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Baby names

Find baby name inspiration and advice on the Mumsnet Baby Names forum.

Friend stopped speaking to me over my baby’s name

28 replies

Mamatobe83 · 30/01/2019 00:05

I’ve recently had a baby boy and my DH had chosen a name that we both liked however it’s the same name as my friend’s 6yr old son so I wasn’t sure. The name meant a lot to my DH and we liked it over other names so I decided to ask my friend whether it was ok to use it as this was the only reason we weren’t! For context my friend has never met my partner or been to my house, I see her about 3-4 times a year which I tend to instigate and we don’t live in the same area, so after much deliberation we didn’t think it was a good enough reason not to name our son a name we both loved.

I messaged her and she said she didn’t mind and understood that finding names is hard. So we named our son this and we are very happy with the name and it suits him well! I thought I’d done the right thing in asking... But since then my friend has deleted me from social media and I found out from a mutual friend she was hurt that we had called our son the same name as her son. She hasn’t spoken to me directly about this and I feel incredibly offended that she has deleted me and obviously can’t bear to look at any pictures of our baby who shares the same name as her son. I feel like I did the right thing in asking but wondered what others opinions are on this. Would you react this way?

OP posts:
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Mamatobe83 · 30/01/2019 00:13

It’s a fairly common name and not unusual at all! My DH didn’t like the name I’d chosen because he thought it was too unusual. I would understand if it was really unique. So I went with a more uncommon middle name!

OP posts:
Hippee · 30/01/2019 00:12

Sorry that has happened to you - I can't understand it. We did the same with friends, whose son is only a year older than DS2 - we only see them a couple of times a year and they were fine with it - and DS2 counts their DS as a great friend, because they have the same name. I would be fine with it the other way round.

PennyMordauntsLadyBrain · 30/01/2019 00:09

Hmmm.

What’s the name?

If it’s Ignatius or Fox or something similarly unusual I could kind of see why she was a bit put out. Still an overreaction though.

If it’s a top 50 name like George or Noah etc then she is being extremely unreasonable.