{"id":11411,"date":"2015-06-15T09:20:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T13:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11411"},"modified":"2015-06-15T14:12:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T18:12:02","slug":"baby-naming-issue-an-ex-used-one-of-our-finalist-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/06\/15\/baby-naming-issue-an-ex-used-one-of-our-finalist-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: An Ex Used One of Our Finalist Names"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I have been a long time reader of your blog. Love it! I’m also a baby name fanatic.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Thanks for any advice you can offer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The short answer is that you are not forbidden to use it, but that I would indeed say it is off the table.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Y3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11411"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11413,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11411\/revisions\/11413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}