Shine OnMore than half of parents have regrets about their baby’s name, survey finds
Apple, Bronx, Suri, Pilot Inspektor…celebrities are spearheading the trend towards ever-wackier names, but do parents ever have regrets?
According to a recent survey of more than 1,000 parents, a staggering 54 percent say they have some misgivings about their choice, while 1 in 25 admit they wish they'd chosen a different name entirely.
The top reason for a change of heart? As their child aged, nearly half of parents realized the name they'd lovingly chosen doesn't fit their child's personality.
Another quarter of the parents surveyed felt the name they picked became too popular, while 11 percent said negative feedback from others changed how they felt.
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Gurgle.com, a web community for parents based in the United Kingdom, conducted the survey. No such survey has been undertaken in Canada, but a poll by U.S. site YourBabyDomain last October revealed that 8 percent of parents admitted to choosing the wrong name.
Nifa McLaughlin, Gurgle's editor comforted regretful parents, saying, "There is never any way of guaranteeing your little one will like what you choose, but if you love it then that will go a long way to ensuring that they grow into it and hopefully it starts to suit them more and more as their personality develops."
Tammi Roy, who writes popular Canadian parenting blog My Organized Chaos, agrees that children grow into their names. "After a long while, you look at your kids and can't imagine them being named any different," she says.
Still, she and her husband tried to match the personalities of their three daughters by making a short list of their favourite names while she was pregnant, but waiting until they'd seen their daughters before making a choice. "Once we had our children, the names kind of popped for us."
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The Gurgle survey also highlighted the tricky family dynamics at play when choosing a baby name. More than a fifth of parents claimed their partner vetoed the moniker they most wanted. Among the nixed names? Scheherazade, Esme, Renesse, and Majalla.
Emma, Sophia, Liam and Ethan were the top baby names in Canada in 2011, according to BabyCenter Canada. The names Kate and Catherine were made more popular by the widespread coverage of the Duchess Catherine's marriage to Prince William, while names inspired by places and flowers also rose in popularity.
For parents who belatedly realize they've chosen poorly, a nickname could be a solution, says Roy.
Or you could just head back to the drawing board. There are no negative effects to changing a child's name before the age of one—even if they appear to respond when you call their name, says Cleveland Evans, a professor of psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska. "Even if they turn, it might just be because they've heard it so much and not at the point where they identify it as 'me,'" he told ABC news. "I don't think anyone has to worry about harming the child."
