You’ve doodled it everywhere. You’ve done the first with the last. The first, middle, last. The monogram. The initials. You’ve chosen your baby name.
When I met Adam, we forever had a love for the name Lexi. Lexi Brehm. We thought it sounded cute…and I honestly, I think Adam felt like every Lexi he’d ever met had been cute so it would be a great name for a little Brehm dame. Barrett and Jonah were just a twinkle in our eye at the time and so when my friend, Erica, welcomed her little Lexi to the world, I was thrilled for her. I couldn’t be heartbroken because not only were kids far from my mind at the time but also, she had no idea that this was a name I had in my daydreams. We both just had exemplary taste in names. Nonetheless, the name was removed from our minds and our list for any future children.
When we were pregnant with Barrett, in talking with one of my friends who was also pregnant, we discovered that we had Kenzie on our list of names for a little lady and they had Mackenzie. It made me uncomfortable. What if we both had girls? I was due first… was it rude to proceed with the name? What would Etiquette Emily do?
Then, when I was gestating Jonah, one of our top 2 girls’ names was Emerson. Emerson Brehm. Not only did we feel we would need to ask “permission” as it is a name in the family twice over {not a first}, but also, two people I knew {or rather, two people who knew people I knew} welcomed Emerson’s {in some form of the name} and it quickly got slashed off the list… just wasn’t meant to be. Not that it ever would have mattered, after all, our babes are boys, but still, I get {overly} concerned about names that have been claimed.
I recently saw a birth announcement on Facebook and immediately, I texted a friend of mine…What was your boy name with your first? I felt as though I remembered that her name… the name that she and her husband were saving for their second {maybe boy} babe… was the exact same name that this girl she’d known for four score and seven had just bestowed upon her baby boy. She replied with the name and we had baby blasphemy banter back and forth. Just as I suspected, her name, a very uncommon moniker, had been snatched by a lifelong friend. And in fact, just weeks prior, her friend had asked her what her boy name was and then joked that she was going to use it. So, following the grand reveal of the name, my friend’s reaction to the name choice was “she’s dead to me”.
If you’re a Sex and The City fan, you might recall an episode about Charlotte’s secret baby name, Shayla. And you also know about the uproar when her friend, Laney, stole her name for her own child. Was Charlotte off-base or is it fair to be furious about a friend nabbing your name?
I get it. I am not completely out of touch with reality. I know that people have the right to use any name they want. And I know that, at least for me, it doesn’t even really bother me to think of someone using a name that we’ve already used {after filling out the appropriate paperwork, of course;)}. But for the sake of convo, how would you react to someone snatching your name? Would you ditch a name because someone else you know has already used it?
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