Name regrets are understandable. A name might sound perfect in your mind, it might flow off the tongue beautifully in your imagination, but – when the little one arrives – he or she might have other ideas.
They might just not look like a Harvey or a Henry or a Sally or a Sam. They might look like something different.
Cue panic and hysteria and ‘what the hell do I put on the birth cerificate?’
Other times, it’s not the baby who’s giving you doubts. It might be the people around you.
For one new mum – her daughter Autumn, was born in October on Halloween – and the girl’s grandmother is heavily critical of Autumn’s name. So much so, it’s making this new mum paranoid.
“Since using it as a name, it doesn’t seem to work as well as it did in my head?” the mum posted to chat forum Mumsnet. “Lots of people don’t get it. My mum actually makes jokes about it – ‘I can’t wait to see my granddaughter who hasn’t got a proper name’ or she directly speaks to her and says ‘you might as well have been named Season’. No one else really says anything, but I feel like they think the same.”
The reaction from the public has been mixed.
Some are defending the name Autumn, and telling the new mum she should stick to her initial idea.
“I can guarantee that no one else feels as strongly about your daughter’s name as your mum. I like Autumn,” one user commented.
“It’s a lovely name,” another added. “I would end up using Otty as a nickname though which is really pretty too.”
“I think it’s a lovely name. You can change it easily but don’t do that just because your mum makes snarky comments,” another said.
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Others are encouraging her to change it:
“I’m not keen on this as a first name, and imagine if she ends up marrying someone with the last name Winter,” one person suggested.
“Yes change it. At this point she’s too young to know any different,” another advised.
Many, however, were in agreement: “Your mum sounds really horrible!”
This isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, new mum to debate changing her baby’s name.
One mum in the US made headlines when she wrote about changing her daughter’s name from Ottilie to Margot.
“Anytime anyone said her name, I kind of cringed,” she told USA’s Today at the time. “Introducing her made me sweat. And I thought, we’re going to keep having to introduce her! This is going to be a problem forever.”
Earlier this year, the Young Mummy blogger Sophie Cachia changed her daughter’s name from Betty to Florence. She went back and forth several times before making a decision and blamed the “f*cked up hormones” after giving birth.
One thing is certain: Whatever you decide, mother-of-Autumn. Just make sure it’s for you, and your daughter, and not to appease anyone else!
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Top Comments
Time to have a polite but firm chat with mum. Something along the lines of "This is our daughter's name. It was our choice, you don't have to like it, but you need to stop making jokes about it." How is little Autumn going to feel as she gets older if Nana is constantly making fun of her name?
I think it's a very pretty name, and has been used for a long time as a name. It's different than naming your daughter after a flower or a gem, who cares what the grandmother thinks, or anyone else for that matter.