Hi Swistle,
I have been a long time reader of your blog. Love it! I’m also a baby name fanatic.
I had written you previously about naming our second baby girl. Her name is Amelia. Today I see through some photos a friend posted on Facebook that an ex of mine is having a baby girl. He and his wife has chosen our second choice name. The name that we ultimately did not choose. But I can’t help this feeling of having been stolen from. It isn’t as if they knew this name was at the top of our list, a frontrunner, a favorite name. They have without knowing stolen this name from me.
I know this is not your typical baby naming issue but I am hoping you may have some advice for me. I think in the way way way back of my mind I was hoping to ‘save’ the name for a future daughter. Is this name off the table? Am I forbidden to use it? We have quite an overlap of friends and social circles.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.
The short answer is that you are not forbidden to use it, but that I would indeed say it is off the table.
There are times when I would emphasize to parents that names are multi-use items (there are many other people named Amelia, for example, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t use the name Amelia), and I would add that duplication can be fun.
This is not one of those times. THIS falls into a different category, where the use of a particular name is packed with so much symbolism and/or so many potential issues, it causes me to flip right over to the “There are so many other names to choose from; why choose THIS one?” side of the name-duplication argument. If you and your ex had each named a daughter the same name inadvertently and unknowingly, that would be awkward enough; I think it would be a very poor idea to do it knowingly. It might be a useful mental exercise to imagine how it would feel if your ex named his new baby Amelia, knowing you had used the name already.
I think what is needed at this point is Coping Thoughts: thoughts to make yourself feel better about the loss of the name. One is this part of your letter: “I think in the way way way back of my mind I was hoping to ‘save’ the name for a future daughter.” After my first read-through of the letter, I was feeling as if the name in question was your chosen first-choice name if you had another girl later on; after re-reading, it sounds more as if that idea to use the rejected name for a future daughter didn’t fully occur to you until after you saw that your ex was going to use it. I wonder if the issue is more that it was very startling to see your second-choice name on an ex’s child, combined with the natural human feeling of wanting something more when it is no longer available.
Another Coping Thought is that it’s very possible that, if your ex hadn’t used the name, you wouldn’t have used it either. Many parents find that by the time the next baby comes along, they’ve cooled on previous finalists or have discovered new favorites.
If I’ve correctly assumed that your ex’s baby is not yet born, there is also a slim possibility that they won’t use the name either. (This could be a False Hope Thought rather than a Coping Thought.)
It is also of course a possibility that you will not have a third daughter, and so the issue won’t come up at all. This is more a Coping Thought for the future: looking back, you may be able to say, “We wouldn’t have been able to use the name anyway.”
I’m finding it interesting to wonder about the other names on your ex’s list. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they had Amelia on their list, and had to scramble for a new favorite?
It does seem best to leave the name to the ex, I agree. It would take a lot of mental work for me to use the name and not feel that there was a negative residue associated with it, no matter how things stand between you and the ex. Irritating, I bet, but definitely something you can overcome :)
I feel like this is a situation where it’s not worth the mental acrobatics to get to a place where using the name is okay. This was a second choice name, that you were possibly going to save for a daughter you might not have – not the name of your late relative that you planned on using on the baby you’re pregnant with now. Especially in a situation where your social circles overlap, I would let this name go.
Although, for what it’s worth, I would totally feel weird about the coincidence and probably a little pissed off too (as irrational as it might be, feelings are weird).
I get four pieces of evidence out of this letter:
1) I’m pretty sure this is an ex-boyfriend, not an ex-husband.
2) They’ve been broken up long enough for the letter writer to have two children with someone else
3) They share friends in common, but the overlap isn’t so extensive that they are forced to be facebook friends
4) The second daughter’s name is Amelia, which is a hint that we’re not talking about terribly obscure taste in names
Based on all of that, I would try very hard not to worry about it that much. Your attachment to the name, and your association of the name with your ex’s kid, will either grow or diminish between now and any point in the future when you might need a name for a daughter, and the direction it goes will probably be the direction it should go. (Unless you catch yourself thinking “I’LL SHOW THEM” over and over, in which case I’m sure you can figure out that you will not want to be thinking that as you are holding your beautiful precious newborn). I come from a smallish town with only one high school and I have a crazy memory for both old drama and for what everyone is now naming their kids. There have been a couple ironic repetitions so far. Mostly, I feel like I’m the only one who really notices them.
This is a much more eloquent version of exactly what I came down here to say. Finding out that your ex and his wife are planning to use a name that was on your short list of candidates is probably weird and awkward and upsetting in that way that things with exes so often are, but eventually (likely soon) it will feel less jarring and you won’t be so put off by it.
