Dear Prudence: Baby Names

[cereta]

Hurt: My mother-in-law called my husband this evening and told us that his stepsister-in-law was going into premature induced labor at 34 weeks because something is wrong with the baby’s heart. We aren’t super close to the couple, but we were nonetheless scared and devastated for them and their other young child. Well, we received another text that simply said the baby was here and they didn’t know anything more than her name. For the purposes of this query let’s call her “Alexandra.” Well, exactly eight months ago I had a baby that we named “Alex.” My husband and I are hurt and offended. Even if they call her Alexandra, other people, friends, family, will call her Alex. They essentially gave their child the same name as ours and we cannot say anything because the baby is sick. It’s so hurtful, and it’s a hurt we cannot even express. If the baby pulls through, and I certainly hope she does, I never want to see them again. What do we do?

A: Here is a basic fact: You don’t own the rights to “Alex” or “Alexandra” or any other name. If you wanted your child to have a name that’s almost unheard of, you could have gotten a copy of the Book of Wacky Celebrity Kid Names and chosen from that. Try to think about what’s actually going on here. A baby has arrived who’s the child of people you love. This baby is in medical distress. And you are planning to throw a permanent hissy fit because their child has a name similar to your child’s. Please tell me you are suffering from some kind of temporary derangement, and you are now coming to your senses. Because what you do now is to never, ever repeat the sentiments you put in this letter. Even if you have to put on an act—for the rest of your lives!—you pretend to be decent people. You welcome little Alexandra with joy, and you offer your help to her suffering parents (by bringing meals, looking after the toddler, etc.) however you can.

Comments

[cereta]

I mostly posted this to see if anyone had a perspective from which the LW isn't a horrible person.

Cheese and Crackers, lady: my brother gave his DOG my name, and I wasn't more than mildly annoyed.* Assuming "Alex" is similar to the name you chose, you gave your kid an extremely common name, and you're bothered that your husband's stepbrother gave his child the female variant of it? My family has, at various times, had two Williams, two Michelles**, and two Sarahs.** We coped.

I have to say, I especially love the, "and we can't even say anything because the child is deathly ill." That's some impressive All About Me-ing, there.

*In fairness, "Lucy" is not the name he calls me, and I'm not sure he even remembers that it IS my name.
**Names changed because my family would freak if I used the real ones. Not that they'll ever read this, but still.

[recessional]

I can, with massive, massive creativity, come up with this:

LW and the entire extended in-law family all have a really intense Names Are Important emotional ~*thing*~. (No real mud to sling there: one of my best friends has the same.) But like the entire family shares this thing, so that everyone understands the importance of names equally, and values it equally, so that there is no way that the similar-naming is not the couple with the sick baby DELIBERATELY DOING SOMETHING HURTFUL because they, TOO, share this ~*thing*~ about names and KNEW this would make LW and her husband Deeply Upset.

Because, like. It is possible to deliberately do things that are technically in Broad Culture Terms just fine and reasonable that one nonetheless knows will cause distress to someone specific with the intention of hurting them (or just with total indifference to hurting them) while at the same time making it impossible for them to protest without looking like they're either a dick or out of touch with reality.

But it requires a LOT of pre-established conditions like the ones listed: that this is a widely known/shared THING-of-distress-ness etc etc.

. . . and even then, given the stresses involved, I'd still probably tell LW to take a deep breath, thank whatever she believes in that her child ISN'T sick, and deal with it/discuss like a rational adult when the couple aren't in the middle of, you know. Hell.

(My family has a pattern of deliberately naming some members of a new generation after members of an older one - we had two Stephens and two Jacks and only because of specific timing of deaths did we not have two Scotts, and so on.)

[kaberett]

and this is dazzling display of creativity is why we love your writing. :-p

(like I would MAYBE to SOME EXTENT get it if the family was of a cultural tradition of giving new members a name of a dead member, cf my familial naming patterns because both Catholicism and Jewishness, but.)

[recessional]

I mean I can see being ANNOYED by this. I would be a bit annoyed, but this is in part because it would actually be a Known Thing that my children's names would be the result of a huge amount of triangulating a space between Meaningful, Not Going To Get Mocked About, Not Going To Be Every Third Kid In Their Class's Name, and Not Being A Bad Omen/Wish, and finally Being One I Actually Like. That's actually a lot of work!

(I'm still pissed off "Sophia" is this generation of little girls' "Jennifer": my great-grandmother's name was Sophia and I wanted to name a daughter that, but I can't now, because I refuse to give my child The Name All The Girls Have.)

