RW writes:<\/p>\n
I have a naming issue. It’s not a baby-naming issue, since the baby girl in question has now grown to school age. My daughter’s name is Eve. One of the reasons I chose it is because it’s so short you can’t make a nickname from it! Also I did think it would be unusual. I understand that it has gone up the baby-name charts in recent years (rats!) but it isn’t popular in our area, thank goodness. So I was surprised when she started school recently to discover a classmate, named Evangeline, who goes by Eve as well. They use their last name initials to get around it and it doesn’t seem to bother them; they are pals. I’m the one that’s bothered! I wish Evangeline’s family would pick another nickname for their daughter so it’s easier to tell them apart. I believe that going by the full name is off the table, but they have lots of other choices! We have run into confusion a couple of times with classmates\/parents of classmates getting the girls confused. Nothing fatal, but still! I would hate for my girl to have her feelings hurt because of it.<\/p>\n
Would it be wrong of me to approach the other parents and ask them to consider picking another nickname for their girl? Am I being too uptight? Is it not my problem? It’s probably not my problem. It isn’t going to go away though – the girls are in an enriched program and are likely to continue in the same class until they are teenagers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Yes, it would be wrong to approach the other parents and ask them to call their school-aged daughter a different nickname than the one she goes by. Even if your daughter were bothered by it, which she isn’t, and even if it were causing serious and unusual confusion, which it isn’t, it would be wrong. They deliberately chose their daughter’s name and nickname, just as you deliberately chose your daughter’s name and lack of nickname. Acting as if the name ought to be your daughter’s exclusive property is the path that would lead to the genuine confusion and hurt feelings, and could end up interfering with the girls’ friendship.<\/p>\n
In addition to being wrong, it would be impractical: not only will this problem not go away, it’s likely to get worse. This is not going to be the only time your daughter encounters another Eve, and I don’t anticipate a high success rate from asking all the other parents to change their daughters’ names\/nicknames.<\/p>\n
If you find it unacceptable for your daughter to share her name with someone else, your only option is to change your own daughter’s name. And at this point, it might not be your option to change hers, either: you could ask her if she’d like to go by a different name (Evie is a common nickname for Eve, or she could go by her middle name, or by her first and middle names together, or by her first and middle initials), but she’s old enough to prefer not to. And even if she does agree to go by a different name, she could then encounter someone in her life who shares THAT name; will she need to continue changing her name until she’s the only one who has it?<\/p>\n
No, this is not going to work. The girls happen to go by the same name, which is disappointing but far from unusual: many, many people share a name or nickname. It sounds as if the two girls are handling it in the standard way, by using last name initials when necessary to avoid confusion. The standard way for the parents to handle it is to feel disappointed, and then to rally in a resigned way and\/or find the fun in it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RW writes: I have a naming issue. It’s not a baby-naming issue, since the baby girl in question has now grown to school age. My daughter’s name is Eve. One of the reasons I chose it is because it’s so short you can’t make a nickname from it! Also I did think it would be […]<\/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-7603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1YD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7603","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=7603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7605,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7603\/revisions\/7605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}