Baby names are a very common dilemma for parents. Most parents want to give their children names that are meaningful, unique, and practical at the same time. And sometimes, that’s a tall order to fill. According to a BabyCentral survey, 9% of moms regret the names they gave their babies. In turn, only 2% of grown-up Americans say they hate their birth name, and 4% just dislike it.
While it may seem that children don’t hate their names as much as parents may fear, it’s still hard to tell how a certain name will affect a child as they go through life. For a child, a unique and meaningful name can still mean years of ridicule and annoying comments from strangers and friends alike.
Some parents understand how badly they messed up just a few years or months in, and Bored Panda has collected the experiences of these parents from several online threads to show just how much some moms and dads regret naming their babies.
Read More: 46 Parents Get Brutally Honest About Names They Gave Their Kids But Now Hate
#1
Named my son Angus. He can’t pronounce his g’s yet 🙁
Image credits: Ewe_Can_Dance
#2
I named my daughter Karen. Thanks, Internet.
Image credits: anon
#3
Named my son Gunner, we call him Gun for short. Started kindergarten, first day of school he was so excited to grt inside he ran in the parking lot. I screamed “Gun stop” caused massive panic.
Image credits: Chelsea
#4
Friend’s family is from India. His parents immigrated here hardly knowing English, let alone any American slang. They named him Hardik (a relatively common Indian name). Grade school was the worst for him, but he stuck it out until after college. He finally changed his name to Haresh.
Image credits: anon
#5
Well I don’t think they regret it or care but my name is Latina and I’m black. I always get asked about it and have to explain that it was completely arbitrary and I speak no Spanish.
Edit: to clarify, I’m not saying I have a Latin name, my name is literally the word Latina.
Image credits: rainrain_throwaway11
#6
I knew an Analeze once, and when she was 8, they realized that the unique spelling of her name was a popular personal lubricant.
Image credits: Froggetpwagain
#7
I let my ex pick my daughter’s middle name, since he agreed to the first name I had always wanted for a potential daughter. He choose Isis, after the Egyptian goddess. This was before Isis (Islamic state of Iraq and Syria) was a thing. I never loved it, but I figured it was just a middle name, so who cares? Now I care, a lot.
Image credits: dreamsinred
#8
I worked at Disney World a few years ago as a photographer. I was taking pictures of these two little girls with a character and they were really enjoying the experience. The parents were ready to move on and told the girls it was time to go. The oldest one, who was about four, moved but the youngest one, who was two, kept playing. Finally the mom said, “Come on, Elsa.” I looked down and realized she had a pin that said “Happy Birthday Elsa.” I asked the mom if that was really her name. She sighed and said, “Yeah… she’s Elsa.” This was about six months after Frozen came out. You can tell they never expected that name to get as wildly popular as it did.
Image credits: anon
#9
My friend’s sister made a deal with her husband; she would name the first child and he could name the second. He has a last name that can be used for a first name and he’d always wanted to name his child lastname lastname. We’ll say Jordan, for the sake of example. He wanted to name his child Jordan Jordan. Everyone told him it was a terrible idea, that he was setting his kid up for mountains of paperwork errors and long explanations, but he was insistent.
The baby was born, he named it Jordan Jordan, but as they were checking out of the hospital the paperwork so confused the billing person and took so long to sort out that he immediately changed the first name to something reasonable.
Image credits: chicagojess312
#10
A friend of my soon to be in-laws is a geologist, and married another geologist. They named one of their daughters Crystal-after the geological phenomenon. Now that they live in Vegas they’ve realized how popular it is as an [exotic dancer] name and they completely regret it. Especially since their other daughter is also an [exotic dancer] name, Diamond I think, and they are religious conservatives. They would like a do-over please.
Image credits: accentmarkd
#11
My name is Jessica, which is the name my dad wanted. Mom wanted to name me Clarissa. I was born early and they hadn’t settled on a name, a nurse suggested combining them… they seriously considered naming me Clarissica. They had even decided my nickname would be Rissy. I am so glad Mom decided Jessica was fine, I never would have forgiven them.
