Does this mom’s sister have the right to lay claim to certain baby names?
The thing about baby names is that they aren’t exclusive, and as much as anyone might love a particular name, other people are going to use it too. That’s the issue at the center of a dispute posted on Reddit’s “Am I the A**hole” forum, where a new mom noted that her conflict with her family was “so petty,” but wanted to know if she went “too far” in the fight over baby names.
“I (26f) have an older sister Jade (28f) who is not in a relationship, is not pregnant and is not planning to have kids anytime soon. While I had my son a few days ago. I’m not close to my family. There’s a very big golden child thing with Jade and my parents really should have stopped at their one perfect darling kid (what they call her) because I got the short end of the stick with them always,” she wrote. “So when they found out my son’s name is Finnick, Jade came and told me I could not call him Finnick and needed to rename my son because Finnick is on her baby boy name list so she’s going to use it one day and not me. I laughed in her face and told her to leave and dismissed her request by saying she had no authority in this.”
The new mom continued, “My parents decided to jump in the next day and they told me I should listen to my sister and choose another name to be a good sister to Jade. They said to think about how Jade would feel and she prides herself on that list. I decided to bring some snark into this and my response was simply that if Jade wants to own the rights to names then she better get rich fast and buy those names because otherwise she cannot stop people from using the ones on her list, not even me. For the record, I know it doesn’t work like that.”
She finished her post by writing, “My parents started to freak out over this and basically told me I was being a bully saying things like that and how dare I dismiss Jade. I threw them out too. And what followed was texts from Jade and my parents saying I had no reason to treat them so rudely. I blocked them. I might be done. But did I go too far?”
Wow. What a wild situation. In the comments, it was pretty much unanimous that this new mom was not in the wrong. One of the highest voted comments reads, “If you looked over your sister’s list and told her certain names were off limits because they were on YOUR list, would she offer you the same benefit? Of course not. This is the action of a child who was given special treatment by your parents and never told “no” in life. She grew up into an adult who doesn’t seem to comprehend that there are other people in the world and you cannot dictate the “terms” of another person’s life. You name your baby whatever it is you wish to name them. You tell your sister that she survived the millions of other people having the same name as her future baby, so she’ll survive yours if you happen to choose that name.”
A response to that adds, “Or better yet. Tell them that Jade is on your list and she should be a good sister and change her name in case you have a daughter next.”
Another top-voted comment, which is leaning into the pettiness of the whole situation, adds, “Act concerned and be like, ‘Sh*t, ok. What are the other names on her list, boys and girls, so I don’t acccidentally use another one. Then every time you get a pet, (even a goldfish) or if you have another baby, just start using her names one by one.”
What would you do in this situation?
