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Dear Aunty Pam,

 

I’m so mad at my former best friend that I could spit and I hope you have some good advice for my partner and me.

‘Tom’ and I have been trying to get pregnant for two years and I finally am. We’re going to have a girl and it took us forever to come up with a name we both agreed on. I love old-fashioned names and flowers and we agreed on Violet. I told my best friend, ‘Susan,’ who is also pregnant and due any day. I just found out from Susan’s mother that she likes the name so much that she’s going to name her baby Violet too! 

I feel completely betrayed. She knows how hard it was for Tom and I to settle on a name and how special it is to me. I can’t believe she’s stealing our name and since her baby is going to be born first, everyone’s going to think when our Violet is born, I copied the name from her. I phoned Susan up to ask how she could do it and she said she just loved the name and nobody owns a name. She also said I was being hysterical about it all. I was so angry I hung up on her. I just can’t believe she did this to me! Do you think I’m being ‘hysterical?’

 

Signed,

Angry Mom to Be

 

Dear AMTB,

 

Frankly? A bit. 

Listen, I hear your frustration and this feeling that Susan has ‘stolen’ the name you chose. And yes, it’s a bit hurtful and it’s natural to feel a bit rankled when we feel someone has stolen an idea we came up with. But she has a point: nobody ‘owns’ a name unless it’s trademarked. Luckily, you aren’t naming her Pokemon, so no trouble there. 

Aunty Pam did a bit of googling and learned this. The most recent year I could find was 2021, but in 2021 Violet was the 35th most popular name for girls. Also in that year, there were 5,474 baby girls given that name, meaning 1 out of every 325 baby girls born in 2021 are named Violet. So perhaps try to focus on the fact that your Violet is one of 5,500 other Violets in the United States and it just so happens that Susan’s Violet is one of them. 

It’s OK to feel a little irked by it—I get that—but there’s going to be so many more things you’re going to be irked by, trust me, once that baby is born and you go three months with no sleep.

 

Cheers, dear!

Aunty Pam