Featured Image Credit: Getty stock images
Topics: Mean Girls, Parenting, Reddit
Britt Jones
Baby names are universally picked with love and a lot of hard thought, but what if your perfect baby name came at a social cost?
There are so many associations when it comes to a name. For example, if I say Buffy, you’re going to think ‘Slayer’. If I say Bella, you’re thinking Twilight.
See? There’s a lot of things you need to consider.
For one woman, she’s being tortured over the thought that her little baby daughter will be bullied due to her love of a 2000s mean girl name.
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She is so worried about the possibility that she might be ruining her unborn baby’s social life that she took to the Namenerds subreddit on Reddit to ask other people for advice.
Why?
Because she’s settled on the name ‘Regina’.
She wrote: “I’m due with my third daughter in a couple of months and we have chosen the name Regina.
“I’m curious if you all primarily associate the name with Mean Girls or if it has other affiliations for you. Is this on the same level as naming a girl Elsa? We don’t think so, but inquiring minds, I suppose.”
For those of you who don’t know, Regina George is a famous character in the Mean Girls movie.
The high school student has had such an impact on the Millennial and cusper generation that even the thought of the name conjures up scenes of her strutting around in pink (on Wednesdays).
Regina was the ruthless leader of the Plastics clique at North Shore High School, which included Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith.
However, does it mean that she shouldn’t name her child Regina because of a character two decades old?
One woman who has personal experience of being called the name shared on the post: “I’m a Regina! Mean Girls came out when I was in 4th grade.
“The Regina George jokes happen pretty often but I learned to lean into it a lot — it makes saying my name easier and people don’t spell it wrong.”
Another wrote: “It’s either going to be Mean Girls references or being called Vagina.”
Plenty of people believed that the mother was worrying too much, and even shared that by the time her kid made it to school- where bullying is the most likely to happen- the film would be ancient news.
Even with the 2024 movie adaptation (which did not have the same zest as the OG), it’s still old as hell by the time the kid is walking into high school.
Another parent put her two pence in, writing: “My daughter is named Regina. There have been no Mean Girls or vagina references. When it does inevitably happen, I won’t care. People can and will find something stupid and negative to say about any name.”
So, there you have it.