Hey there lovely people,
I’ve been mulling this over in my head and though it could be an interesting discussion starter…
I have realised recently that I am subconsciously stressing that other family members will beat us to using names I/we love. My hubs has a big family, and a few of them currently have babies, are having babies, or are looking to have babies soon. We are about two years of ttc, and I have noticed myself thinking “but what if they use our name?!” a lot!
Now, normally my philosophy is “if you love it, use it” … but in this case, it would be first cousins close in age and that live reasonably close to each other, so I feel like it would be awkward to use a name that was already used.
There are double ups in my extended family, so having multiple of the same name in the family is not new to me, but they are spread out so I feel more comfortable with it (e.g I have two cousin Michaels, but there are like 10 years apart, and live on opposite coasts of the country).
We like unique names, and I feel like that should be a comfort… but his siblings like unique names too! So it doesn’t really make me feel any safer. (Example: I have nephews [name_m]Zebadiah[/name_m], [name_m]Osvaldo[/name_m], Peppino, etc)
Anyway, I mentioned it to my hybby and he was like “I doubt anyone will like the same names we do, and even if they do [use them], what does it matter?”
Then he posed the following: if we chose our baby names two years ago and then have a baby in two years, we have like the name for four years total. If his sibling chooses a name while pregnant, then even though they technically got to use it first, we loved it first. Thus, their using it should not disqualify us from using it.
So… what do you think? [name_f]Do[/name_f] you believe in “if you love it, use it” or " first in, first served"?
Would you give up a favourite name, because a close family member used it?
Interested to see your answers, and thanks for letting me think out loud. xoxo