Thoughts on having the same name as a friends baby?

[justasmallglass]

Considering Charlie for DS2, however friend's 6 month old has the same name. We are in touch but don't see each other every week. Acceptable to steal?

Use whichever name you like best. If it's the same as someone else's choice then that's just a coincidence.

people have very strong views about this on MN - on both camps. where is charlie in the rankings at the moment? how close is your friend? how would you feel if the situations were reversed? if there are a close friend then i would say no, or i would at least check and see if the other friend minded.

people on here says no-one owns a name. but i say its all about being considerate to a friend

I have the same name for DS2 as a friend, however there is 12 years age difference... She was thrilled I used the same name.

TBH I know loads of Chralie's - it seems very popular around here.

Unless it was a family name or one I have loved for YEARS then I wouldn't do it, I think it shows a complete lack of imagination (sorry).

If you like it and would genuinely considered it without knowing DF, then go for it.
MAybe metion it first (before baby comes) so it's not a big shock.

I think its fine to do. We loved our daughters name and a friend named her daughter it 6 months earlier. Given we liked the name from our last child (it was the second choice) we figured why change from a second choice.

i don't think mentioning it, so its not a big shock would work. friends we thought were close did that to us and we were so shocked we didn't say anything and assumed they would change their mind. they didn't and it has changed our relationship as a result. though they did know that we had chosen the name partly as it wasn't that popular. agree we didn't own the name, but if you are close friends it just doesn;t seem a very friendly thing to do

I agree with both camps but I tend to agree with chippinginneeds that unless you had always had it for you future dc or it is a family name best avoid...

However could you name your ds Charles nn Charlie at least that would be a compromise???

Unacceptable imho.

Would be easy if you lived in Bali... all 1st born have the same name, all 2nd born have the same name... male and female!

Completely acceptable....choosing the name of a kid is important enough for the other person not to get all cross and petty about it.
There's not much worse than being imaginative just to be imaginative. You're not unique if you try to be...it's that kind of thing. If you really like Charlie (one of the most popular names ever)...use it.

You probably will see each other more once you've had the baby, you will need all the friends you can get. If you're only considering it, if you haven't loved it since childhood, name of a recently deceased loved one etc. She might not act like she minds but she and/or her DP will.

I'm currently expecting my first DC (have decided to wait to find out the sex), and I've had my choice for a girl's name picked out since I was a teenager (a variation of my great gran's name followed by my late sister's name) - I'm now 30, so you can imagine how I felt at 3 1/2 months pg when one of my oldest friends named his 2nd DD by the same 1st name that I'm planning on using.

I've reasoned that he lives a long way away these days (2-3 hours away by car), I told him off for nicking my chosen name as soon as I found out his DD2's name, and I've had it picked out for about 15 years, so I'm still entitled to use it.

Still only a 50/50 chance that I'll need it though ...

Agree no one owns a name but still, I wouldn't.
Maybe as a second name..

If you feel really strongly about the name, use it, but do be prepared for your friend to be upset.

A friend recently used my DS's name for her DS. She asked me first if I minded. I was rather flattered - and feel there's a rather nice little connection between the two of them now.

I think you can get away with it if it's a friend, and a reasonably common name; after all, you might not be friends in a few years.

But family is different; my friend doesn't speak to her SIL any more after she "stole" her DS1's name - even though he was 11 by that point.

I think it depends on how close the friendship is and whether she knew this was a name you liked prior to naming her own DS.

We had our DD's name picked from the time we discussed getting married - it was another 8 years before she actually came along, and although no-one owns a name, tbh I would have been devastated and pretty pissed off if a close friend had knowingly used it first.

Not saying it's a reasonable reaction necessarily, or that I would lose a friendship over it, but it would always rankle.

I agree that it is ok if you genuinely had the name in mind before they named theirs. If you heard their name and then stole it then very bad form.

Wouldn't bother me at all, I don't really get what the fuss is all about - unless its a made up name Friends of ours that we see a few times a year but would keep in touch with recently had a baby. Their girls name was the same as our dd2, I really didn't give it a second thought - mind you its a terribly unorginal popular name - turns out they had a boy.

Friend(ish) of mine had a dd name which I love but we have really similar surnames too so what made our shortlist was a slightly different version of it. Eg Beatrice Bond / Beatrix Bane, similar enough without using exactly the same name. My baby turned out to have a winkle though so it wasn't an issue.

I would say the "stealing names" things only counts if it's something really unusual, which Charlie is not.

I honestly don't see the problem, particularly with a fairly popular name.

In my dads family I have 6 male cousins, 2 names are duplicated, no-one seems to care.

Why would you want to use the name now they have? I wouldn't want to use a name of a child I knew of the same age.

Agree with undercoverdad - it's a popular name so no biggy. The obvious thing would be to go for Charles, nn Charlie? Much better to avoid diminutives as official names anyway...

My friend nicked dd2's unusual name for her own dd3's middle name - I thought that was rather nice actually, as the girls are growing up to be friends - but OK, I was a bit taken aback that friend didn't mention beforehand that she was planning to do so.

OTOH, I vetoed dh & my first choice for dd1 because it was a name my friend at Uni had given to her dd1. Totally daft as Uni friend now lives abroad, there's 15 years between our dds & they've never met!

So overall, I'd say only any sort of problem if you are likely to spend huge amounts of time together; even then, I have cousins with the same name (after our grandfather) who were known as Big & Little throughout our childhood without it unduly fazing anyone...