Baby-name remorse -- what do you do? - CNN.com

Baby-name remorse -- what do you do? - CNN.com: "By Anna Jane Grossman

(LifeWire) -- Pauline and Jeffrey Eadie, of Cleveland, had gathered the family together to watch home movies of their two older children as babies. In one movie, Jack, now 5, was looking skeptically at his then-newborn sister, now 3. "In the video, I was saying, 'Jack, go to the baby, go hug her,'" says Pauline. "And then at some point I said, 'Go kiss Emma.'"

Oh my gosh! Don't call me that!

Unaware that her name had been changed when she was a newborn, Pauline Eadie's daughter, Caroline, looked at her and asked 'Who's Emma?'"

The Eadies are among a surprising number of parents who, following the birth of their child, suffer namer's remorse. In a recent poll of 1,219 mothers conducted by BabyCenter.com, 10 percent considered changing their baby's name. The reasons they gave ranged from being inspired by another name to having a relative disagree with the choice.

Regret is common after any big decision, and few prenatal decisions these days are as open to debate as picking a child's name. Rare are the parents who haven't invested in a small library of baby-name books or trolled the Internet for a name unique enough to be usefully Googled, but not so weird as to cause ridicule....

For most parents, the urge comes long before the baby can say his or her own name. Wavering is not uncommon for those who figure they'll pick a name once they see the baby. "But that's a tall order to put on a newborn," says Wattenberg. "It's hard to look at this 7-pound thing and say, 'Oh! She's an Abigail!'" So they choose something quickly and then spend weeks second-guessing themselves.

That was the case for the Eadies. When their daughter was born, the nursery was full and the nurses were rushing them to sign the birth certificate and leave the hospital. "Emma seemed pretty," Pauline Eadie says. They sent out birth announcements, "but it just felt strange coming out of my mouth." They decided they preferred a family name, Caroline.

Adrienne and Matt Grayson, of Charleston, South Carolina, settled on the name Luke early in her pregnancy. "I also loved the name Beckett, but it felt a little weird, like Apple," says Adrienne Grayson, referring to the name actress Gwyneth Paltrow gave her daughter. When the baby was born, they named him Luke Beckett Grayson. What followed was a sea of engraved picture frames, monogrammed pillows, "Welcome Luke" signs drawn by the Grayson's older children -- and a wave of regret.

"I couldn't shut up about how we should call him Beckett instead of Luke, and I also started mourning my maiden name, Shaw," Adrienne Grayson says. "I thought I should've made that his middle name because we weren't going to have more kids."

The more she reflected, the more she wanted to change Luke's name to Beckett Shaw Grayson. The process involved hours on the phone with the Social Security office and the county clerk. She found that although it's legal to change a minor's name (as long as both parents consent), states don't always have a well-oiled system in place for regretful parents.

......

Since learning of the name she had for the first eight weeks of her life, Caroline has taken to renaming her dolls.

She also has announced that she prefers the name Emma. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend

LifeWire provides original and syndicated lifestyle content to Web publishers. Anna Jane Grossman is a freelance journalist in New York City.