Naming a person is a huge responsibility. In most cases, this ends up being a name for them for life, and may actually have implications for their future success. Best of all, you’ll get to go into the naming game by choosing the right, not too common, but not too exotic name that suits them and won’t give them much grief. But what happens if you screw it up and pick it up wrong, and choose something that doesn’t work for you, or if it always goes in the wrong direction, or if your child absolutely hates it? What if they want to change it? The truth is, I don’t mind if my kids decide to change their name. Mostly because I changed my country.

When I was pregnant with my twins, I worried a lot – not only because I had two kids, but also because I was one of those kids who hate my name. My parents, bless their hearts, give me my first and two names because of the middle names and last names along with the family name which is always misnamed, it was fun. My first name at birth was Cheri—French, “dear”, was a peen sur —and I spent the first eight years of my life wishing it was Emma (a sweet slang English name that sounded like perfect for a little girl in the UK).

I was now an adult, a pretty name, and I loved my family, but it became a bane from my existence for some reason. At first, no one else had it. Sure, the later first lady was Cheri Blair, but by that time I had left the country and changed my title, so that didn’t help. Second, no one can say it correctly. It’s always, always, more familiar Banana , which was also a pretty name, wasn’t my name. But perhaps most importantly, I didn’t like it. It was beautiful, delicate, and flowery, and I wished it was a more substantial and powerful name. So I changed it, unofficially, when I was 8 and never looked back.

When I was pregnant and put baby names on websites, I felt very strongly that I wanted to try and make sure my children didn’t go through what they went through. Growing up hating your name isn’t easy, but it’s also not easy to decide that you won’t be called by that name anymore. So I was worried, and every name we could think of — and it wasn’t that hard, since there were only a few names on our “ideas” list at all. At some point, I was sure that we would never find the perfect name, that my children would come into this world and still be called Baby A and Baby B, and that they wouldn’t hate us. Adequate identification (there was basically no possibility in my pregnant mind that my children would hate me for something).

I thought of my mother, who had chosen me as her first child (my father called my first middle name, Alana , which I finally chose when I decided to change it), and wondered if I would break his heart and hate him so much that I had to give up my first name forever.

Of course, in the end, we chose the names, and everything turned out to be much easier than I imagined. One day, he watched some scary reality show about labor and delivery, which no pregnant woman should ever see , one of the newborns named Madeline. It was a name I had heard a million times before but had never thought of until that day.

I called my husband and said, “And what about Madeleine?”

He said, “I love it.” “Madeleine is.” (Except we eventually found the French version of Madeleine selected, because apparently I inherited my naming skills from my mom.)

A few weeks later, with no boy names on our list, our Criminal Minds were watching an episode of (which, again, never sees a pregnant woman ), and I said, “And what about Red?” doctor. After the character of Spencer. cane. I said that only half seriously – who is naming their child after a televised FBI agent? – But my husband liked it. “Yes! Red! That’s his name.”

For the remainder of my pregnancy, I mentally debated every possible backer and scammer I could think of about the names, refusing to tell anyone what we were calling them. Then I was born prematurely at 25 weeks, and I had to write something on the labels affixed to each of their incubators.

How painful it was to know that it was the name you chose that upset your child.

“Madeleine Reed,” said the nurse who was introducing herself to the terrifying world of her traumatized NICU. “I love that.”

As Madeline and Reed spent more time outside of my body, being referred to regularly by the names we gave them, I began to fall in love with my choices more. They love like Madeleine and the Reeds look was, whatever that means, and I was very happy with it. But now, I was not only hoping that they would be happy with their names so that they would avoid any misery in the future, I also hoped that they would be happy with their names because it might break my fragile heart if they weren’t.

This was the first time I, as a parent, thought I would definitely develop an association with the names I chose for my children. I thought of my mother, who had chosen me as her first child (my father called my first middle name, Alana , which I finally chose when I decided to change it), and wondered if I would break his heart and hate him so much that I had to give up my first name forever. He definitely chose her because he loved her, and of course he was expecting me too. I imagined how hard, and how hard, hearing myself call myself Emma, ​​when I told her I wanted to change my name permanently before starting my new school in Canada. How painful it was to know that it was the name you chose that upset your child.

But then, I realized something else. Not only did my mother allow me to hate my personal name despite my feelings about it, she really did let me change it and she could have easily ignored it, and she could have easily assumed that it was a silly childhood that I would have developed normally, and I could have She insists that I be my name. He kept it because he gave it to me, damn it. But instead she said, “Okay” and then said for life I’ve been called by that name.

I would trust them with the same choice, the way I trusted my mother, knowing that they know my heart better than I do.

I now see myself as a mother, and that was really a bold act. I’m sure she must have decided on it (being a mother is a constant exercise in making a permanent decision), and I’m sure she must have been wondering if she would give me the option of renaming me that at a young age. But she did it because she loved me, and because she wanted me to be happy, even if it meant choosing a name for Lee She.

I love my kids’ names – I think they fit and are cute and I hope they enjoy them as much as I do. But if they don’t, if they hate them and want me to choose differently and someday announce that they want to replace them, I’ll be on board. I would like to trust them in the choice my mother trusted in me knowing that they knew my heart more than I did, and that giving them that choice would be a deeply endearing act, even if they didn’t realize it for another 20 years or so.