Betrayal comes in many forms. But when it comes to crimes against the sisterhood, there are only a few unforgivable sins; acts that rupture friendship groups, end decades-long relationships and make you question everything you thought you knew. People might get over a friend hooking up with someone they liked at uni. There will always be gossip. And spilling a secret you swore you’d keep—at least once—is practically par for the course. But nobody gets over it when someone steals your baby name.
We can all remember that Sex and the City episode. The one where Charlotte discovers her old friend Laney will be calling her daughter “Shayla”, a name Charlotte claimed to have invented when she was 11 and told all of her friends about, making them promise not to use it. Former party girl Laney denies culpability and rolls her eyes: “I can’t believe you’re freaking out over a name.” Another friend concurs, “You’re not even pregnant.”
This is all happening at Laney’s baby shower, by the way. Samantha arrives and asks what’s going on. After Charlotte explains, the ardently loyal Samantha simply turns to Laney and says, “You bitch!” It’s one of the most quoted moments in the series.
There are other pop culture references to this crime against friendship, too: like in Seinfeld when George discovers Susan’s cousin has named her baby with the name he planned to use for his first child, or in Friends when Rachel steals “Emma” from Monica—though I’d argue that with generic names, the rules are a little more relaxed, like how you can’t really be angry at someone for buying the same dress as you if it’s from Reformation.
Still, this is delicate stuff, particularly if it’s a unique moniker, as it was for Yas*, 40, who was out for drinks with a fellow pregnant friend when talk turned to names. “I told her I’d always loved the name ‘Vesper’ and she claimed it was on her list, too, which I thought was odd as she’d already reeled off some of the names she was considering.”
Yas brushed it off, forgetting about the exchange entirely until she saw her friend’s social media announcement following her birth. “There it was: her daughter, Vesper,” she recalls. “I was really upset, especially as she lives near me and our daughters would likely have been in the same school year. We were due around the same time, so I ended up having to rethink our baby’s name at the last minute.”
Names are personal, no matter how unique or popular they may be. Whether inspired by family histories, books, films or strangers who changed our lives, they mean something. So it makes sense we wouldn’t want other people using the ones we’ve chosen for our children, whether they’re real or imaginary; it’s as if they’ve taken a part of us and superimposed it onto themselves. And thanks to a peculiar mix of gender stereotypes and social conditioning, many women start thinking about what they might call their children when they’re very young, giving them even more significance. Even if they’re not sure if they even want kids.
“A friend of mine actually ended up not using a specific name for her daughter because it was one I’d had in place forever,” says Karlie*, 37. “It was a family name that my entire girl group knew about, so when this particular friend announced she was going to use it, we were all shocked, especially because I was single at the time. It was a bit like, oh god, why do the married people not have any sensitivity to this stuff? And I can’t really say anything because my baby is only imaginary.”
