When your name is similar to a celebrity

April 30, 2018 5:09 AM

The new royal baby has almost the exact same name as my son. I’m bothered by this. How can I deal with this better?

To clarify the ‘almost’ it’s the same name but in a different order. Mine goes by ‘Charlie’ so people won’t look at him and go ‘oh, royal baby!’ And rationally, I know that these are common names and probably many people have them in the same combination...

I just keep thinking about a student I once had whose last name was Potter and had a son called James. Again, very common names but that kid got a ton of Harry Potter jokes and probably got sick of it. I don’t want the handsome, carefully chosen names I gave my son to make him the butt of a joke later.

Has anyone been through this kind of thing before? Am I overthinking it?

posted by ficbot to Grab Bag (34 answers total)

Am I overthinking it?

Yes.
posted by macapes at 5:21 AM on April 30, 2018 [45 favorites]

Obligatory Office Space clip. "Why should I change? He's the one who sucks."

The royal baby will be named "Prince Louis" for, basically, ever, as the entirety of his name. Nobody knows or cares about all their middle names, so as long as your last name isn't "Windsor", you should be fine.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:21 AM on April 30, 2018 [15 favorites]

I think you may be overthinking. When my son William was born the nurse called him Prince William a couple times. That was the end of it. I didn’t mind. I don’t know your location on the globe but kids at school in the USA aren’t going to have the royal family on their radar.
posted by loveandhappiness at 5:21 AM on April 30, 2018 [5 favorites]

From what I recall, the prince's name is Louis Arthur Charles, so... I don't think it's similar at all if your son goes by Charlie? And as the above commenter points out, they are gonna just be Prince Louis and most people will not remember the middle names (I have no idea what the middle names of George and Charlotte are). So in the rare occasion they need to write out their full name ie "Charles Arthur Louis" or whatever close combination your child has, I really don't think the connection will register.

And this is their third kid. Like, I don't think people really make a connection with Prince Harry if their name is Harry (people would probably make more of a connection to Harry Potter than Prince Harry in that case). And nobody knows what his middle names are either.

I think you're overthinking it. Charlie is a cute name and common enough that I personally don't associate it with a specific celebrity or cultural icon.

(And also, sorry but kids can be jerks and all names can be susceptible to teasing but at least Charlie is not *too* easy to target.)
posted by like_neon at 5:41 AM on April 30, 2018 [5 favorites]

I don’t want the handsome, carefully chosen names I gave my son to make him the butt of a joke later.

There isn't anything you can or could have done about this. If there were no royal baby with a similar name, other kids might still find a way to twist your kid's name into something tease-able. This isn't on you or your child.
posted by rtha at 5:42 AM on April 30, 2018 [18 favorites]

In one way, you could think of this as lucky, insurance against a disreputable person with the same name as or a similar name to your child showing up in the news later and causing people to develop negative associations with the name. You never know who is going to end up with the same name as or a similar name to your child in the future. But you do know that, now, there is at least one famous person with a similar name whom millions of people are likely to have a positive association with.
posted by BlueJae at 5:42 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

(Plus now you can say to your kid, "Oh no, you weren't named after the prince-- the prince was named after YOU." Which is a fun family joke and also a pretty good comeback to any teasing that may happen.)
posted by BlueJae at 5:44 AM on April 30, 2018 [11 favorites]

He goes by Charlie? Non issue, in my opinion.
posted by cooker girl at 5:45 AM on April 30, 2018

Actually my comparison to Prince Harry is incorrect. Your situation is more like if someone's name was "Albert" and worrying about the connection to Prince Harry (Albert is his second middle name, he has 3). It's just not a thing. Hopefully that eases your worry.
posted by like_neon at 5:46 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

This shouldn't be something to worry about at all. Yes, all of his names are very common, yes, he will probably only be referred to as Prince Louis for his whole life and only folks who are very into royal family stuff will make any connection. More reasons not to worry: their initials are different, kids who really want to make fun of your son will find a way and his name likely won't be that, teasing is part of life and you can help your kid develop healthy responses to it regardless of its source.

