Naming your child isn't always easy if you haven't had a moniker in mind for months, and it's not uncommon to want to change your little one's name a few months after finalising their birth certificate. But one mum has been left unsure of what to do after discovering that her four-year-old daughter can't stand her own name, and now wants to go by her nickname instead.
The mum explained that she named her daughter Philomena after reading the name in a book, but for short, she and the rest of her family have been calling her 'Pippa'. And now that her daughter is old enough to start making her own decisions, she's said she doesn't want to be called Philomena, and will only answer to Pippa.
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In a post on Reddit, the mum, from the US, claimed: "My daughter doesn't like her name.
"She's four and her name is Philomena. We are in the US and I read the name in a novel and absolutely loved it from a young age, so when I had a daughter I named her Philomena.
"We call her Pippa, and she insists her name is Pippa. She is not Philomena. Did I make a mistake calling her Philomena?"
The mum - who says she still "loves" the name and doesn't think it's "weird" - also admitted she may have made a similar error with her two-year-old son, Malcolm, whom the family have decided to call Macko for short.
While Malcolm is still too young to form any opinions on his name, the mum said she's worried that he might grow up to only answer to Macko and reject any mention of his full first name.
She added: "I still love the name and I don't think it's weird. It's spelt properly and it's not absurd. Her brother is Malcolm - called Macko. He's two.
"I don't know, I had a really hard time naming my kids. I didn't want them super common, but I also didn't want them weird, you know? Do you think Philomena is weird?"
Commenters on the Reddit post were largely in agreement that the mum hadn't done anything wrong by naming her children Philomena and Malcolm, and said that the issue with her daughter is probably more to do with how tough Philomena can be to spell for a young child.
One person said: "She's four, and it's a name that's a b***h to learn to write. Just call her by the nickname she likes and see what happens."
While another wrote: "This reminds me of the children’s book, Chrysanthemum. Her kid might grow out of it or maybe she won’t. I’ve known people with completely ordinary names who go by middle names or nicknames bc they hate their given name for one reason or the other. Sometimes we don’t fit our name."
And a third noted: "Your daughter also might just be young. When I was little I always went by my nickname because other kids couldn't pronounce my full name. I felt embarrassed and weird about it. Now I often lead with my full name. I love it and it suits me."
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