{"id":15650,"date":"2021-11-26T09:37:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T13:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15650"},"modified":"2021-11-26T11:42:09","modified_gmt":"2021-11-26T15:42:09","slug":"baby-naming-issue-birth-certificate-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/11\/26\/baby-naming-issue-birth-certificate-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Birth Certificate Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi there Swistle,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reaching out for some thoughts on how many times is too many to change your babies name…
\nI know sounds a little curious…<\/p>\n

My daughter was born in May of 2020 (peak pandemic). We wanted to name her Coco Gianna (pre-Covid) but I got scared that we would associate her first name with the word Covid.<\/p>\n

We named her Nico Gianna (and it never truly felt like \u201cit\u201d for me).<\/p>\n

So, at 6 months old (before applying for her birth certificate) we added in \u201cJune\u201d (another name I had on my list).
\nMy husband calling her Nico.
\nMe calling her Nico-June.<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s 18 months old and can say her own name and in her sweet little toddler talk she calls herself \u201cCoco\u201d.
\nWhen I say Nico, Nini or Junie, she corrects me, \u201cCoco\u201d.<\/p>\n

I think Nico-June is so sweet and unique but I\u2019m often called back to think- she should have been a Coco.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s SERIOUSLY pulling at my heart strings and triggering my feelings of name regret.<\/p>\n

Do I send in for a new birth certificate and write on it Coco June Gianna?
\nOr just keep Coco as her little family nickname.<\/p>\n

Siblings are-
\nParker Emilia
\nQuentin Hayes (nn Quinn)
\n(and her twin) Jasper Graham<\/p>\n

Thank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have a Coping Thought I find useful when I am experiencing the kind of stress\/uncertainty\/indecision where I keep thinking about something, but thinking about it doesn’t seem to be getting me any closer to a decision. The Coping Thought is this: “I don’t have to make this decision RIGHT NOW.” (Currently I am using it because a housecleaner stole from us and we had to fire them, and I keep spiraling off into decisions that can wait until LATER, such as “CAN I EVER TRUST CLEANERS IN THE HOUSE AGAIN??” and “BUT HOW WOULD WE EVEN FIND NEW CLEANERS??” and “BUT HOW ARE WE GOING TO CLEAN THE HOUSE OURSELVES WHEN WE ARE FAIRLY BAD AT DOING THAT??” All of these are decisions I don’t need to make RIGHT NOW, and in fact CAN’T make right now while still at this level of emotion\/stress.)<\/p>\n

I think for now you could delight in the way that she is calling herself by the very nickname you wanted to name her and were sorry you hadn’t named her. There is no reason it has to match what’s written on her birth certificate: the birth certificate isn’t something we file with The Universe to declare our child’s True Fated Name, it’s just a government document to let the government keep track of its citizens. There are plenty of reasons why someone’s True Name might not match the birth certificate: maybe the parents felt pressured to submit to a naming tradition, so they put the Tradition Name on the birth certificate but they call the child by the child’s True Name; maybe the child doesn’t like their Birth Certificate Name and goes by something else but it’s not worth it to them to go through the hassle of changing the birth certificate, and\/or they’d actually prefer to keep their True Name as something for people who actually know them; maybe someone goes by a nickname of their given name to the extent that NO ONE calls them their Birth Certificate Name, but that’s a normal\/familiar situation and causes no real issue. You have another child named Quentin and nicknamed Quinn; do you feel as if you must change the birth certificate to reflect that nickname? Or does it feel as if the child can be Quentin AND Quinn?<\/p>\n

If, as the years go by, she is known as Coco to absolutely everyone, and she actively dislikes the name Nico, and it bugs you\/her that Nico is on the birth certificate and Coco is not, you can change it then. But until then, I think everything is okay: you wanted to call her Coco; Coco works as a nickname for her given name; she is calling herself Coco; you can call her Coco, too! Those are all happy things! The birth certificate doesn’t need to be involved in this at all. It CAN be involved, later—but you don’t have to make that decision RIGHT NOW. It isn’t even a question of how many times a parent can change their baby’s birth certificate (I’d say as a rule of thumb ONCE, and after that the parents should look into whether there may be a different issue masquerading as name regret), but more a question of whether it needs to be changed at all (unknown), and whether that decision needs to be made RIGHT NOW (no).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi there Swistle, I\u2019m reaching out for some thoughts on how many times is too many to change your babies name… I know sounds a little curious… My daughter was born in May of 2020 (peak pandemic). We wanted to name her Coco Gianna (pre-Covid) but I got scared that we would associate her first […]<\/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-15650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-44q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15650","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=15650"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15655,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15650\/revisions\/15655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}