A woman says she's been left in a difficult situation after a friend yelled at her for "stealing" her baby name for her dog.
Two weeks back, the 19-year-old got a five-month-old puppy, and wanted to name him Milo, after her brother who passed away nearly a decade ago.
She and her brother had always said they'd name their children after each other, but when she first clapped eyes on her new dog, she was struck by how closely his eyes resembled her brother's.
She, therefore, decided to use the name for her pet, and plans to give it as a middle name should she have any children of her own.
Her friend Jessie, who is expecting her first baby, is well aware of her long-standing fondness for the name and has never shown much interest in it herself.
However, when she came over to meet Milo, she wasn't happy at all, claiming she herself had wanted the name for her unborn baby.
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Taking to Reddit, the frustrated dog owner, who has already purchased tags and a collar for Milo, sought opinions as to whether she is in the wrong for "stealing the name" as others have claimed.
She wrote: "She was really quiet and I asked what was wrong. She said 'I’m naming my son Milo. You can’t name your dog that. I don’t want my baby named after a dog.'
"I told her that 'you knew I loved the name. You’ve never liked it anyway.' She said that 'her baby’s name was more important than a dumb animal’s name.'
" She told me that she and her boyfriend had already bought shirts with the name on them and they had already told their families about it.
"I told her that she knows why I love the name. She proceeded to tell me that I needed to change it and that the dog wouldn’t care what its name was. The thing is I have a connection with this name. I wasn’t sure if I was going to name my dog Milo but when I met him I knew that was his name."
The unnamed woman, who goes by the username u/Accurate_Zucchini_27, admits she felt a "bit sad" given that Jessie knew the context behind the name, and told her that she'd prefer it if she chose something else for her baby. Unfortunately, she wasn't keen on this suggestion at all.
She said: "At this point, she’s yelling at me to change it and that she didn’t care it was my brother's name. She wanted it and I wasn’t backing down. She ended up calling her boyfriend to come to get her and left."
Her friend's mother later rang her up, telling her "that it’s just a dog I don’t have to be so attached", and claiming that Jessie was "really upset about not being able to use the name."
She continued: "I told her mum, 'this is my dog, named after my brother. She can do what she wants I don’t care.' A few others in her family are saying that I’m an ****** for stealing the name and that she loved it and had been talking about it for months."
One person wrote: "You can use the name, and she can use the name. The dog and the baby won’t be in the same class or anything. They don’t even let babies in the kennel!"
Another said: "No one cares if your baby shares a name with some random dog. Also, you can’t steal a name when you don’t know someone else is planning on using it!"
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