Baby Name Remorse

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Imagine you’re the mother of a four-week-old baby.

You’ve given your baby a name that you thought was wonderful.

It’s pretty and a little bit unusual.

You called her Maeve.

M-A-E-V-E.

Yes, Maeve.

But since then, the reaction from family and friends has been a little bit less than enthusiastic.

They love the baby, but they can’t get past the name.

Right.

And you explain again and again that it’s Maeve, M-A-E-V-E, and it rhymes with wave.

But Grandma accidentally calls her Mav, and you’re constantly trying to explain yourself to the point where now you’re in tears.

You’re actually crying about it, and you’re wondering if you made a mistake and if maybe you should change the baby’s name.

Should you change it? Have you saddled this baby with a name that is just going to be a problem for the rest of the baby’s life?

That’s right. Is the baby going to hate you even more than she does when she’s an adolescent?

I know what you’re talking about.

We found this discussion on the site Ask Metafilter.

And it’s really interesting.

A lot of discussion.

We posted this to our Facebook page and Facebook group as well.

And everybody came out.

Some people said, yeah, that’s a difficult name and you should consider something new.

And other people said, I named my daughter that and she’s wonderful.

Right.

And other people said, my Waterford Crystal has that name.

Which I don’t know if that’s an endorsement or not, but okay.

Something beautiful.

But this woman is suffering from Namer’s regret.

Will she get over it, do you think?

Will she get over it?

I would say that most people said, oh, it’s a beautiful name.

Yeah.

I thought the consensus in all the places that this was discussed was that it was a good name, a little unusual, but plenty of people have it.

And it’s actually rising in frequency.

I wonder how many parents have that experience where they’re thinking, did I make a mistake?

And is it too late to change?

Right.

Now, I’m not a parent.

I know when I took my dog to the veterinary behaviorist, she said, absolutely, you can change a dog’s name.

Anytime.

That it has to do with your tone of voice and everything.

But for a kid, I don’t know.

And there’s another question that came up in all of these discussions.

The baby’s four weeks old.

And a lot of people were wondering if the mother was just kind of having those baby blues.

The first little while with a baby can be an emotional time.

There’s not enough sleep and there’s so much to do.

And you’re still sorting out your feelings and the hormones and all that stuff.

And maybe she should just wait.

There’d be no rush even if she wanted to change the name.

Yeah, maybe that’s why she’s crying, right?

Well, we pose this question to you.

Have you named your child something and then regretted it?

And what do you think that the mother of Maeve should do about her name?

Let us know, 877-929-9673, or email us, words@waywordradio.org.