your not ‘getting’ “the whole aversion to taking a husband’s name” by doing a quick Google search of the history of this symbolic patriarchal tradition. Just because women traditionally take their father’s name doesn’t legitimize the practice– have some conviction and do some simple research before questioning the choices of other women who more likely than not have done just that as a way of arming themselves against those who thoughtlessly defend the status quo.
AshaB commented on Apr 09 10 at 2:41 pm“the whole aversion to taking a husband’s name” has to do with the patriarchal social “norms” that we have even though we are not living in a patrilocal society [for the most part]. It’s an antiquated ritual, and describing my aversion to it would take a while. Naming a person is pretty substantial. We chose against using my partner’s last name for many reasons.
Our friends and my partner and I created a last name for our kids, which my partner and I have since added it as one of our middle names, so that we all have it as a part of our ‘official’ names. We did this for the same noted feminism/social issues (with taking a husband’s/male’s name)and because my last name is not really meaningful to our family either.
But I did regret my daughter’s middle name, and we changed it when she was three months old.
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Apr 09 10 at 3:06 pmToday’s quote: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. – Abraham Lincoln.
jenny tries too hard commented on Apr 09 10 at 3:30 pmIt is a good thing you didn’t combine the names…you might’ve ended up with Bunter or Hack…
MsC commented on Apr 09 10 at 3:57 pmIsn’t this why we invented the concept of nick names?
Maegan commented on Apr 11 10 at 3:05 pmI didn’t know the gender of my children before they were born (I have 2 girls). So husband and I picked out a handful of names for each gender. We couldn’t decide on anything for the first until day two. If she would have been a boy, she’d have been Gabriel. I am SO glad she was a girl, lol. There must be 20 Gabriels just in her school’s kindergarten classes. I have lots of friends with little “Gabriels”. For the second…Since husband ended up chooseing the first’s name…I got naming power! :) Another girl. And a name I had been in love with for many years. If I have a regret…its that people often mispronounce them. We didn’t do any creative spellings. They are names that exist in baby books. Even when I correct them…they still get it wrong. Whatever…people mispronounce our very easy (and slightly famous) last name as “Bloodshed” on a regular basis. ;)
Manjari commented on Apr 12 10 at 10:52 amI regret that my son’s name is so much more common than I realized. Most of our friends’ kids have Indian names, and I wasn’t aware of what names were becoming very popular here. I still love his name. I wouldn’t say I regret naming him that, I just wish everyone else had picked a different name. :)
Natalie commented on Apr 12 10 at 12:11 pmI don’t regret our name choices, altho Miriam isn’t very common. I had a girl on my soccer team in grade school named Andromeda, tho, and most of the kids on our team had trouble pronouncing it…
Melissa commented on Apr 13 10 at 4:30 pmI love my daughters name…but wish I had of stuck to my guns and went for one that was a little more unique. Her name is Katie – and now we know Katie’s, Kaylene’s, Kaelynn’s, Kaylee’s, Keeley’s, etc. – I had no idea how many variations were out there, so I just anticipate a room full of girls with all these names and it now sounds boring, instead of cute and innocent like I originally pictured. The name I would have preferred…Ruby….ah well.
Robin commented on Apr 28 10 at 6:46 amNo I haven’t, but I’ll never forget when my older daughter started preschool at age 3, a classmates mother found out that my daughter was named Caitlyn, just like hers and she abruptly changed the name her daughter was “called” to her middle name. The poor child seemed so sad and confused after 3 years of being called Caitlyn. And her middle name was something very odd. I just felt so sorry for her.
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