“Am I A Jerk For Not Wanting My Sister To Be Named Like Me?”

Your name is something that’s forever tied to your identity, so it’s only fair to want to be the sole owner of it in your family.

So this 18-year-old young woman got very upset after hearing that her dad and stepmom decided to give their baby exactly the same name as hers.

“My dad is super excited about this baby which I guess is good but him and his wife want to name the baby Roseanne since her favorite flowers are roses,” the author explained in the post on the AITA subreddit. Turns out, if they follow their plan, “it will be my exact name and surname.” Read the author’s whole point of view below.

18-year-old girl wonders if she’s wrong to be upset over the fact that her dad and stepmom are planning to give their baby exactly the same name as her

Image credits: valeriygoncharukphoto (not the actual photo)

Image credits: mstandret (not the actual photo)

Image credits: RosieRoThrowaway

Name expert warns that giving the same name to a second child in the family compromises both children’s identities

Bored Panda reached out to Pamela Redmond, a baby name expert and the creator of Nameberry, known as the world’s leading expert on baby names, to find out what a name expert had to say about this case.

“It’s totally reasonable to get upset about your parent and stepparent giving their baby the exact same name as yours! Not only does that compromise your identity within your family, it compromises the baby’s identity too,” Redmond said.

Giving the same name to another child in the family was common in Middle Ages, but “this is no longer done and there’s no excuse for it”

“In the Middle Ages, there were relatively few names in common circulation, families were large, and the infant mortality rate was high,” Redmond said. She explained that “At that time, it was normal for two children in the same family to be named John, say, or Elizabeth. That’s how nicknames were born — one John would be called Johnny, the other Jack, one Elizabeth would be Lizzie, the other Betsy.”

But in contemporary times, this is no longer done and there’s no excuse for it, really, the name expert argues. “There are more than 70,000 names in Nameberry’s database — surely parents can find different names for two siblings. If these parents can’t think of a different name for the new baby, they should let the older sibling whose name they want to steal choose the baby’s name!”

“Our names may not be unique in the world, but they should be unique in our families”

Redmond believes that there is nothing more personal or more central to our identities than our names. “Our names may not be unique in the world, but they should be unique in our families.”

“In some cultures and religions, children in the family may traditionally have the same first name — Mary or Maria in conservative Catholic families, for instance, or William as an ancestral first name given to all sons, with the children called by their middle names,” Redmond said.

She added that this practice is old-fashioned and increasingly rare, but it is still done. “In this case, each child’s name is effectively their middle name.”

Many people expressed their support for the author and said that she has a reason to be upset

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