When something like this pops up in my head and just won't go away, it's not a matter of overthinking anything (though I do that all the time too), it's a matter of displaced anxiety. Is there something going on right now for you that you can't control or are scared about? Maybe a lot of little things have piled up? Try spending some time working on those issues and see if you're still bothered about names.
posted by Mizu at 5:47 AM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]

What is the worst thing that will come from this? My name is Molly Mc____ and I grew up incessantly being called Molly McButter and nothing bad happened to me as a result. I'm a healthy adult and nobody does that anymore. The point being, kids will always find a way to tease other kids about something. If this is the worst thing they can come up with for your son, he's doing pretty well.
posted by something something at 5:59 AM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

I named my daughter Elena (a very common Italian name but rare in the US) and Disney promptly came out with a Princess Elena the following year. It’s fine. No one cares, I promise.
posted by lydhre at 6:01 AM on April 30, 2018

I like the name Charlie, and I don't associate it royals, if anything I associate it with a chocolate factory and that very sweet young actor. I suspect your annoyance will be temporary. Be glad you didn't name your baby Donald, Paul, Ryan, Mitch, Orrin, etc.
posted by theora55 at 6:03 AM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]

This just seems like something now because it’s in the news. It’s like a baby boomer being named Andrew (third child of Queen Elizabeth). Who even associates that with Prince Andrew now? In fact I had to Google to make sure I had the name right.
posted by FencingGal at 6:10 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

There's nothing anybody can do about this, so let it go. If the names aren't even in the same order then incidences of him having to deal with the minor annoyance of someone saying "Oh, like $famousperson?" will probably be rare anyway. But minor annoyances are a part of life, it's beyond our ability to control. About one out of four people I introduce myself to hears "Hi, my name is Dave," even though my name is not Dave. I could choose to let that annoy me, but how would it help anything? All I can control is my reaction. It no longer bothers me.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:17 AM on April 30, 2018

The new royal baby has almost the exact same name as my son... Mine goes by ‘Charlie’...

Okay, I'm not trying to be a tool here, but your son's name is "Charlie" not "Louis." That's significantly different from the royal baby's name, and it's certainly not "almost the exact same." People will forget the royal baby's middle names pretty soon, and TBH people aren't going to pay much attention to your son's middle names, either.

Let it go. You don't own these names and you're seriously overestimating the effects of your son "sharing" a name with another person. I'm a Sarah Elizabeth #LastName, and have never felt any name overlap annoyance with other Sarahs, Elizabeths, or Elizabeth Sarahs, or even Sarah Elizabeths.

This literally does not matter at all in the grand scheme of things.
posted by schroedingersgirl at 6:21 AM on April 30, 2018 [20 favorites]

Your son is Charlie. The baby is Louis. If you weren’t concerned that there was a Prince Charles already before he was born, you certainly shouldn’t be concerned about a Prince Louis.
posted by amro at 6:28 AM on April 30, 2018 [31 favorites]

Very, very few people know or care about the 27 names given to a royal. This seems like a big deal right now because social media was in an absolute tizzy about how "long" it took Beth & Art (oh, I'm sorry, the Duchess & Duke of Cambridge, oops I mean Kate & William) to name Prince Louis. In a month no one will remember except the most ardent of royal watchers. Unless you think 3rd grade is going to be stuffed with kids who have Ebay alerts for vintage novelty Charles & Diana wedding china, it will be just fine.
posted by I'm Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today! at 6:30 AM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]

You're overthinking it. Prince Louis will be Louis all his life (at least to the press/public), your kid will be Charlie or Charles (depending upon the formality of the situation or how mad you are at him). Most people will never know that his full name contains elements of the name of the second British prince of his generation. Even fewer will care.

SonR has a use name that's very close to Voldemort's given name. He was born before we knew what that name was. It does not seem to have adversely affected him -- in his teenage years, he embraced it, and used to answer the phone "Dark Lord Voldemort speaking".
posted by jlkr at 6:53 AM on April 30, 2018 [5 favorites]

My son also has th newborn royal’s name. It was somewhat novel for the last 8 years (one other in town) but I never expected to corner the Louis market, and there has been a long line of Royal Louis precursors. There will likely be an influx of Louis and maybe now people won’t be as likely to spell it with an ‘e’. /puts on deal with it sunglasses
posted by furtive at 6:53 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

I know the middle names of none of my friends. Unless your son's last name is Windsor, I don't think this is going to be an issue, at all, ever, particularly given that your son is a Charlie. Also I will tell you that I spent all of my youth having cracks made about, separately, both my first name and my lastname (Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.) There are worse fates.

