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Mum's heartfelt apology for her daughter's problematic moniker: 'I shouldn't be allowed to name people'

By Merryn Porter |

Naming a child is a personal experience and there are many reasons behind how parents eventually come up with a name for their offspring.

But every now and then, parents, and their children, suffer name regret - sometimes many years later.

Now a woman has taken to the question-and-answer sharing website Quora to admit she regrets giving her daughter her unusual moniker.

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A mum has admitted apologising to her daughter for giving her such an unusual name. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Store manager Samantha Anderson took to Quora to discuss the question, "What do you think of parents who give their children oddball names?"

She admitted that she is so racked with regret over her daughter's name that "occasionally I tell my daughter that I'm sorry" and that she "wasn't trying to make things harder for her."

"I was 18 when I got pregnant with my oldest," she explained, adding that at the time "I was reading one of the MANY cheesy romance novels my aunt had given me and the main female character was named 'Persephone' and called 'Sepha'.

"Well I LOVED it! 'Persephone' is the Greek goddess of spring and rebirth and yes the queen of death, but I mean you can't escape it so better to rule it right? Plus the name is just so pretty."

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Anderson said "that was going to be her name" until she learned "everyone hated it" and "no one could pronounce it or spell it."

"I refused to give up the name I loved but decided to make it the middle name to be easier on her," she said.

Anderson said she and her friends then spent "hours and hours trying to come up with a name that would work and flow with the middle name 'Persephone' before coming across 'Cairo'.

She thought 'Cairo Persephone' "rolled off the tongue nicely" and that she was making it easier on her future daughter "by hiding what I saw as a potentially problematic name in the middle."

But Anderson said she did not anticipate the problems her daughter's first name would cause.

"It's a well-known city in Egypt," the mum said. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

"I didn't think everyone would think 'Cairo' was a boy's name. I didn't think people would mispronounce it CONSTANTLY. It's 'Cairo'. It's a very well-known city in Egypt. It's not 'Kayro' as in corn syrup people! She's not a curio or a cheerio or a churro! It's 'Cairo' not 'Caira'.

"I'm sorry sweetie. I LOVE your name. I just didn't imagine ALL the ways it could/would go wrong."

Anderson said she named her next child, a son, 'Alexander' or 'Xander'. She added that he "got off easy," even with the middle name 'Hale'. But her third child, another girl, was again given an unusual name.

"She's named after a fictional character on a TV show. We LOVE Game of Thrones and one of our favourite characters is Arya Stark. I love the name but preferred the 'Aria' spelling. Her middle name is a compromise. My husband desperately wanted to name her 'Valkyrie'. We settled on 'Valyrie'. It's a real name spelled differently to give a nod to Norse mythologies," she said.

She ended the post, "I shouldn't be allowed to name people."

Hundreds of people weighed in, with some giving their own examples.

"I have a friend who decided to name her kid after a Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Except they dropped the 'Marcus' and just went with 'Aurelius'. Which is cool and all, until you realise that she wants Aurelius pronounced in a way that sounds a lot like 'areolas'," wrote one, adding, "parents who give their kids different names are trying too hard" and "their selfishness and vanity is showing."

Another wrote, "My name is 'Rucinde-Ann'. It's a name that I love and I wouldn't change it for the world, mostly. But let's consider what I've been called for the last four or so decades," and added a long list that included 'Ruwanda'.

She said she wanted to shake parents who saddle their kids with unusual names, "until their ears ring and common sense magically flows back into their selfish brains."

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