A woman has been backed online for sticking to a name she and her husband had chosen for their son, even though her brother and sister-in-law surprisingly gave their baby the same unusual moniker a couple of months earlier.
The Reddit post, shared on the Am I The A****** channel, has sparked widespread discussion, with many commending her for handling the situation with grace.
The new mom, who goes by the handle u/Extension_Umpire7129, explained that she and her husband had long planned to name their son Oisín, a traditional Irish name that holds significant meaning for them.
Her husband, originally from Galway, Ireland, had discussed this name with her since they were dating. When the couple found out they were expecting, they agreed that their son would indeed be named Oisín.
However, her brother and sister-in-law, who have no ties to Ireland, surprised the family by naming their own son Oisín Miguel when he was born two months before the original poster’s baby.
“My brother and his wife have as much right to name their child whatever they want. I do not own my name. I have no right to dictate to my brother what he names his kid,” the original poster (OP) typed in the Reddit post.
When her son was born, she and her husband followed through with their plan to name him Oisín Daniel, the name they had decided on long before their nephew was born.
Her sister-in-law wasn’t pleased that the cousins would share the same name and demanded that the woman either call her son by his middle name or change it altogether.
“She has flipped out that two cousins will have the same name. She is nuts because our family is Hispanic, and half of our cousins are named Carlos or Camilla,” she wrote in her post.
The situation became even more baffling when she shared that her mother, while staying neutral, was surprised by her brother’s choice, expecting him to name his son after their late father instead.
“My husband’s family thinks the whole thing is hilarious, my family thinks my sister in-law is a weirdo, and she thinks I’m an a****** for copying her,” the OP wrote.
Newsweek spoke to Renée Zavislak, host of Psycho Therapist The Podcast, who praised the OP for her maturity in relation to her admission of not owning the name (“very demure, very mindful,” she commented).
Zavislak said there is no reason why the woman should have changed the name upon her nephew’s birth, given that she always knew her son would be called Oisín.
“The fact that her SIL beat her to it has no bearing on what is ‘right’ here,” Zavislak told Newsweek. “Just as she doesn’t own the name, neither does her SIL. It is absolutely inappropriate for her to suggest that you call your son something other than Oisín, and the audacity of her demands is what strikes me most.”
At the time of writing, the post has received 21,000 upvotes and 2,000 comments, commending the OP for handling the situation with grace.
“OP is definitely handling this right way. I was expecting her to say she flipped out on SIL/bro for “stealing” her name (which how these posts usually go) but instead…just cool as a cucumber, stuck with her plan… and now SIL is the one flipping out,” one Redditor commented, meanwhile another wrote “she’s got the gold standard of coolness.”
Another user shared that their ex-sister-in-law “deliberately stole” the name she was going to use for her newborn baby girl, Freya, but spelled it Frayah: “I burst out laughing when I saw the birth announcement and decided she was welcome to it.”
Zavislak concluded that the sister-in-law is out of line for naming her son the same moniker that the OP had decided for her own son long ago.
For this reason, Zavislak predicted that arguing would only make the sister-in-law more hostile.
“I highly recommend she avoids all conversation about it by using this polite dismissal: ‘I understand you are disappointed that we stuck with the name we had always planned to use. I am not going to change his name nor discuss this anymore. I hope we can all focus on raising happy boys, no matter what we call them.’”
“If she, or anyone else, brings it up with her after that, repeat the last sentence,” Zavislak said.
Newsweek reached out to u/Extension_Umpire7129 for comment but couldn’t verify the details of the case.
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