Misnaming children

[Coatsoff42]

Should we call our children radically different names to future proof ourselves against calling out the wrong name? You know when you are tired and say your sister’s name instead of your niece’s, that sort of thing.
Would it help to call two boys Harry and Thundercloud? Or two girls Ann and Medusa? I wonder if they would grow up with vastly different self images.

Doesn’t work, I was always called G..Mary and my kid is K..Joe!!

It wouldn't make any difference. You'd be equally familiar with each name and make the same 'mistake' no matter what their name is. It happens in most families I should imagine.
Vastly different names ie plain v out there might be a bit more of an issue but I know someone in this situation (adult) who thought her parents were just a bit bonkers really.

Why does it matter if you call them the wrong name?

I call mine by the dogs name quite a lot, and so far it doesn’t seem to be causing any psychological damage.

I dint think it'll make a difference. I'm forever calling dd the cats' names and they are nothing like hers!

My brothers were always called JohnBill and BillJohn by my mother 😂.

My mum used to call me by the cats name all the time when I was a kid.
Several decades later she does the same to my daughter.
(Obviously different cat....😁)

It really wouldn't help. My children's names don't sound the same but I still use the wrong one lots 😁

I don’t think it will work either. DFIL goes through every one of his DGC’s names before he gets to the right one.

Im not sure baby Thundercloud or Medusa are going to thank you either

My mum cycles through my siblings names, sometimes twice before landing on the correct one - all our names are very different.

I guess there is no avoiding mixing up peoples names, I am really really relieved not to be the only one struggling to get the right name though. People get very annoyed and say it’s very rude, but it’s not a sign of disrespect for me. I don’t know why my brain struggles with it!

Obviously Medusa and thundercloud were not real initially, but thundercloud is growing on me…

We cycle through all names here. I’m known as “dadmum ” and dh is often called “mumdad”

it’s very common, apparently our brain mixes up the names of people we love.

I suppose naming a DS Thundercloud isn’t such a stretch when you consider some people name their DS Thor.

I’ve met a couple of baby Pandoras over tge last year and I’d consider that to be similar to Medusa

It's another one that is just normal life, but people will post on MN that it's rude.
My mother and I both did/do that thing thats Bill/Bert/Mary/dog's name ...oh whoever you are..! I never understood why my teachers at school muddled names of siblings, but it became much clearer later on.

Truth! I remember calling my teacher mummy, and GC called her grandpa 'mummy" the other day.

Can't see it working, my poor kids sometimes got the dog's name before the right name (or even "...whoever you are!')

It's become a running joke that my (step)mum would cycle through my three siblings and all the pets (4 cats, two parrots, cockatiel and guinea pig) before getting it right.

I think you need to go the other way like George Foreman and give them all the same name tbh

I work with teenagers and if I am tired they get called by the wrong name (it just comes out! I know it’s wrong as soon as I’m saying it and instantly correct myself). It’s always the name of one of their friends/peers and only happens with names starting with the same sound, there are a lot of names starting with A and M so for example Alexandra gets called Alison or Michael gets called Matthew (not their real names.) They just look at me pityingly as if I am ancient and mad and say soothingly, that’s ok.

I have literally never been called my own name by my mum. She uses only my sister’s or brothers’ names.
Also, if she is telling me about one of them she will invariably use the wrong name and it can be some way into the conversation before I realise from some other information who she really means.

My mum did it to me growing up. I do it to my kids (different sexes and names that share no letters/sounds). My mum now does it to her GC, mixing up the boys' names particularly, and often calls my son by my brother's name (tbf my son is v much like my brother in all ways and their names have similarities).

It does not cause childhood trauma and you'd still find yourself going "A-Medusa" or "Th-Harry"!

DH's mum calls him her brother's name (DH is an only child). He calls me DD's name and DD my name. (Dd is also an only child).

DD thinks it is hilarious and often calls me Daddy by mistake.

Just goes to show that if you only have one kid, it can still go wrong! 🤣

My mum frequently spirals through the entire family's bank of names, including all pets, before landing on the correct name, so no, I don't think it will help.

On a side note, I knew a family whose boy and girl with short, rhyming names, one letter apart. They had a townhouse, and the mum had a gong in the kitchen to summon the children - if she called up the stairs inevitably the wrong one would come, so her answer was to summon both!

I don't think that it really matters what you're called- family members will always mix you up! Bonus points if you all live in the same area, and people outside of the family do it, too!

The women in our family all have very different names. You tend to get a long list of names of family members before you might get to yours, or you just answer to anything (including the cat's name, or an entirely unrelated name that isn't on your birth certificate, but it's what your family calls you). Think: I was christened with an 80's/90's name, but called an old lady name that became fashionable. Interestingly, I got horrified looks for answering to it before its resurgence!

This habit of christening a child one thing and calling them another gets very confusing, to the point that we assumed that we were at the wrong person's funeral, denying that a relation worked somewhere because we didn't have an Uncle X, and a nurse who knew the family changing a relation's name on a hospital board because he was registered as X but known as Y. I'm yet to understand how I knew my official name by the time I got to school...

Most of the men in the family share the same first name. Trying to figure out which one is being spoken about can be fun, as is trying to remember which one is which in phone contact lists... When it was announced that I was having a nephew, the first thing that I said was, "Please don't call him <insert duplicate name>!" Thankfully, it's not even a middle name😆

Very normal to mix up names, my grandmother would go though all 3 of her children (one of whom had died 30 years previously) before even getting to her grandchildren. Where it gets problematic is where the spouse of one of my children is called by the same name as the previous partner of the other. I do have to be careful not to call their current partner by the name of their previous one when I have mixed up their parters' names.....

This would stress me out so much! I would put my foot in it all the time!