My son is named after furniture, the bullying is so bad he begs for them to be changed
A mother has sparked a debate online after revealing that her son wants to change his name.
She said she was unsure whether to let her almost seven-year-old son change his name, despite the fact that he was severely bullied at school.
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She explained that she had adopted her son three years ago and that she did not want to change his name because his biological mother had given it to him.
“We did a lot of research and even though the name seemed kind of ridiculous, it still felt wrong to take his name away,” the mother explained.
“His name is the name of a piece of furniture. To be clear, I’ll use the first name Table,” she told Reddit.
“We actually decided to keep his whole name, but we rearranged everything to add our last names. His full name was Table Michael Harrison.”
The mother said he was bullied at school because of his name and had since gone by the name Harrison.
But he still sees it on forms and occasionally substitute teachers call him by his first name, which makes him angry.
“He gets upset when he sees his real first name on forms. He gets upset when he has a substitute and she calls him Table.
“He really doesn’t like his first name and he says it makes him think of bad things,” she continued.
For his upcoming birthday, her son asked for no gifts, other than changing his legal name.
“He wants to get rid of Table completely and become Harrison Michael Smith-Jones. Would you let your child do that?” she asked Reddit users.
People were quick to comment on the thread, with many indicating that they would make him change his name if it got that bad.
Someone wrote: “He can always change it back later. I’ve never heard of a kid wanting to change his name for a birthday present. It sounds like he really wants to.”
Another noted, “I would say that in 99% of the situations the child is too young to make this decision. I would also say that this is the 1%.”
“I would consider it. The name stresses him out and he already uses another name. Plus, he still has the connection to his birth family with his middle names, if that becomes important to him in the future,” wrote a third.
The Struggle of Choosing a Baby Name
CHLOE Morgan, a senior writer at Fabulous, has revealed her dilemma when choosing a baby name…
I’m 35 weeks pregnant and the hardest part of pregnancy these past few months (apart from the insomnia and countless nighttime wetting!) has been coming up with a baby name.
The dilemmas are endless…
My partner and I had a private ultrasound to find out the gender as early as possible. Part of the reason for this was that we thought it would make choosing a baby name a lot easier, as we would only have to come up with a list of names for one gender instead of two.
How wrong we were…
I was overjoyed to find out I was pregnant with the baby girl I had dreamed of for so long. But because I was one of the last friends to get pregnant, I have had countless conversations with excited friends over the years about their favorite baby names…something I would like to undo without ever having heard.
Every friend comes up with at least 10 possible nicknames and I can’t help but feel like more names are out of the question, even though I know no one would object. It’s just my own problem!
This debate comes up over and over again on social media: can you choose the same name that was a ‘potential’ name for your friend’s baby?
It’s a very divisive topic and opinions are always divided. And I don’t want to be THAT person.
While some argue that there are thousands of other names to choose from, others say that you should choose YOUR favorite. After all, there is no guarantee that person will ever have a child.
Then there’s the matter of finding a name you love… and then doing some research online and reading one negative comment among hundreds of positive ones that you just can’t let go of.
I made that same mistake when I fell in love with a certain name (I won’t tell because I don’t want to ruin it for others!)… and then I saw someone point out that the name constantly autocorrects on a phone to something rather rude.
So we went back to the drawing board.
Only five more weeks and it looks like our little girl will be called ‘baby girl’ for a while longer!
Meanwhile, a fourth said: “I would let him do it. It’s not like he wants to change his name to Spider-Man, if his name is Harrison then life will be easier if that’s his legal name. Changing a name just gets harder as you get older.”
“I would make him change it. It seems like everyone is on the same page, I don’t see any harm in it. If he regrets it later, he can always take it back,” claimed a fifth.
Someone else added: “Yeah, go for it! I read your title and thought ‘oh God, no. He’s only 6.’ But… in that situation, yeah. I would do it.”
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