New Mom Tells Her Sister She Needs To 'Buy The Rights' To The Baby Name She Says She Stole
"She cannot stop people from using the ones on her list, not even me.”
Elizaveta Galitckaia / Shutterstock Just a few days after the birth of her son, a woman got into a heated argument with her sister, who was not pleased with her nephew’s name. The sister claimed that the new mom "stole" the name she had chosen for her future baby and demanded that she pick a new one. The mom, however, disagreed.
The new mom advised her sister to ‘buy the rights’ to the baby name she ‘stole’ to keep others from using it in the future.
In her since-deleted Reddit post, the 26-year-old woman revealed that she gave birth to her firstborn son a few days ago. The woman’s 28-year-old sister, Jade, on the other hand, is not in a relationship and is not planning on having kids anytime soon. But that didn't stop her from sharing her unsolicited opinion on her sister's baby’s name.
“When they found out my son's name is Finnick, Jade came and told me I could not call him Finnick and needed to rename my son because Finnick is on her baby boy name list, so she's going to use it one day, and not me,” the woman wrote.
“I laughed in her face and told her to leave and dismissed her request by saying she had no authority in this.”
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However, the woman’s parents believed that she should “be a good sister to Jade” and asked her to change her son’s name so that Jade could use it for her hypothetical future son.
“They said to think about how Jade would feel, and she prides herself on that list,” the woman wrote, adding that her family has always favored Jade as “the golden child.”
The new mom decided to point out just how ridiculous Jade and her parents were acting by suggesting a hilarious idea.
“I decided to bring some snark into this, and my response was simply that if Jade wants to own the rights to names, then she better get rich fast and buy those names because otherwise, she cannot stop people from using the ones on her list, not even me,” the woman wrote.
“For the record, I know it doesn't work like that,” she added
She’s right — while you can purchase the rights to a trademark or intellectual property, human names are not up for purchase.
The woman’s parents were not pleased with her remark. They claimed that she was “bullying” Jade and being selfish by not changing her son’s name so she could potentially use it in the future. The woman blocked them from contacting her again, but now she is questioning if she took things too far.
Most people online agreed that the woman did the right thing, and should not have to deal with ludicrous demands from her family.
“You didn't go too far. They went too far with this stupid demand,” one Redditor commented. “You go ahead and name your beautiful baby boy Finnick with a great big capital F.”
“If you looked over your sister's list and told her certain names were off limits because they were on YOUR list, would she offer you the same benefit? Of course not,” another user noted.
“Tell your sister and parents that Jade can use the name too because those cousins will never meet,” another user suggested.
There are hundreds of thousands of names that exist, and chances are, hundreds of thousands of people will have the same name as you.
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Names are not up for grabs for anyone to claim as theirs and theirs alone.
If you really don’t want anyone stealing your baby name ideas, you might want to stick with names that are so outrageous most parents would never even dream of them or, better yet, come up with your own (but please ensure that they are somewhat normal to spare your poor kids teasing from their peers!)
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.