Ask a Manager: Employee Named her Dog after a Coworker’s Baby

[minoanmiss]

A team member has just announced she’s getting a puppy and naming him Achilles, which, though an unusual name, is the same name of another team member’s baby. (“Achilles” isn’t the real name, but it’s a similar degree of unusualness.) We are a small team of 10, and Achilles is the first and only baby anyone on the team has had.

She didn’t mention anything to her colleague before making this decision, and announced it in a team (Zoom) meeting. We were all stunned. As her manager, should I address it? The two already have a fairly tenuous relationship and I hope this won’t tip it over the edge!

Oh dear.
I’m a big believer that you don’t really get dibs on names. If she wants to name her dog Achilles and a coworker already has a baby named Achilles … well, she gets to do that. If her coworkers think it’s weird and want to judge her for it, they also get to do that.
However, if your sense is that she named the dog after the baby as a way to needle her coworker, it’s time to intervene in whatever is going on in that relationship. But you wouldn’t be addressing the dog’s name; you’d be addressing whatever is going on more broadly. You can’t have two people on your team not getting along and at least one needling the other, and that’s where I’d focus.

Comments

I cannot stop giggling

[minoanmiss]

I mean... I'm a woman of color who has been compared to an animal to my face, for some info on the perspective I'm bringing to this. And still I cannot stop giggling. Duplicate names happen all the time! Now they can refer to Baby Achilles and Puppy Achillies!

And I can't help but think that if the coworker did this deliberately to bother the new mother, the joke is on her, becauase now she has to remind herself of the new mother whom she hates every time she calls her puppy's name.

Also, I can't stop giggling.

Re: I cannot stop giggling

[watersword]

All I can think of is this tweet.

Re: I cannot stop giggling

[cynthia1960]

+1000

[ayebydan]

Unless the person with the baby brings it up...leave then to their odd little petty lives I guess

[melannen]

It's hard to tell from the renaming, but it's entirely possible this name isn't as unusual as it feels like to you, LW. Naming trends go in weird waves - and one of them is the cycle where everybody uses the same name one year *because* it's unusual.

It's kind of odd for the co-worker not to acknowledge the coincidence at all until it's pointed out - but depending on how social you all are, it might not even have clicked that the name was the same - and being FB friends doesn't mean she actually saw any of the posts about the baby. Once it was pointed out she didn't really have much choice but to awkwardly play it off.

--signed, one of the four people in her elementary class with the same "unusual" name.

[sara]

Well, my ex gave the cat he got after I kicked him out my middle name.

Which was also one of my grandmother's names.

Creepy, obsessive, and I can't begin to imagine why his second wife tolerates it, but hey, people are weird.

[minoanmiss]

Well that's horrifying. I'm sorry he's such a creepy twit.

I'd say "did he HAVE to?" but it sounds like malarkey like this is on brand for him. :(

[sara]

He's a big weirdo. Big big weirdo. Honestly compared to the actually scary stuff, I find things like this kind of funny. You named a cat after me...the week after I had to call the police because you tried to kick in my front door? WTF. It's surreal.

I guess my larger point is, sometimes names are a coincidence and sometimes it's someone abusive making a deeply disturbing "power move" and it's hard to tell which is which. Even when you're in the middle of it.

[conuly]

Does he treat his cat and new wife okay!?

[sara]

Not remotely my problem.

[minoanmiss]

As one sapient creature concerning others I do hope so, but I don't really think it's in sara's purview to at all deal with her ex's relationships with anyone.