January 25, 2024 at 6:47 am

Teenager’s Parents Gave Him A Unique Name, But Now They’re Trying To Convince Him To Change It… Even Though He Likes It

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Pexels

Well, that’s a bit odd, don’t you think?

Parents wanting to change a kid’s name…it’s…odd…

But they must have a good reason, right?

Or maybe they don’t…

Check out the story below and see if you think this teenager is wrong for what they’re doing.

AITA for refusing to let my parents rename me?

“My (15M) parents gave my sister (16F), brother (13M) and me nature names and more specifically. Water nature names.

My sister is Ocean, I’m Cove and my brother is River.

They wanted our names to have a theme without being matchy with the same initial so we got our names.

The story was told to us when we were little and my parents were proud of the names they gave us.

But then they had a change of heart…

Back when we were all stuck at home my parents started to express regret about their choices for us. They actually told us over dinner one night that they wish they had given us better names and apologized for making us live with the names we were given.

A few months after that apology my mom and dad told us they wanted us to be Elizabeth (sister), James (me) and Michael (brother). They said since we were kids and weren’t in college yet and nobody had their license at that point it would be the best time to do it.

All three of us said we didn’t want to change our first names.

They weren’t having it.

My dad looked into whether they could do it when we said no and all answers he got pointed to a very strong no.

But it was also unusual to change your older kids first name so they went ahead and tried anyway but once we were asked if we wanted different names they were told no.

My parents brought it up a lot to us afterward. My brother asked why they wanted to name him Michael and said the name was lame.

They told him Michael was a timeless name that would age well and gave him some nickname choices. He said he didn’t like it.

So they asked if he would consider Charles instead which he said was an even bigger no.

Our parents focused really hard on him for a while because he had asked the question about the name so they figured he was the most open.

They’re standing their ground.

So far none of us have agreed to the name change.

I told my parents that I know they regret the names but we’re all used to and like our names and don’t want to go for more boring and common names.

My parents argued that in the future we will regret it and we’d have to pay for it ourselves when we’re adults and we realize having weird names does not age well.

I asked why they can’t let us get there if we ever do. They said we should be thinking more of our futures and they accused me of having a really bad attitude because I said James was as bad to me as Cove is to them now.

They told me to look online and I did and I saw a lot of dislike for our names. But I told them it still didn’t change my mind.

My parents said we should respect them enough as parents to allow this and that we’re all being disrespectful.

AITA?”

Here’s what folks had to say.

This person made a good point…

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual said he’s NTA and this is his choice.

Source: Reddit/AITA

One Reddit user said these kinds of names are becoming more common.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another individual agreed.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this Reddit user said these names aren’t bad at all.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Listen, if a kid wants to keep their name because they like it… LET THEM!

Sometimes parents can’t get out of their own way.

If you thought that was an interesting read, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.