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

[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.