But that's . . . .annoyed. That's me bitching in a "and we all understand that I am specifically venting to you on IM right now because it relieves my feelings that I feel are inappropriate to express in other ways" way to someone on IM. Not . . . THIS.

[cereta]

Yes. I mean, the small fanperson's name means a great deal to me, admittedly for reasons many people would find silly (see icon for explanation ;)). So I probably would have been annoyed if my sister had named her next daughter the same name. But never wanting to see them again? Great Pumpkin preserve us.

[shreena]

Obviously, the LW is massively overreacting. But I do think it's a bit weird to name your baby the same as another baby in your immediate family - unless, I guess, it's a family name and it's the norm for there to be lots of them in your family. I would kind of wonder why, out of the sheer number of names there are, they had to pick mine. But, as I say, not wanting to talk to them ever again over it.. I got nothing.

[ellen_fremedon]

I dunno, I had two first cousins on the same side of the family with the same name (first AND last). It's moderately weird, but But then that side of the family is only a couple generations removed from the cohort of Nicholas, his sister Anna, their half-brother Nicholas, and their half-sister Anna.

[cereta]

Well, we don't know the process by which the other couple chose the name. They may have wanted to name a daughter that name for years, and just not mentioned it to the LW. I know I was attached enough to our chosen name for the small fanperson that if someone had named a daughter, let's say "Anna," I would not have forgone using, "Annabelle." (Don't know why I'm being so twee here when right above your post, I pretty much give her name away, but still.)

[delphi]

I think this varies hugely by culture. One side of my family has multiple generations of large families drawing from the same pool of culturally-specific names, so there were always overlaps between cousins, even with what you might consider more unusual names like Napoleon, Leopold, or Scholastique. In my mother's generation, you always have to specify Richard [Last Name] or Paulette [Last Name] or Claudine [Last Name, No, Not Ramona's Daughter, Berthe's Daughter].

This has tapered off in my generation, with smaller families and more of us marrying outside the culture, but I still wouldn't consider it at all odd if my sister and I chose the same name for our kids. (Although I totally get that in other families there's the expectation of originality.)

[shreena]

I think that's right. I have an enormous extended family (on my dad's side alone, 20 first cousins and about 30 second cousins) and there is absolutely no name duplication. My parents were mildly offended when one of my cousins picked a name for her daughter that is very similar to mine. They didn't hate her for it or anything but they were surprised and a bit offended.

[recessional]

I. Just.

Really? Really? REALLY, LW?

[cereta]

It is for times like this that the, "Really?" was created.

[recessional]

I somehow missed my opportunity to use this icon. Which is sad, because it is also just the sort of thing I have this icon FOR.

My evens are incapable of even thinking about attempting to can, here.

[xenacryst]

Coming from a family that had a similar name collision (my cousin and I share a name, and I'm five years older), I understand that that can cause some friction. But dear deity, you're planning on permanently splitting the family up over that? As Abby says, please come to your senses and at least pretend to be decent people. My cousin and I get along quite well now (and to the extent we ever butted heads, it was never because we have the same name).

why are people?

[cereta]

I feel a bit like Miss Uganda. Why are they? What is she? How is why?

Seriously, I always liked finding someone with my name.

[xenacryst]

Srsly

[shirou]

When my wife and I were considering names for our kids, we learned that there are leagues of people who believe they can claim names, even years ahead of having children. It has always struck me as bizarre, and the LW takes it to insane lengths, but I'm not entirely surprised.

[kaberett]

w o w

(I changed my forename and my surname when I was 20; the surname to my mother's, which another set of cousins share, and my forename to Alex, when one of that set of cousins is called Alexander. I asked him if he'd mind, out of an overzealous sense of courtesy - there were at least two other people called Alex Surname, no relation, living in my small market town at that point. It was fine. We were fine. The world hasn't ended. People don't even get us confused on facebook. Just... SERIOUSLY. WOW.)

[neotoma]

My brother and one of my cousins have the same name, one spelled with a K and one with a C. It's not that hard to tell them apart from context.

And likely, with a longer name, you can break it down into two different nicknames, like Xander and Lexie. The LW needs to calm down and cope.

[azurelunatic]

I have a very strong, possibly superstitious DO NOT WANT reaction at the idea of someone naming a baby who is in immediate danger of dying the same thing as a theoretical similarly aged child of mine. Even absent a strong belief in names-as-sympathetic-magic, it does rather take the somewhat abstract idea of someone else's baby in medical distress and focus all that potential pain and fear on your own very concrete baby, in a way that could be very unsettling.

