Not pregnant at this point, but I still try to keep my names private from casual acquaintances as I am terrified of Name-Napping! I’ve heard too many stories about friends and in-laws (not to mention neighbors and co-workers) using someone else’s name. My sister and best friend know (and we have a truce among us that we won’t steal each other’s favorites) but otherwise I keep it to myself - also because of the unusual nature of my favorites I’d rather not hear opinions (of course, this will be more important when I am actually pregnant!)
While I know that it isn’t my right to lay claim on my name from the whole world, I think there are definitely some rules of etiquette and ways to make peace amongst friends and relatives.
I know how you feel. I am currently 3.5 months pregnant and after much vacilation I finally played the name game with my sister. We didn’t have any overlapping names BUT I just found out that she has been going around telling all her friends and co-workers my name choices! She has no idea why I’m so upset! Didn’t she see that Friends episode where [name]Rachel[/name] totally swipes [name]Monica[/name]'s baby name???
[name]Kate[/name], I feel for you! I’m not pregnant myself (yet) but like fairly obscure names and so don’t share them in RL. I feel pretty secure sharing them online, I mean, how many other folks are going to find [name]Ottoline[/name], [name]Eulalie[/name] or [name]Lucretia[/name] appealing for a girl? Or [name]Remus[/name], [name]Cassius[/name] or [name]August[/name] for a boy?
Have you told your sister that you’re upset and asked her to please stop? If not, you should really do so, in a calm & quiet manner. If you have, then good. And for any possible future kids, don’t tell your sister!
I totally agree. As I said in another post in another topic here, one of the people I work with is currently pregnant, and I know I’m going to be biting my nails until [name]April[/name] next year, desperately wanting to know if the names my fiance and I have chosen for our future children are ‘safe’, so to speak. I don’t mind if my kids end up with other kids of the same name in their classes at school, but if my colleague uses one of the names (especially my girl-name, I have my heart set on it) and then I use it, it’s going to look like I’M name-napping, when I thought of it first!
It’s highly doubtful that she would come up with it, or that her husband would agree to it, but ever time I see it written down in the paper or on the noticeboard, I want to take a match to it before she sees it, just in case!!
Maybe I should come up with some other girl-names, just in case…
I am very secret about my names. I don’t want anyone stealing my favorites for a future child. Nobody’s hearing them. I made a list of them, but it’s still secret…
i’m not worried about it… yet. not a lot of my friends are having kids yet (i’m 23), and those that have generally use very popular or kreatif names, so, so far i don’t have anything to worry about.
I know how u are feeling…
My fiancee and I are the ONLY people
who know the names of our future children…
Once I was telling my sister the name I wanted to name my little girl
and she was pregnant at the time…
a few months later she told me that she found a name for her little girl
it was the exact same as mine except it had an H at the end…
(it was still the same name because the H was silent…)
I got really upset…SHE STOLE MY NAME!!!
I have my heart set on my girl name. It was my great-grandmother’s name, and I’ve always loved it. A friend of mine used it about a year ago, and I’m still not over it! We were having the “I’ll share mine if you share yours” conversation about baby names and she and her husband absolutely LOVED the name I mentioned. When their daughter was born, she used the name. She lives out of town, and we have only a few mutual friends, but I still am so upset! It feels like a “used” name now…
I’ll still probably use it if I have a girl because of the family connection, but I definitely keep my choices secret now.
I am 5.5 months pregnant and today my younger sister asked me about names. Thinking I could be smart and do the whole give them a fake name I would never use, I replied that I was naming my daughter to be Abbettina [name]Finula[/name] [name]Lynn[/name]. I thought that her expression was one of disgust, but then I found out it was one of anger! She then asked me if that was really the name I was using and when I told her it was my absolute favorite name she revealed to me that Abbettina was one of her favorite names that she would consider for her future daughter. I couldn’t control my laughter, but then I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was just an ugly name (just in my opinion, I’m sure that it could be lovely…maybe) I came with. So as of right now she is mad at me and wants to know who told me that Abbettina was ‘her’ name. What do I do?
I feel you girl! I’m just a teenberry, but man when I hit about 25, or any of my friends start to have kids, I will 100% not share my top 10 boy or girl names with them. Not because I don’t want them to give their kids great names, I just want their names to be great names I would never use. I know it may be a bit stupid, but I just want to make sure there aren’t any other kids in my social circle with my kid’s names.
My sister and I have always shared name ideas and talked about our favourites. If there is an occurrence where we both really like a name, we get our partners thoughts on it, chances are one of them won’t like it! But mostly we agree that it sits better on one of our lists rather than the others.
Other than that, the only people I talk to is my Mum and obviously my partner! Especially now my partner and I are considering children in the next few years or so we have really nuckled down to semi finaslise our list of 2 boys and 2 girls so over the next year or so we can work out if they would ondeed work for our children
I will always share new names with my sister and she does the same (though she knows I’ll share my opinion whether the baby already has it or not and if neither of us like the others’ baby name, we know the other will have a personal nickname for the kid, we’re sisters after all…)
As for friends, I’d only tell my closest friends…if they end up “stealing” it, they’re gonna have to deal with the fact that I’m not changing it just b/c their kid has the same name…when my mind is made-up, it is made-up…I’m sooo stubborn that I would consider naming my child the same name my friend stole even if I didn’t really wanna use it anymore, just to prove a point, haha (hopefully I would end up not doing that though, I wouldn’t name my child out of spite, but I’d want to…)
As for the “Friends” episode, Rachel didn’t “steal” Monica’s baby name. Monica “gave” it to her. Their friendship was more important than some silly baby name…also, it’s not like she used her “boy” baby name when she had the boy…
I’m super secretive about my names too. I tell a select one or two people. Unfortunately my sister-in-law and I have very similar styles, and she already has 5 kids and is looking to have more in the future, so I especially steer clear from her! When she named her daughter [name_f]Filomena[/name_f] I cried because I feel like it has wiped out [name_f]Wilhelmina[/name_f] for me :-/ (Still haven’t completely let go of it though!)
