Dear Care and Feeding: My Brother Stole Our Baby’s Name for His Son!

[dorothy1901]

Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife and I named our daughter Nola. We wanted a unique name, like New Orleans, and thought it was pretty. Six months later, my brother has named his new son Nolan, the male version of Nola. We are shocked and hurt that he picked this name without asking us if this was all right. This is his second son; if he’d always loved the name, he could have picked that name for his first son, and we would not have picked Nola. They announced the name at the bris, and everyone kept asking if it was a family name, as we already have a Nola. Are we being overly sensitive, or is it weird to steal our 6-month-old’s name? Can I talk to him about it?

—Worried About Our Good Name

Dear WAOGN,

Name stealing is not a thing. It does not matter. Please maintain a dignified silence on the subject until the sweet release of death.

As seen on Slate

Comments

[the_rck]

Name stealing is not a thing. Parents being unwise about picking names is, however, a thing that isn't limited to a large percentage of girls my age being named Jennifer or Michelle (or the class I volunteered with in which half the girls were Alina, Elena, Alena, Elaina, etc. I never managed to learn which of them was which, not reliably).

This is not a family breaking offense. The kids are entitled to be peeved when they're old enough to notice, but seriously? This letter actually makes me wonder what's wrong with the sibling relationship that this is a blow up point.

One of my mother's brothers named a daughter Christine. Later, another named a daughter Kristen. That was the sort of thing that people cluck over and talk about but don't really get particularly worked up about. It's at the level of someone putting in curtains that cost a bundle but look like they're Target's cheapest.

[delight]

My husband's mm's best friend's kids are named Bethany and Ethan. My husband's sister is also named Bethany, and she was born around the same time as Ethan.

Nobody ever comments on them having the same name for their daughters -- and the daughters go by different nicknames so even they don't care -- but lots of people comment on 'Ethan' being most of 'Bethany,' and saying that if they had a third kid they'd be stuck naming them 'Tha.'

[neotoma]

This is like my brother is Mark and my cousin is Marc; if you don't know which one you're hearing about, you ask "Mark with a K or Marc with a C?"

Nola and Nolan at least are actually different to the ear. If that's still a problem, give them nicknames.

[eleanorjane]

It's not a thing, but on the other hand families can be weird about it.

My dad has a not-super-common name (common enough most people know how to spell it, uncommon enough that you wouldn't expect to meet other people with your own name). My (maternal) uncle named his second son by that name - and he and his wife made REALLY SURE to tell my parents that the cousin was NOT named after my dad. Just... wtf.

[redbird]

If there are Ashkenazi Jews in your maternal uncle or aunt's family, that might be connected to the superstition against naming a child after a living relative. (The fear is that when the Angel of Death comes for the father or grandfather, he might instead take the child.)

I would expect anyone who believed in that superstition to have avoided the name, because someone who actually believed that probably wouldn't expect such an explanation to help—an angel who would confuse three-year-old Amelia with her grandmother isn't going to stop to check why the three-year-old is named that. But someone might have retained a vague "you're not supposed to name a child after a living person" without the reason, or thought "he's not named after you" would reassure someone else who was superstitious. That feels like reaching, but the whole thing feels off: if I had a sibling I disliked enough to say "not after you" for that reason, I wouldn't want to give a child (or even a pet) their name, because I wouldn't want to associate the two.

[eleanorjane]

Nope, no Ashkenazi Jews - straight up good ole Church of England on both parental sides. And the weirdest thing - the Uncle is my mother's brother, not my father's - so it was his (mild, friendly, inoffensive) B-I-L he was insulting, not even his sister!

Family is (can be) SO WEIRD. It just bemuses me.

[euphrosyna]

It’s not a thing but I’d still be a bit pissed off... just me and LW?

[cereta]

No, I would be a little annoyed that they didn't at least tell me. I mean, my kid's name is...not Anna,* but we'll use it as an example. If a sibling were planning to name a baby Anne, assuming it wasn't already a family name, I would kind of like at least a head's up before it reached me through someone else or were announced at a religious ceremony. I doubt I'd get one, but that's my family, who named a dog my chosen name. I wouldn't object to baby Anne's name, but being told would be nice.

*Insert slightly less common example here.

[jadelennox]

Some Jews have a tradition not to tell anyone at all the name they pick until the bris (or the naming ceremony, for a girl). Though they're clearly not that traditional (or they'd say something about which Naomi or Nechama or Noa or whoever their Nola was named for), the silence on a name thing is a superstition for some and might exist any number of families.

[xenacryst]

Speaking as the kid in such a circumstance, sharing the first name with my cousin has never been a source of strife. It can be mildly confusing to us in bemusing ways, but really the extent of it is that we put our middle initials (no, not last initials, I guess because they differentiated us by middle name when younger) on the letters we send to each other. So, yeah, I'd say get over it.

[jadelennox]

I have multiple cousins who all share the same name, and none of them has ever seem bothered.