However. There is no possible way it was intended as any kind of offense or attack or slight or ... whatever.

This is an issue for clergy, not an advice columnist.

[cereta]

I could sympathize if that were the stated reason, but all the things she seems to be upset with would only happen if the baby survives - that people will call her "Alex," that they can't even express their offense (which will just not be an issue if the baby dies). Maybe she just couldn't articulate what you describe, or isn't self-aware enough to understand her feelings, in which case, I'm probably being unfair.

[cheyinka]

I can also see it being hurtful that at Hurt Letterwriter's family reunions, everyone will assume that Alex Letterwriter, or Alexa Letterwriter, or Xandie Letterwriter, or whatever, is a reference to the one who got lots of attention for being ill, not to the perfectly wonderful older Alexandra Letterwriter, even if the two end up going by different nicknames. But that's where you say, "no, no, Alexita is Hurt's daughter, Alexa is the little one", or "no, no, I mean Brunette Alex or Tall Alex or Hurt's Alex", not "OMG THE SAME NAME HOW DARE".

(And I would be hugely sympathetic to that kind of superstitious DNW, and if one of my husband's cousins named an ill baby [Blinkenbean] I would be entreating St. [Blinkenbean] to keep both my son and my, er, cousin-in-law(?) safe on a regular basis. But like cereta said, Ms. Letterwriter does not seem to have expressed that to Prudie.)

[fox]

I can dig that. I have a culturally-reinforced Very Strong Preference against new babies having the same names as living relatives anyway; the same culture has an occasionally-exercised superstition of changing the names of the very very ill in order to confuse the angel of death; it doesn't take a huge leap of logic to arrive at it being a disastrously bad idea (superstition-wise) to name a very very ill new baby with the same name as a healthy child because the angel of death might get confused and come for the wrong kid.

(a) Nobody who really had both those superstitions all the way down to the ground would name a very very ill baby with the same name as a healthy child for the purpose of the angel of death coming for the wrong kid. (b) Not a shred of any of this is in what the LW said; just "We are so hurt and offended that they used a name we were already using." As if names were zero-sum affairs like bar stools.

We have friends with a charming daughter named (let's say) Fifi. It's possible this is short for something, or it could be her whole name; I really don't know. She's about nine. We have other friends who, a couple of years ago, were expecting their first child; the mom said to the first family that if they had a girl she hoped the girl would be just like Fifi. Dontchaknow they did have a girl, and they named her Felicia, with an explanation of an important person from history to whom the name alludes. But they call her Fifi for short. The first Fifi's dad wouldn't have thought that was at all weird if the second Fifi's mom hadn't so recently said how much she hoped her daughter would be just like his. ... But nobody's stopped being friends over it.

[minoanmiss]

This was going to be my theory as to how the LW was possibly not completely horrible, yeah. Instead, the LW and spouse are massively unselfaware, and have interprested their subconscious susperstition of "they want to direct the Angel of Death to our cchild, not theirs" as "they have upset us, so they must have done something wrong, so let's have a giant shitfit and hope never to see them again."

This is quite the creative writing exercise!

[amadi]

My immediate mental correlation to this letter writer's plaint was very young verge of adolescence girls, dreaming out loud together about their future lives, and one says "And I'm going to have two kids, a boy and a girl, named Michael and Emily" and the other instantly whines "noooooo, Emily is MYYYYYYYY NAAAAAAAME, I toooooooold you that! I'm having two daughters named Emily and Elizabeth! Emily is MINE!"

In other words, baring something like the new baby being named for letter writer's dearly departed father (or husband!) this is the stuff of someone lacking maturity on a level that makes me worry for her child, frankly.

[melissatreglia]

See, this I don't understand--given the context, I'd feel HONOURED that my in-law wants her baby to have the same name as mine. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, y'know? We could be, like, mommy twins or something.

That being said, in my family, there WAS a case where naming a child was rather egregious--my brother's name is Thomas and, when he was a teen, his father (Tom Sr.) named ANOTHER SON FROM A NEW MARRIAGE Thomas as well. My brother felt betrayed by that, as if Tom Sr. had forgotten all about him. And, given the significance of my mother naming my brother Thomas, it's hard to see it as anything other than an insult.

Of course, my brother is in his forties now, but I'm sure it's never really stopped smarting. But he also named his own son Thomas.