{"id":12332,"date":"2016-09-29T09:50:06","date_gmt":"2016-09-29T13:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12332"},"modified":"2016-09-29T09:55:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-29T13:55:27","slug":"baby-naming-issue-should-you-point-out-a-concern-for-a-friends-baby-name-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/09\/29\/baby-naming-issue-should-you-point-out-a-concern-for-a-friends-baby-name-choice\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Should You Point Out a Concern for a Friend’s Baby Name Choice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

An acquaintance (husband’s coworker and his wife) are expecting their third baby. They have two adorable children with pretty “normal” names; recognizable, relatively easy to spell, easy to pronounce, etc. Their last name is [\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ].<\/p>\n

Yesterday, there was an office baby sprinkle for the family (we got together for a meal and everyone brought them diapers). During the lunch, they revealed the name for the new baby: [\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ].<\/p>\n

I’m all for people choosing names to their tastes, and I know that I’m not going to like everyone’s names (and that’s fine!), but I can’t believe they haven’t thought how terrible [the name] sounds. Like it sounds like someone is [cheating or scamming a commendable organization]. I’ve been saying it out loud over and over since yesterday and I can’t shake how troubling it sounds to me.<\/p>\n

We’re seeing them again this weekend and I’m wondering if this is something I should mention to the mom-to-be. All I can think of is if the name is brought up in conversation, I could just say, “Hey, did you consider that the baby’s name sounds like this? Are you and Husband comfortable with this?”<\/p>\n

I feel so awkward about the entire thing. Am I overreacting to my impression of this name? Do I just stay quietly to the side and watch this unfold? I’m leaning toward keeping my mouth shut and learning to contain my cringes whenever we see them.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your help!<\/p>\n

CC<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’m uneasy about posting someone else’s baby name here, so I’ve removed that part. It’s too bad, because having an example really helps when considering the issue. On the other hand, many of us have probably wondered a similar thing about a totally different situation, so perhaps we could just discuss more generally whether it’s a good idea to speak up when you see an issue with a name that has not yet been officially given to a baby.<\/p>\n

Here are the reasons FOR speaking up:<\/p>\n

1. The parents may seriously not have thought of the issue, and may agree it’s a serious concern, and may end up with serious name regret later if they don’t realize the issue ahead of time.<\/p>\n

Here are the reasons AGAINST speaking up, at least in this particular example:<\/p>\n

1. It seems like the kind of feedback people generally dislike.
\n2. They haven’t asked for feedback.
\n3. They haven’t said it’s a name they’re considering, they’ve said it’s the name they’ve chosen.
\n4. As people living with that surname, it seems likely they’ve thought of the issues with it.
\n5. There really isn’t any good way to say it. Asking if they’re comfortable with it seems to imply that the only natural answer is “No.”
\n6. I think most of the possible outcomes of such a discussion are going to be negative outcomes.<\/p>\n

I think what we’d need here is a balance scale to figure out whether the possible reasons to speak are worth the possible reasons against it, but the trouble is we can only guess at all the weights and measurements. On one side we’d put “How serious a problem is this?”—and as we know from letters and comments on this blog, there is wide disagreement on this kind of thing. One person’s “Oh, man, stay WAY away from THAT!” is another person’s “Who cares? You can find a problem with ANY name.” And there are all the places in between: for example, parents noticing the issue but concluding that it’s worth it for this particular name.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the scale we’d put “How likely are they to shoot\/resent the messenger and\/or be thrown into unnecessary doubt and turmoil?”—and again, we just don’t know. If they were to easily change the chosen name and thank you with great relief, that would probably be okay; if they keep the name, they may always remember you as a person who disliked their baby’s name and tried to talk them out of it. Or they may decide in the end not to change it, but spend the rest of the pregnancy feeling very unhappy and stressed about it. Or maybe not! Maybe they’re extremely laid-back people who believe in frank talk and would easily shrug off anyone’s input if they didn’t agree.<\/p>\n

Here is how I think I’d think it through, if it were my husband’s co-worker’s wife:<\/p>\n

1. I am uncertain how big of an issue this thing bugging me actually is: would it seem like a problem to LOTS of people, or just a few? This is not something I can know; I can only guess.
\n2. I am distant from these people, relationship-wise.
\n3. If it IS a big issue to a large number of people, and they have been telling everyone the name, SURELY someone has already pointed it out to them.
\n4. If not, that still doesn’t mean it needs to be ME who says something.<\/p>\n

That is, I think I would let the “How serious of a problem is this?” side of the balance scale be in charge of automatically generating a response from someone other than me. If it’s a big deal, someone else will say something: there are always people who don’t give a single thought to whether or not their input would be welcome (*thinks briefly of my late mother-in-law*). And if it’s not a big deal, then no one will say anything and I will be glad I didn’t either.<\/p>\n

It’s a tough call, though. Even with my strong interest in baby names and all my careful attention to detail, we realized only a couple of years after one child was born that we’d given initials that spelled something (in a license plate \/ text speak kind of way, or else we would have noticed it earlier). Luckily it wasn’t anything BAD. But if it HAD been bad, I would have been glad to have noticed it beforehand. And perhaps my husband’s co-worker’s wife would be the perfect person to point it out: none of the baggage of hearing it from my mother-in-law, for example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, An acquaintance (husband’s coworker and his wife) are expecting their third baby. They have two adorable children with pretty “normal” names; recognizable, relatively easy to spell, easy to pronounce, etc. Their last name is [\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ]. Yesterday, there was an office baby sprinkle for the family (we got together for a meal and […]<\/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-12332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3cU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12332","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=12332"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12338,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12332\/revisions\/12338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}