Ready? Set… Fight! The ring is set, the boxing gloves are on, and Reddit is ready to play referee for a brother and a sister who are in an epic baby name fight. The problem is, these two are so evenly matched, it’s almost impossible to pick a side to root for!
In the “Am I The A—hole?” subreddit, a 23-year-old woman wrote in about her twin brother and his pregnant 21-year-old girlfriend, who she claims “stole” her baby name for her future (still non-existent) daughter.
“Now I wasn’t happy about this, but I wanted to give them a chance to explain themselves, so I asked why they would give their baby that name,” she wrote, explaining that they chose the name “Amelia.” “My brother’s GF said that she has a coworker with that name, and that she loved it because of how unique and quirky it was.”
While no one should have to justify their reasoning for picking a name, this reason seems fine (although Amelia is the fourth most popular baby girl name of 2023, per TODAY). It’s not spiteful or anything, the brother’s girlfriend simply found a name she liked. However, choosing this name “really upsets” the twin sister — and she has a point, too.
“I was hoping to name a future daughter of mine ‘Amelia’ after a late childhood friend who passed away from cancer when we were 12,” the woman explained. “Her name is extremely important to me because Amelia and I made a promise that if she was going to pass away, I would name my daughter after her so that she can be remembered and would ‘officially’ be part of my family.”
OK, while fighting over a baby name is usually so ridiculous, this reasoning actually seems super valid to me. Especially because her twin brother already knew. “It’s even worse in my opinion, because this is no secret and my brother knows about that promise, and I have talked about it multiple times beforehand,” she added.
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Enter: the big fight. The sister and brother metaphorically put on their boxing gloves and tried to hash it out. The sister asked her brother and his girlfriend to pick a different name, but they told her she “was being entitled about it” and refused to change their name because she doesn’t “I have the right to ‘claim’ the name, especially since they were having a daughter first and they don’t know if I’ll ever have a daughter in the future anyways.” Hmm, I can definitely see both sides of this.
To be fair, the brother tried to reassure her about the name, telling his sister “that he’ll be the one to uphold that promise for me, and that he’ll make sure that Amelia will be properly remembered.” It seems sweet, but I understand why she was still mad. She wrote, “I told him that won’t work, because I was the one that Amelia asked to make that promise, and it wasn’t going to be the same since he never made that same promise to her.”
The fight ended in a loss for both sides, and the sister “walked away in anger.” Later, friends and family tried to gang up on her, telling her they were “really disappointed” and “childish” and demanding she apologize to her brother. So to find a neutral referee, she turned to Reddit — and they were feeling a little conflicted.
One person wrote, “YTA You don’t get to ‘reserve’ a name for some imaginary (at this point) future child. Also, it doesn’t mean you couldn’t still name your own future daughter that if you want to.”
Another person countered, “Why not? She explained why…honoring the friend that died at age 12.”
“I can’t imagine having a twin, see them go through this kind of grief at the age of 12, and then decide it’s not that big of deal,” someone else said. “I think he just sucks generally for dismissing her feelings when he was there to witness what motivates them.”
Others reasoned that it still wasn’t a good enough reason for the brother to not use the baby name. One person shared, “It was nearly impossible for boyfriend and I to find a name we both liked for our kid. If someone in his family told me it was verboten because she reserved it a decade earlier on the off chance she had a daughter, I’d ignore her as a juvenile nutbar.
Especially something as dead common as Amelia.”
The final verdict? NAH (no a—holes here). One person summed it up: “They’re not AH’s for wanting to use that name, and she’s not an AH for being upset, given that her brother knew it was so important to her.” They even offered a solution, “Her response should be to tell them now, firmly and directly, that she still fully intends to use the name if given the chance, so they should be prepared for the cousins to have the same name.”
“This, looks like the family is getting two Amelia’s,” another wrote. Somoene else offered a simple solution, “Amy, Mia. Boom. Done. Or Amelia 1 and Amelia 2. Amelia Jen’s Kid and Amelia Ally’s Kid,” they wrote, adding, “My sib and aunt had the same name. We called them Name Senior and Name Junior.” It’s as easy as that!
The OP added a comment to explain that she is still going to name her future daughter Amelia. “Amelia used to tell me about how proud she was of her name, because of how she shared the same name as Amelia Earhart and how much of a feminist icon that she is because of her being the one of the first female pilots as well as the very first to travel around the world,” she wrote about her late childhood friend.
“My friend Amelia would go on about how much of an inspiration and a strong person Amelia Earhart was and how, if she ever beat cancer, she dreamt of being a pilot like Earhart,” she continued. “My friend Amelia did ask me specifically to make her a promise that if she died, then she would want me to name my future daughter ‘Amelia’ to remember her and to have such an inspirational name. I still plan on naming my future daughter ‘Amelia’ regardless. But that was also one of the reasons I was so upset about the baby name, and it was also because of how nonchalant his GF was about the name that made me more angry about it.”
She’s also going to ask if they would be willing to have their daughter go by Amy or Mia. This situation is heated on both sides, but at the end of the day, it’s just a name — there’s no reason you can’t both use it.
And one last piece of advice for any future parents: “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this sub, it’s never, ever, EVER tell anyone what you are planning on naming your child until after the birth certificate is signed,” one person said. We couldn’t agree more.
Before you go, check out some of Reddit’s wildest baby name dilemmas.
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