Image credits: anon
#12
I named my daughter Alexa… way before… ‘Alexa what time is it?’ was a thing.
Image credits: _jen_hamilton_
#13
Right after I gave birth I was still very [medicated] and they brought the birth certificate, big mistake. My son’s name was to be Joseph but I misspelled it and it is now Joesph (Joe-sffff). We didn’t know until he was 16 and went to get his driver’s license😂 He loved the story so much He’s kept it and he’s 30 years old now 😂 I can’t believe it took us 16 years to realize it was the wrong name. It actually legally turned out to be a huge deal when he went to go get his passport and his school records did not match his birth certificate. The spelling, it turns out, have to be identical. It was a mess lol 😂
Image credits: Colleen Badassthatsparkles
#14
I named one of my daughters, Bella. Google top female dog names. 😂
Image credits: Golden6
#15
I regret spelling my 3rd kid’s name the trendy way. It’s Jaxon instead of Jackson, and while I love the name, it really grates on me that I spelled it like an [idiot].
All of my kids have fairly classic names, and verbally they match but then when they’re written out his just looks so out of place 🥲.
Image credits: ohlovely
#16
My Mom def regrets my name. She named me after her favorite aunt that had [passed away] a few years before I was born. The wound was too new and no one wanted to call me by her name. My middle name is Mackenzie after the beer dog Spuds Mackenzie, my dad got to pick that one out. He lied to her and said it was after his ‘Irish heritage’. So I get called by a name that is not on my birth certificate.
Image credits: LucyOfDorne
#17
We named one of our children after a specific person in my in-laws family. Unfortunately, our child is severely autistic with cognitive disability and the in-laws have never helped. Haven’t been on a date with my wife in two decades. So, I regret putting anyone from their family in a place of honor in mine.
Image credits: Azozel
#18
I’m named after a song. It was also in the top 5 names for the decade in which I was born. Pretty sure they started to regret it the first time there were more than 5 kids sharing my name in my class.
Image credits: FidgetyGidget
#19
My son’s middle name is Beren which is a Tolkien reference from the book “the Silmarillion”. While I still love the name and look forward to my son discovering the hero that he is named after, it is a repetitive and painful process explaining the name and it’s origins over and over again to fellow parents and relatives and then feeling their silent judgement upon that level of nerd-dom.
Image credits: Phugginay
#20
My wife and I don’t like all the family politics of naming the children. Someone’s going to get bent out of shape because one family member got used and not another. So, we racked our brains to agree on a name not used on either side of the family.
Didn’t announce the name until the birth. Neither my mother or father said anything for a year. Then, one day they casually mentioned the name of my uncle’s first son that I wasn’t even aware of. He had [passed away] at only 6 weeks old, 15 years before I was born.
I don’t know that I regret the name of my son. But, it would have been crossed off the list of contenders had I known.
Image credits: rhymes_with_chicken
#21
My friend’s name is Sepfora, and she was named that before the popular make up company Sephora got big. It’s the greek version of the biblical name Zipporah (Moses’s wife).
Image credits: sirthisisreddit
#22
I’m the son. My father regrets the name he gave me, because it’s nearly identical to *his* name. Only difference is the middle name / initial- which rarely shows up on paperwork. So almost any time that either of us goes to do any paperwork or sign up for something, we run into issues involving our nearly identical names.
For example: We both face roughly a 20 minute delay when trying to vote because they mix up which of us is which. I receive his best buy receipts. He gets packages and mail meant for me and I for him. His credit card routinely pops up on my credit report, my student loan routinely pops up on his.
Image credits: mxmnull
#23
I named my daughter ‘Bella’ eight years ago. Goddangit Twilight.
Image credits: Comment-Illustrator
#24
I named my daughters Sienna and Shyann not knowing there both names for mini-vans 😔
Image credits: Ronnie Bearley
#25
I named my kid after a Pokémon – Eevee. Thought it was a super cool idea in 2002.
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Image credits: _jen_hamilton_