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When everyone is seeking the same aesthetic, it’s hard to be original
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A few years ago, Sophie Kihm, a baby name expert and consultant in Chicago, was working with an expectant mother to curate a selection of possible baby names. Kihm’s client wound up settling on two relatively distinct top choices: Winter, for a girl; Bowen, for a boy. The client shared her chosen names with a few friends before her son (Bowen) was born.
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When the client later became pregnant with her second child, a girl, she was thrilled to have the chance to name her daughter Winter. But then one of her friends announced that she was also expecting a daughter – and planned to name her Winter.
Kihm’s client was bereft. From her perspective, “the name was effectively stolen from her,” Kihm says.
Over a decade of working with clients, Kihm – who is also a perinatal therapist and the editor in chief of the baby name website Nameberry – has encountered innumerable variations of naming conflicts: The expectant mother who was dead set on Henry, until one of her best friends unknowingly gave the name to her newborn son first. Another client said she had always loved the name Isla and was heartbroken when her cousin used it (but when the client herself became pregnant years later, she decided to name her child Isla anyway.)
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Truly flagrant name theft is less common, Kihm says – though jaw-dropping accounts abound in Reddit forums and advice columns – but she’s counseled parents through scenarios that feel somewhat theft-adjacent: “Like, ‘Oh, I really loved the name Riley, and my sister knew that, but she named her daughter Kiley, so can I still use the name Riley?’” she says. “These types of issues come up a lot.”
Caring about baby names isn’t new. But caring this much, especially when the duplication of names is concerned, is a modern development. Before the Social Security Administration started publishing baby name popularity data in 1998, there was no real way for parents to know what other parents were naming their kids, beyond an anecdotal awareness of seven Stevens in a kindergarten class.
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But now there is copious data, along with naming websites and internet forums filled with parents searching for the perfect name. An industry of experts and consultants has emerged to offer professional guidance. Social media means more parents are likely to announce a new arrival before a vast online audience. Combine all this with the pressure to identify the unicorn of names – one that feels singular and special but still acceptable and pronounceable – and it can feel more consequential if someone else uses the name you chose.
But not so long ago, encountering the same names in a community or a family was not nearly as big of a deal. Kihm notes that in 1950, more than 23 percent of baby girls, and more than 33 percent of baby boys, were given a top 10 name. That started changing in the 1960s, she says, with the rise of countercultural movements, and the number of babies with top 10 names has since plummeted: “People are very concerned these days with choosing a name that is unique, something that feels individual to their child.”
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But when everyone is seeking that same aesthetic, it’s harder to actually be original.
“A lot of people will tell me, ‘Oh I love unique names, and then the names that they’re talking about are all in the top 150,” Kihm says. “If you have mainstream taste, you’re especially likely to be choosing the same names as your social circle.”
And even if a name is truly uncommon, someone else still might choose it – as was discovered by Lindsay, a mom of a toddler in Massachusetts who spoke on the condition that she be identified by only her first name to discuss a sensitive family situation. Lindsay had always loved the name Seraphina, even before she met her husband. When she became pregnant with their daughter, they didn’t plan to share the name until the baby was born. But then the topic of baby names came up at a family holiday gathering, and Lindsay’s sister-in-law suddenly announced that if she ever had a daughter, she would name her Seraphina.
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“I just couldn’t believe she said that,” Lindsay says. “I talked to my husband, and we felt like we should tell his sister that that’s what we had planned on naming our daughter, and ask if it would bother her. I didn’t want to seem like a name stealer.” Luckily, the sister-in-law gave her blessing.
Colleen Slagen, a baby name consultant in Boston, says this kind of communication is the key to preventing lasting damage to a relationship.
“Have the conversation, and decide your stance,” she says. “Be prepared that the conversation could go really well or not well, and what are you going to do based on the information you get? Think through what the possible scenarios are going to be.”
As awkward as that talk might be, skipping it could be far worse. Maria Reppas, a mom in Virginia, says she saw one of her closest friendships dissolve after a baby name dispute over a decade ago. Reppas and her friend had been close since high school, and the friend had known Reppas’s favorite baby name – a gender-neutral option that she hoped to one day use for her first child.
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The friend became pregnant when the two were in their early 30s, and “I was genuinely thrilled,” Reppas says. Her friend was evasive when asked about possible names, and Reppas respected her privacy. But after the friend gave birth, she called Reppas to share the news – and casually announced that she’d given her daughter the very name that Reppas had always loved.
“I was stunned,” Reppas says. “I didn’t know how to respond, just thinking, ‘This is something I was really clear about, it’s something I wanted, and you’ve taken it, and you’re acting like nothing is wrong.’”
Their friendship had been suffering from simmering issues for years, Reppas says, but the name was the final straw.
“It sounds so petty and so shallow – nobody owns a name, right?” Reppas says. “But if she had just asked me, if she had acknowledged it … it would have been nice to have had a heads-up.”
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The realm of baby name conflicts is filled with nuance and ambiguity, and in most cases, Kihm advises her clients to prioritize a relationship over a name: “My brother is named Charlie, and my mom’s best friend named one of her sons Charlie after my brother was born,” she says. “It is not an issue today. Would you sacrifice a relationship like that over a name?”
But there are other circumstances when the use of a name carries far more emotional weight – particularly when grieving parents are involved.
Beth, a mother of four who spoke on the condition that she be identified by only her first name to discuss a sensitive family story, lost one of her children as an infant in 2011. A few years ago, she and her husband learned that one of the husband’s cousins was expecting a baby and planned to use the same name as their son who had died. (The two families also share a last name, Beth notes.)
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Her husband spoke to his cousin, who subsequently decided to use a different first name. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would be uncomfortable spending holidays with [the cousin’s child] when my own dead son with the same name wasn’t there,” Beth says. “It was just too painful to think of having the same name around for the rest of my life.”
Name conflicts can also be especially fraught when cherished family names are concerned, particularly when multiple people wish to honor the same relative. Slagen has confronted this scenario with prospective parents before: “Those situations can get really tricky,” she says. “When multiple siblings or cousins want to use [a family name], I think in that case it’s kind of first come, first served.”
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Jennifer, who spoke on the condition that she be identified by only her first name to discuss a sensitive topic, found herself caught in the midst of such a dispute in her family, where she grew up as one of 50 grandchildren of a deeply beloved grandmother.
“Both my sister and one of my cousins had my grandmother’s name as a middle name,” Jennifer says. Both hoped to pass the name along to future daughters: “So they had a pact when they were teenagers, that whoever had a child first would get to use that name.”
When Jennifer’s sister eventually had a daughter, she did just that. But a few years later, the cousin also had a daughter, and gave her their grandmother’s name, too.
“My sister was just very upset; she was really out of sorts and angry,” Jennifer says. “But you can’t expect a teenage pact to be held for all these years.” When the cousin shared the birth announcement on their family’s website, Jennifer left a pointed comment offering her congratulations and praising the name honoring their grandmother. To her sister, Jennifer says, it felt like Jennifer was siding with their cousin.
But those sore feelings have ebbed over time, Jennifer says – at least to some degree.
“My sister eventually forgave our cousin,” Jennifer says. “Not sure she ever forgave me.”
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