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Being a parent is one of the biggest responsibilities you can have in life, and part of it involves giving your child a name they won’t hate.
My dad wanted to name me after Kate Bush, but my mum preferred Emma – and she didn’t want to name me after a celebrity.
But while naming a baby after a singer is one thing, naming them after your ex’s cat is something else entirely.
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This is exactly what one man wanted to do to his son, and so his partner took to Reddit to open up about her feelings.
Now, before we get into it, the name in question is a popular and inoffensive one – Max.
As a result, the mum-to-be initially didn’t have a problem with the name, and it was only after she found out the inspiration that it ‘felt really off’.
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She wrote: "My partner and I are expecting our first baby together. We recently found out it's a boy and we're trying to decide on a nice boy's name.
"My partner suggested Max as he really loves the name. I don't like the name but agreed to consider it as I couldn't really think of another name.
"We were talking to his sister about baby names and I mentioned that he suggested Max. She brought up that it was the name of a cat he shared with his ex-fiancée. When they broke up, she took the cat and he never saw it again.”
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The woman said she wasn’t comfortable naming their child after her partner’s ex’s cat.
She wrote. “It felt kind of gross to me. He told me I'm overreacting. It's just a name and it's not like the cat and the baby will ever meet."
However, as any cat owner like myself will attest, when you’ve not got a human baby, your furbaby is, well, your baby.
This mum-to-be felt this way too, and she explained that she didn’t want to bring an aspect of his ex’s old relationship into their child’s life.
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But despite her discomfort, her partner is standing by the name and claiming that she’s just being ‘sensitive’.
She added: "He also said that I didn't like the name in the first place so I'm looking for excuses not to name our baby Max.
"It ended it a bit of an argument with me basically saying I'm refusing to consider it anymore and him calling me an a**hole."
The post was made in Reddit’s 'Am I the A**hole' forum, where users can share their dilemmas and have strangers weigh in on whether or not they are in the wrong.
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In this instance, social media users were in agreement that the woman wasn’t the a**hole.
One wrote: “First, in my opinion, Max isn't a great name. It makes me think of pets and it seems so inappropriate for a child.
“Second, naming a baby after a pet you shared with an ex is weird and makes it sound like the person doing so isn't over their ex.
“Finally, I hate when men use pregnancy hormones as a reason to dismiss their partner as sensitive and irrational. It is such a red flag.”
A second agreed, writing: “He had a pseudo baby with her and named it Max, then wants to name his actual baby that.
"Maybe he's just obsessive over the name but it's kind of weird.
“I think what really pushed in the nail is that he accused you of being hormonal and overly sensitive. None of those things have to do with not wanting the name of his ex's cat.”
A third added: “He’s just being weird here, you don’t have to name your child anything that makes you uncomfortable.”
A fourth suggested: “You should suggest to name your baby the same name as your ex-boyfriend, and see how your current bf reacts. Then we'll know who's being hormonal here.”
However, some Redditors took the side of the woman’s partner.
One said that they too would name a child after a past pet.
They wrote: “My first cat was named Dominic. If I had a son, I might have named him Dominic. Why?
“Not because I loved the cat (which I did) but simply because I have loved the name Dominic since I was a child. That is why I named the cat that.
“It might be he just likes it.”
A second agreed: “How old are y’all? Where do names come from? You heard it somewhere, so you like it. That's usually how it goes.
"It's not like it's the name of some unborn child that will never be from a relationship that will never be again.”
What do you think?
Personally, I have no problem with naming a child after a pet – it’s the association with an ex that makes this problematic!
Emma Guinness