Lots of Parents Regret Their Baby Names, but It’s Not the Ones Who Probably Should
(“My name isn’t Anne. My name is Cordelia!” iStockPhoto/BenchBo)
We spend so much time and care and so many google searches to pick the “perfect” baby names, but it’s inevitable that some of us would get it wrong. Despite our best efforts, a lot of people regret their baby names, but it’s not necessarily the people who named their kids Hollow Point or even all the well-meaning parents who named their daughters Isis. According to a recent poll of parents in Britain, the people who most regret their baby names are those whose names are too normal.
According to Today’s Parent, the number-one reason the responding parents gave for disliking their baby name is that it had become “too commonly used.” Several parents said they regretted their Charlottes after Kate Middleton named her daughter Charlotte, and the “Kate Effect” guaranteed that classy name was about to skyrocket up the popularity charts. I can understand regretting Charlotte after the second Royal Baby was born, especially if they were close in age. Nobody is going to believe you when you insist your three-year-old Charlotte was not named after the princess.
Parents everywhere regretted “Elsa” once Frozen took off, and that’s understandable.
What was a slightly old-fashioned, uncommon name is now enormously popular, and intrinsically associated with the Disney movie. I mean, nobody is ever going to think you named your daughter after avant-garde poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Hopefully the kids will be as obsessed with Frozen as everyone else seems to be, because kids named Elsa are going to be getting told to let things go for their entire lives.
Anne was also on the list, even though Anne is a perfectly lovely name. (Even if the ultimate Anne is the one who lived in Green Gables and desperately wanted to be named Cordelia.) That one does seem like an odd one to regret, though, because Anne is the type of Biblical/Royal name that is always very popular but never particularly trendy, sort of like Elizabeth and Catherine. One would think any parents who chose Anne would know exactly what they were getting.
Amelia was another most-regretted name, and another name that’s a perfectly nice thing to call a baby, child, or adult woman. It seems like a lot of the people running around regretting their baby names are the ones who picked names that are perfectly nice, if a bit ordinary. Meanwhile the parents of little Hollow Point and Abcde are happy as clams, so maybe a little bit of regret isn’t such a bad thing. If you slightly regret your baby name, that might just mean you picked a nice one.
