Internet Backs Woman Picking Same Baby Name as Cousin's Child

A woman's plan to give her son the same name as her cousin's child has been praised online.

In a viral post shared on the Am I The A**hole group on Reddit, which can be seen here, user Anonymaus1679 explained their naming dilemma.

The Reddit user said that she and her husband both loved the name Mark and planned to use it in the event of having a boy.

But despite knowing this, her sister said that she would call her son Mark, creating a small drama in the family after the poster became pregnant.

While the name Mark is proving to be popular in the family, the name did not make it into the top 100 boys' names in 2021.

According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, the top 10 names in 2021 were, in order: Liam, Noah, Oliver, Elijah, James, William, Benjamin, Lucas, Henry and Theodore.

The Reddit user said: "My husband and I were annoyed and reminded her of our naming intentions and told her that we would not be changing our minds if we were to have a son.

"She agreed to at least avoid calling him Mark (which was a lie, ironically she started calling him that a little before I started trying for a baby)."

The Reddit user added: "I am now pregnant with a boy and I love my little nephew but my name choice has not changed.

"She is absolutely livid and despite the family had known about the name drama, some of them are pressuring us to change our minds.

"We did try to think of alternates but no other name feels tight."

Since being shared on Sunday, August 28, the post has raked in 8,600 upvotes and some 1,400 comments.

Most of those commenters praised the mother-to-be for going ahead with the name and shared examples where the same name was used in their own family.

One Reddit user, who's comment was upvoted some 11,000 times, said: "NTA. Name your child any name you wish. Even if they were close it wouldn't be uncommon for two cousins to have the same name.

"In my family, my cousin has the first name as my brother. In my wife's family, there are several cousins with the same first name. In that case, it is a grandfather's first name. N my brother's just a coincidence. No one ever made an issue about it."

Another added: "Same cousin names are very common in my family. We tend to differentiate by saying Big Adam or Little Adam or my Ben or Aunty's Ben just for convenience but we also have some names that are repeated over several generations so each has a particular nickname like that and we all know who were are talking about.

"I guess you can just call nephew Marcus constantly and hopefully once your Mark comes along it will catch on."

A third posted: "There's so many Johns in my mom's side, we refer to them by John - 'middle name' when they're blood-related and 'John - last name' if they're family by marriage. If anyone cares, they haven't mentioned [it]. I also have a relative named Dawn, who married a guy called Donnie."

Anonymaus1679 declined to comment when approached by Newsweek.