Woman Demands Her Sister Pick A New Baby Name So She Can Use The One She Chose In The Future
Should she give up something she wants just to make her sister happy?
ArtFamily / Shutterstock A young, expecting mother turned to Reddit to ask for advice on a current issue with her older sister. The problem? Her baby’s name.
Her older sister wanted to use the baby name that she picked out.
The 23-year-old woman and her boyfriend were preparing to welcome their baby girl into the world and picked a name that felt perfect to them — Wren. However, the drama came when they announced their decision to her family.
"After I told my sister (30F), she asked me if we could talk and she showed me a list she had of names [she] and her husband had chosen for their future babies," the woman wrote in her since-deleted Reddit post. "Wren was the girl name they had chosen too."
"My sister never thought anyone in the family would go for a name like Wren, and when she heard we had chosen that name, she got a little sad," the woman wrote. Adding to her sorrow was the fact that she and her husband had been struggling to conceive for the past six to seven years and were currently undergoing fertility treatments.
Infertility is an incredibly challenging experience — something the Reddit woman acknowledged. As such, she purposefully tried to be as understanding as possible to her sister.
"When my boyfriend and I first learned we were expecting, we agreed I should tell my sister first and give her time to process," she explained. Though her sister was sad and jealous for a while, she understood the conflicting emotions "because this is something she has wanted for so long, and it was difficult for her to see me get pregnant so fast."
However, when her sister asked her to change her baby's name to something other than Wren, she was not willing to agree.
"My daughter feels like Wren to both me and my boyfriend," she wrote. "We've already got some items with her name on them. We have grown very attached and bonded more with our Wren."
She added that while it's not unheard of to have multiple family members with the same name, their family was so close that it would cause confusion.
When she told her sister that she would not be changing her daughter's name, she was upset. "She burst into tears but told me she understood. She hugged me and everything."
Her brother-in-law, on the other hand, was far less understanding. "He tore me a new one for not sacrificing a name so that my sister can hold on to the hope that she'll get to name her future daughter," she wrote. "He said that she has been such a good big sister to me, and this would cost me nothing."
While infertility is hard on the mother, it is also a difficult process for the father, both to watch his wife go through it and not be able to have a child. It's understandable that her brother-in-law was upset, but it also doesn’t give him the right demand she change her baby's name.
She added in the comments that if she had known her sister wanted the name, they never would have considered it. However, the name preference was never shared until after she announced it.
Wren isn't an entirely uncommon name, either. In fact, in 2023, Wren was ranked 196 out of 1000 most popular names in the US. It became increasingly popular after a controversial TikTok mom and her daughter, Wren, became viral during the pandemic. The name has continued to increase in popularity, so it's not surprising that both sisters heard it and took a liking.
Ultimately, as one commenter summed it up, "It's understandable to want to avoid hurting your sister, but it's your baby and your choice. It's OK to stand your ground on the name you and your boyfriend love."
Madison Piering is a writer on YourTango's Entertainment and News team specializing in human interest and pop culture topics.