Delia writes:<\/p>\n
I have a question that I am sure you have come across many times before, but I would like to hear your thoughts \/ your readers thoughts on it. It has to do with naming a child with the same name as one used in your social circle (or close to it). DH & I have been together for 5 years and recently decided to start trying for a baby. In our 1st year together we talked about kids and we decided back then already that if we have a son, we would call him Ethan – we both love the name, it sound good with our surname and it just felt (and still does feel) ‘right’. Fast forward to the present and we found out today that some colleagues\/ friends that had a baby boy last week have named him Ethan. Now, sure, it’s not like we had a claim staked on the name and we didn’t advertise the fact that we had chosen that particular name, but it feels like if we were to now name our child the same it would be kind of odd, even be seen to be ‘copying’ them. That being said, we are not as close with this couple or other friends of theirs that we also used to socialize with as we once were and speak to or hang out with them outside of work (we all work at the same company). I am of the opinion that if we aren’t that close then it shouldn’t matter, but DH feels the name should be up for review. Should we just abandon the idea of using Ethan and go back to the drawing board, or should we stick with it even if their is a bit of the weirdness factor thrown in?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In your case, I’d say it’s pretty clear you can go right ahead and use the name. Ethan is a fairly common name, and at the very earliest the boys will be nearly a year apart, so I don’t think anyone will make a connection as they might if the name in question were Edgar. If you feel a little awk, you can spread The Story of His Name: every time you tell what his name is, you can say that when you and your husband were in your first year of marriage, before you even knew when you would have a baby, you decided on Ethan as your boy name. Tell this story with stars in your eyes, and everything’s fine: you’ve made it clear that your choice has nothing to do with anyone else’s choice.<\/p>\n
Any tips from the rest of you? Have you been in this situation, and what did you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Delia writes: I have a question that I am sure you have come across many times before, but I would like to hear your thoughts \/ your readers thoughts on it. It has to do with naming a child with the same name as one used in your social circle (or close to it). DH […]<\/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-6892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Na","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6892","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=6892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}