An ex of mine (distant in the past but present in social circles with zero awkwardness, remarkably) has used a girl name that I adore the shortened form of. I could just use the shortened form only, which they don’t use as a nickname for their little girl that I’m aware of… But I can’t even bring myself to do that given the “copycat” nature of it. And it’s a really common name! Still, it’s off the table totally for us because of that specific and only reason.
I’m inclined to agree with everyone else. I wouldn’t want to be reminded of an ex anytime my child’s name came up. It’s really unfortunate though, and I feel for you (my frontrunner was used knowingly by a family member I’m on good terms with and that was awkward enough). I’ll also add that in these situations, the name really does become the person over time, so if you think you might see the odd update about baby “second choice”, you may find it becomes less usable the more you hear it used on them. I would try and make peace with not using it in the future, or at the very least using it in the middle-spot.
What’s more, I’m guessing your husband would rather not be reminded of your ex every time he hears the name eier, even if he’s crystal clear that it was a favorite of yours before the ex’s kid was even born. Let it go.
Swistle’s point about the fact that you might not have used it anyway is a really good one. With my daughter, we had two names at the hospital. I loved them both and when we named our daughter Margaret, part of my rationale was that I figured someday if we had another daughter, I would prefer for “Eleanor” to be the little sister’s name.
Well, flash forward and my husband has totally cooled on the name Eleanor. So now we’re pregnant with a second daughter and I feel like I have to “mourn” Eleanor because my dream sister set will never be…
I would not use the name-mostly because it would be a regular reminder of the ex. It is perfectly fine to mourn the loss of the ability to use name you love.
But when you are done mourning, I would try to put the name into perspective. If I a reading the post correctly, you have two daughters and this name didn’t wasn’t the first choice either time as your daughters do not bear that name. The name wasn’t the “right” one for the first two and, if there is a third daughter, it might not be right for her either.
Also, for you are it opens up possibilities. If you are to get pregnant with another girl, instead of heading right for the leftover name, it opens you up to a wide world of possible names that might be perfect for the new little one. You will have an opportunity for the excitement of a new search rather than having a go to name already picked out.
Well, assuming your second choice name is still on your list in X number of years and you are expecting a girl, do NOT use it. Not because of the ex, because really imagine the girl’s question one day “mommy, daddy, how did you choose my name?” “Well honey, it was the second-best name on our list when we chose your sister’s name.”
wow. Wouldn’t that make you feel special? That your name, a major part of your identity, is a sort of castoff of your sister’s? That she got, what was in your parents’ eyes the BEST name, and you got the name hand-me-down, even worse than all those clothes hand-me-downs?
I think this is one of the few times when I might disagree with Swistle. It sounds like you and the Ex have some overlap in social circles, but not that you still actually associate with each other (you found out the name based on someone else’s FB post). Imagine if you had never seen that post, used the name on a 2nd daughter, and then found out the Ex had used it first. It might be a bit uncomfortable at first, but I imagine you’d be able to shrug it off.
For me, the current situation is equally shrug worthy. File this information away for now and then deal with the question of the name being still usable when you are faced with an actual opportunity to use it. Consider you may not ever have a 2nd daughter. If/when you do, you may no longer feel the same way about the runner-up name. You may stumble across another name you like better or that fits hypothetical daughter #2 better. Or, you could get over the sting of your Ex using the runner up name before you get a chance to use.
I completely agree with this, don’t think it would bother me unless it was a particularly horrible relationship.
As trivial of an example this might be, it reminds me of when some friends got a new puppy… and another set of friends became very upset because the name they’d chosen for their soon-to-be-born daughter was the name of the puppy. It was awkward.
The puppy’s name didn’t change, but the baby’s did.
Now the baby’s parents couldn’t imagine her being called by the dog’s name. They’re glad they let it go.
Anytime there is a breakup, most things get divvied up: bank accounts, homes, cars, friends, movie collections, etc. It sounds like both the poster and her ex thought that they alone were taking a name from the relationship. That’s a jarring and unpleasant surprise.
It’s okay to feel bummed and just as okay to move on.
I had to laugh about this message, only because I have a daughter named Amelia, and my ex and his wife (the woman he cheated on me with and dumped me for) named their daughter Amelia several years later. I know he knew about my Amelia, because we were Facebook friends for years after my daughter was born until he deleted his Facebook account. To be honest, it’s always seemed odd to me that he would use the same name. However, it has no real life impact on either of us, we haven’t talked or seen each other in years at this point. I know it’s a common and popular name, so I figure he and his wife must have just really loved it!
I don’t know how I would feel if the situation was reversed, and I learned that he had used one of my top choices first. I guess it would depend on whether the situation ever came up where I would possibly even use the name (ie pregnant with the right sex), how much I really loved it, and whether I felt that the association with the ex would be too strong.