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Choosing the perfect name for a child is one of the biggest decisions parents will make when their baby is born, but for some parents, this decision can come back to haunt them. Have a listen to this one regretful mum's story:
The situation becomes even more troublesome when someone close to you has already chosen your dream baby name.
While some defiant parents go ahead and use the name regardless, others may feel compelled to look elsewhere for a moniker.
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This happened to Mairéad, a mum took to TikTok to discuss how she ended up regretting the name she gave her son because all the boy’s names in her close circle ‘had been taken’.
Apparently, her choice of name even made her cry every day for six months.
“I don’t regret what my children are called now because they’ve really grown into those names and I can't imagine them being called anything else,” Mairéad says at the start of her post.
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"When we had our son, everybody we knew had had boys - all our family, all our friends - and all the names that were on my top list for a boy had been taken.
The mum said the name she had in mind for her son was already in use when ‘another family’ gave it to their own son.
"The name that I was in love with the most, I thought it just went perfectly with my little girl’s name as well, it had already been taken by another family.
"My husband and I became so paranoid that if we used that name, they would think we were copying them.
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"So we settled on a common name that nobody we knew had used.
"For the first six months I think I cried almost daily over my decision. I regretted it so much, I just didn’t think he suited that name."
When her son was born, she and her husband Lee didn’t even get a congratulations from the family they were worried would think they copied.
"So I guess it’s just a lesson now, not to worry about what anyone else thinks," she said. "But, like I said, I don’t regret it now."
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Parents in the comments shared their own similar experiences, with some confirming that they still used the name their wanted despite another family using it.
“Me and my brother have a Harry,” said one TikTok user. “I always wanted that name and he had a boy 1st and called him Harry, sorry I wasn’t changing my mind.”
Another woman said: “No one owns a name .. call them what you want to”.
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Similarly, another woman quipped: “I can’t get my head around people being angry about using same name, I feel like yes it’s a great name all children should be called ‘said name’.”
When asked by one of her followers to reveal the name she cried about, Mairéad revealed: "Sorry I always assume our followers know. I wanted Max, we settled with James."
What do you think?
Gregory Robinson