Your baby's name is 'so weird' ...?

[brandnewcoffee]

Due with our baby girl in just a few weeks. It took us a long time to pick a name that will flow nicely with the middle name as well as the surname and a name we both love equally. My nan texted me this morning and ask if we've picked a name yet so I told her that we have and told her the name we chose is Esmé. Her response was simply 'such a weird name'. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm gobsmacked and don't know what to say back. I know it doesn't matter what others think about the name we chose for our baby girl but it really got me doubting myself and now I'm sat here worrying whether we picked the right name. AIBU?

If she’s not normally that blunt could it be a predictive text error?

It's a lovely name but to anyone over 60ish who isn't immersed in modern naming trends it is a bit weird.

Blimey I hope when you're '60ish' you'll remember how you thought of people that age. We are able to use Social Media you know, and we/our friends are becoming grandparents, we are aunts and uncles, we watch TV, have colleagues with young children. So not entirely cut off from what's happening in the child naming world.

Ah it was rude, but it’s a very ‘now’ name and will sound weird to lots of nans!

Lovely, by the way...

I love that name, its beautiful x

My daughter is Lyla and when we told my boyfriends grandma her response was..."Oh right..whose idea was that then?"

When we called our daughter ‘Phoebe’ 27 years ago, my mother in law said ‘you’ve got time to change your mind’.....she then went on to recommend her choice of Pamela. Given our surname starts with a P, Pamela was definitely out of the running!!

And by the way, Esme is a beautiful, beautiful name.

Well, now I'm disappointed! I was expecting to have a big reveal of the "weird name".
Esme is by no means weird. What's actually weird is that somebody thinks that it's weird!

I might have agreed with the weirdness verdict if the name had been Ceramica or Calexica or Beetlejuice or Diddums!

This was the name I wanted for ds if he was a dd.

@RockingMyFiftiesNot

It's a lovely name but to anyone over 60ish who isn't immersed in modern naming trends it is a bit weird.

Blimey I hope when you're '60ish' you'll remember how you thought of people that age. We are able to use Social Media you know, and we/our friends are becoming grandparents, we are aunts and uncles, we watch TV, have colleagues with young children. So not entirely cut off from what's happening in the child naming world.

I'm fifty, with a very tech savvy 75 year old mother :)

But I think people two generations older should be allowed a little bit of leeway. My gran thought most of the things we did, said, listened to and wore were utterly incomprehensible, and to be fair it went both ways.

Refusing to use butter that hasn't first been decanted into a ceramic dish that looks like a packet of butter? Mental.

@MorrisZapp how fascinating. But my butter dish doesn't look like a packet of butter - it's white, much larger and you lift off the lid rather than unwrap it. Are you telling me you take the butter directly from the packet faints

Lol OK maybe I'm thinking of modern 'lurpak' branded containers. But my gran had branded tins for Cream Crackers, Ryvita, Homepride Flour, Tetleys Tea etc etc.

These were all acceptable. Passing someone a biscuit from THE PACKET IT CAME IN was so rude you might as well kick them down the stairs.

Ideally, a plate acted as middleman. For special occasions, the plate had tiers.

Morris I was only teasing

@MorrisZapp

These were all acceptable. Passing someone a biscuit from THE PACKET IT CAME IN was so rude you might as well kick them down the stairs

So true!! I remember my great aunt calling my Gran a slattern for doing that, and being genuinely furious at her for it 😂

Mil said when told daughter being called Chloe said ,. She'll not thank you for that when she's older,. and kept referring to get as Cleo.

Funny coming from someone whose name is Davina Wilhelmina ,-. I could have said what horrible names you have,wish I had now we

I think the idea to text back 'rude!' is a great idea. Its a lovely name.

Rude! Is a good response.
My mother thinks it is impossible to be rude to somebody younger. In her mind, you can only be rude to your elders. It a mad mindset.

Really not a weird name. I was expecting a funky spelling or made up name.

I do think it's weird to text the name and gender before baby has arrived though.

Wow, I've just come back to this and didn't realise there was so many comments! I will be sitting down with a cuppa later on and reading through the thread thanks all x

@SelkieFly

Rude! Is a good response. My mother thinks it is impossible to be rude to somebody younger. In her mind, you can only be rude to your elders. It a mad mindset.

DHs nan is like that, we can be rude to her because she's older than us so should be respected and never questioned or challenged. She can't possibly be rude to us though as we are just "the children" so she can say whatever she likes and we can't be upset.

She's stopped acting like this to me though as I do just challenge her and tell her she's being rude.

Thinking about it she hasn't asked about our ideas for baby names during my current pregnancy. She has clearly learned her lesson after nearly having a heart attack at the "wild and made up" names that we had in mind for DC2.

I agree with PPs, just message back saying "rude!" And leave her to it. I can't stand rudeness, if she wasn't prepared to hear any name and make a positive comment then why ask?

My grandad who is in his late 80's had never heard my sons name before (and we'd had some negative comments from the in-laws) but he just asked how to spell it and said it's perfect for such a good looking chap (good looking like his great gramp apparently). So I can't believe that people use age as an excuse not to respect someone's name choices and to be rude about it. You can age and keep up with the world and see things changing. Also it's always been a faux par to be rude so that's not even a new fangled modern idea.

Esmè is a lovely name, it sounds both fresh and timeless, so don't let her shake your confidence in your choice and remember it is YOUR choice not hers, so her opinion means absolutely nothing.

Oh this thread has made me laugh. I wanted to hurl when I heard my first niece's name. Now I absolutely love it.

When I was pregnant I sadly told my best friend that my DP had vetoed my chosen baby name she let a huge sigh of relief and told me the name was awful and thankfully one of us could see that. She was so embarrassed when I told her I talked him around.

Grandmas are so weird. When my youngest was born we named her Eliza Lily and she thought that was weird. I think elderly people feel that they have earned the right to be as rude as they like.
Esme is a beautiful name, I know a couple and both lovely kids

@MorrisZapp

It's a lovely name but to anyone over 60ish who isn't immersed in modern naming trends it is a bit weird.

So to you it's just a lovely name, but to someone forty years older than you it's the equivalent of say, Chevrolet.

I'd cut Nan some slack, and keep names under wraps until they have a delightful baby to attach them to.

Eh? Esme is nothing like Chevrolet! It's similar to Violet, Ada, Ivy, Edith etc - ie a lovely "old-fashioned" name that has grown in popularity over the last 25 years or so.

I first encountered a little Esme at a nursery school in the late 1990s. Prior to then, I'd only come across it in elderly ladies and in period dramas set in the 1920s.

I'm over 60, in case that's relevant!

I would tell her she's being rude.