Filed under: Lifestyle, Moms, Dads, Birth announcement, Making a Difference
When a friend of mine was pregnant with her first child she refused to divulge the name of her son, which she'd already picked out, agreed upon with, and stored away for the big day. Although part of her concern was that people wouldn't like the name, she was more worried that someone would REALLY like the name and steal it for their own unborn baby.
Anyone due before her was definitely not going to find out the name. Her fear wasn't completely out of line--she knew someone who'd fallen in love with a name only to have another friend who everyone claimed already knew the name had been "chosen" by this other woman take it.
I don't know if that story is true, but it does bring up an interesting question. Does a name every really belong to anyone? Can names be "chosen" and therefore reserved for the use of one mother to be in a group only?
I don't think so. Names are important, and baby names should be selected carefully if they're important to the parents to be, but I don't think anyone can claim ownership over a name. Most people share their name with at least one other person anyway.
That said, if you have a pal who is expecting and you are expecting too, maybe it would be best to try not to name your children the same thing to avoid all this business. I admit I didn't tell anyone the name I'd chosen for my son, but, then again, neither my husband nor I had totally settled on what that name would be. We had a pool going but there were definite favorites.
The ultimate favorite is what I named my son, Mr. Pickles. just kidding--it's Mercer. If someone else in my little group had mysteriously come up with exactly the same name, which is not a common name at all, I would've been miffed at the very least. After all, the uniqueness of the name for my son would've been lost. I would've felt like one of the things that made my son special had been taken from him.
The truth is, though, our children are special and different from anyone else simply because they are our children. They're all different and unique no matter what their names happen to be.
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