A few years ago, Sophie Kihm, a baby name expert and consultant in Chicago, was working with an expectant mother to curate a selection of possible baby names. Kihm’s client wound up settling on two relatively distinct top choices: Winter, for a girl; Bowen, for a boy. The client shared her chosen names with a few friends before her son (Bowen) was born.
When the client later became pregnant with her second child, a girl, she was thrilled to have the chance to name her daughter Winter. But then one of her friends announced that she was also expecting a daughter - and planned to name her Winter. Kihm’s client was bereft.
From her perspective, "the name was effectively stolen from her,” Kihm says. Over a decade of working with clients, Kihm - who is also a perinatal therapist and the editor in chief of the baby name website Nameberry - has encountered innumerable variations of naming conflicts: The expectant mother who was dead set on Henry, until one of her best friends unknowingly gave the name to her newborn son first. Another client said she had always loved the name Isla and was heartbroken when her cousin used it (but when the client herself became pregnant years later, she decided to name her child Isla anyway.
) Truly flagrant name theft is less common, Kihm says - though jaw-dropping accounts abound in Reddit forums and advice columns - but she’s counseled parents through scenarios that feel somewhat theft-adjacent: "Like, ‘Oh, I really loved the name Riley, an.
