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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 when George discovers Susan’s cousin has named her baby with the name he planned to use for his first child, or in 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 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.”
Something similar happened to Milly*, 29, after a seemingly innocuous conversation with a pregnant friend. “She couldn’t pick a name for her second daughter,” she remembers. “I was single and years off having kids myself, but told her I’d always loved the name ‘Jessica’ because I love ‘Jessie’ as a nickname. Next thing I know, her daughter is called Jessie. Now I feel like, if I’m lucky enough to have children one day, I can’t call my daughter that – it will seem like I’ve copied her!”
I’m single. I don’t even know if I want kids. Even so, I’ve had a list of seven names (all for girls, obviously) on my phone since I was 14. In light of this article, it might seem silly to write them down here, but I’ve happily divulged these names to friends over the years, almost as an insurance policy: “These are names, please do use them.”
Most of my friends refuse to tell people their names, keeping them in a secret list on their Notes app in order to make them less susceptible to theft. This isn’t something men seem to think about; at least my male friends don’t – when I told one I was writing something about baby names, he shrugged and replied blankly, “Are you for or against?”
Generally, then, this is an issue between women, one that I’m partly convinced is characterised by a tacit sense of internalised misogyny that pits us against each other, as if the first person to secure their baby name wins. And at time in which names have become a bit of a status symbol (growing up, I swear everyone just cycled through the same classic names, like Sophie or Jamie), everyone wants baby name to stand out.
In Sex and the City, the reason why Laney’s name theft stings so much is that, as a single woman in her 30s, Charlotte hasn’t been able to have the children she so desperately wants yet – and now she can’t use the name she wanted, either; someone else has beat her to it. The pain extends beyond the betrayal of having her secret name used – it’s that Laney has had kids before her.
Honestly, I get it. And so whether you want kids or not, if a friend uses one of your baby names, I hope that all of us have another friend who’ll swagger up to the offender in a sexy red cardigan, no context needed, and say something cutting before wrapping an arm around us and taking us to a dive bar. Because those are the friends we all deserve.