Sister in law took our baby girl name

[hannahb93x]

So a bit of background, I had my son back in October 2018 and the February after we found out that my sister in law was pregnant.
Whilst we were pregnant with our son we had decided on a girl and boy name.
Our girl name was Harper, we loved it and didn’t like anything else.
Anyway we found out we were having a boy so that took the focus off the girl name and we named him Jack.
Fast forward to March/April 2019 and my sister in law tells us that they’ve decided on names.
you guessed it, her girl name was Harper.
We basically said but that’s our girl name if we have one and it was a case of oh well my partner likes it.
Anyway nothing more was said and she had the baby in October and named her Harper.
At this point I didn’t mind so much, it was only went I fell pregnant with my little girl back in 2022 that all the feelings started coming up.
We ended up naming our little girl 2 weeks before she was born, but I don’t LOVE her name, she should have always been called Harper.
It’s hard because I just think to myself, of all the names in the world and you chose that one.
I don’t want to feel like this for the rest of my life. Not sure I’ll ever get past it :-(

If it makes you feel any better, Harper is a hideous name to burden a beautiful baby girl with. Makes me think of a harpy. Hopefully what you went with is an actual nice name and your SIL did you a favour?

@hannahb93x You are being ridiculous!
No one owns a name, they are not unique.

You should have just named her Harper, but it’s possibly a lucky escape- it’s a name that will likely date, also it’s hard to shorten.
” Harpy” - it also has associations with nagging- “ Stop harping on”
We have same names in family- it doesn’t matter one jot.

It's your fault for giving her a name you don't love! If I had been in your situation I would have made it a mission to come up with a name I loved even more. If you'd had more than one daughter you would have had to do this or else the second daughter would have had a name you didn't love.

Glad I’m not the only one!
I too think it’s a hard name “HARPER!!” being yelled at by a parent , plus the Harpy association.

Harpy?

And BTW, I don't get the love for the name harper- it's a surname to me.

I mean you both copied the Beckhams. There will be many others who did the same. And you can’t ask someone to hold off from a name you like on the offchance that you may at some point have a girl. It might never have happened.

@Allthatwegotisthispalebluedot , Have you never heard of Harper Lee who wrote To Kill A Mockingbird? that surprises me.
Her first name was Nelle. She used her middle name as a pen name.

Assuming your dd is nearly 2 years old, you need to get over it. You could have named her Harper. It's a very common name; nobody owns it.

This thread reminds me a bit of the poster who was upset because she found out another person in her town had used the name she had " made up" apparently she thought she had invented the name Farrah 🤣

It's such a common name now, nothing special or unique about it. And besides she had a girl first and you were never guaranteed that move on

When these children get to school Harper will be a very common name, all the Beckham sycophants, find something less common, your child might even thank you. Teachers will tell you about names going in cycles, one friend had four Britneys in various spellings in one class a few years back.

The friend whose class had the Britneys in it had complaints from the parents because other children called them Ferries!

OP has only ever made one post - the OP.

Harper really has been done to death. My DS’s Year 2 class has a few in.

As an aside you should have named her Harper

I really can’t bear this ‘name stealing’ nonsense. A name doesn’t ‘belong’ to anyone.

The name harper makes me think of a harpy, lucky escape for your daughter

Imagine getting stressed about this, years later.

Must have nothing else to worry about.

It’s not even that nice - tell yourself that

A bit annoying, but to be fair I think she had a lucky escape as Harper is a bit naff. I bet your baby has a far lovelier name.

I agree.

You could have just used Harper anyway. No law against it. Could have told family that you’d already chosen it and SIL knew

that said, I don’t like harper much!

Haaaaha! Took me a couple of seconds to get that 😂

She didn't steal the name at all. Yes it's annoying though. Could you think if variations, like Hallie or Piper?

Pharper but the p is silent?

Call her Harper. What’s stopping you? Who cares if two totally different children have the same name? You don’t own the rights to a name so you can’t stop others choosing it. What about all of the families where two relatives have the most popular names like Emma, Claire, Mark, David etc - their parents can’t all go around feeling upset that their name / child’s identity has been stolen. Harper has connotations of nagging to me (harpy / harping on) if that helps put you off it!