Yes I can wiggle my nose, and Arthur Dent is my dad.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:16 AM on April 30, 2018

My middle name matches a royal, and we were born within 6 months of each other. No-one cares. No-one even mentions it. One of my kids shares a middle name with one of the young royals (fact: I only just realised this!). There's a kid at my kid's school whose first name is the same as the new royal baby. One of my cousins shares a first name with a royal. They're all common names.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 8:01 AM on April 30, 2018

Honestly if he's called Charlie then I'd be more concerned about people comparing him to Prince Charles
posted by wwax at 8:06 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

I can't tell from a quick skim of your posts but if you're American this is a total non-issue IMO. Americans won't even remember the new baby's name by next year. The only reason William and Harry are so relatively well-known here is because Diana was so famous.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:25 AM on April 30, 2018

I'm an Anglophile and I honestly forgot Princess Charlotte's name and had to look it up. I'm with nakedmolerats, nobody will remember. Just like nobody remembers that one of Prince George's middle names is Louis.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:27 AM on April 30, 2018

Yes, you are waaaaaaaaaay overthinking this. Unless you literally made up a name that never existed before, your child will always have a name that someone else has. As long as you didn't name him something like "John Wayne Gacy [Last Name]," no one will care that he was the same name as a royal, even if you're a Brit.
posted by holborne at 9:32 AM on April 30, 2018

The first thing I think of when I hear the name Charlie is not anything to do with the royals (and I also only heard the baby’s name was Louis) but rather Charlie Brown from Peanuts.

As other said, you can’t prevent a somewhat common or known name from being part of a cultural touchstone somewhere at some point. There’s nothing to worry about here.
posted by Crystalinne at 10:17 AM on April 30, 2018

I went to high school with a kid named Dan Quayle. He was fine.
posted by jeffamaphone at 10:37 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

There are scoooooooooooooooooores of people who have the same name as a celebrity, so much so that there are news magazines who turn to that as a fallback piece when it's a slow news week and they have to fill space. Most of the time, it's only a minor annoyance for them, particularly if the celebrity they share a name with is a jerk (imagine the other "Donald Trump"s out there in the world, for example).

Also, jerky kids will make nicknames out of your kids' name no matter what you do. There's a story I read somewhere of a couple parents who thought long and hard about the name for their new daughter, trying to avoid picking a name that could be spun into a teasing nickname, and finally settled on "Amber" - only to have their son walk up to his baby sister one day and greet her with "Hi, Amber-ger!"

Almost no one will associate your son's name with Prince Louis' name. You're fine.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:05 AM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm American and I didn't know until the NYTimes wrote a "Prince Baby's full name has a history" last week that any of the UK Royals had anything but a first name. Thinking right now, I'm not sure I acturately remember Prince Baby's uncle's name (Prince William?).

I guess this kind of thing is only a problem if the dickhole-kid age group knows about it. If the third grade bullies don't know about Prince Louis's full name (and why would they?), then they aren't going to be making fun of your kid for a the same collection of names in a different order.
posted by sideshow at 11:17 AM on April 30, 2018

You are totally overthinking this, yes. We're talking about a set of very common Western European names here.

And for all you know, young James Potter thinks his name was a fortuitous coincidence and he uses those jokes to his advantage on the playground.
posted by desuetude at 11:53 AM on April 30, 2018

As an adult, I discovered my name had been used by a porn actress, and her results came up in google before mine. This is really a non-issue.
posted by Nimmie Amee at 1:13 PM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

My middle name is Theon. Prior to 1996, the only place I ever saw that name was on my driver’s license and on whatever official application I was filling out at the time. Prior to 2011, on the few occasions it ever came up, I had to spell it and explain why I had that as a middle name (it’s a male name and I am not in fact male, not that anyone knew whether the name was gendered anyway).

Now that Game of Thrones is a hit TV show that’s been on the air for 7 seasons, I never have to spell it or explain it again! But it still almost never comes up. Moral of the story is that it wouldn’t matter how much of an outlier a name is or isn’t, someone else probably has it and that person could wind up famous, so oh well. If you’re not even in the UK then I can’t imagine why anyone would make the connection. It’s not like Kate and William copied you any more than George R. R. Martin copied me.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:59 PM on April 30, 2018

I'm trans. My first name is 'Dwayne'.

So is this guy's.

The only commentary I get is from some friends who forward me news on The Rock. Which - OK. I don't mind; I kind of asked for that in taking the name. But that's it. Acquaintances and strangers don't say anything about it at all, and The Rock is a lot more well known in North America than rando Prince Royal X.

If anything, it helps, because at coffee houses? I can just say "It's a latte for 'Dwayne', like The Rock".
posted by spinifex23 at 7:00 PM on April 30, 2018