Mom Who Named Baby After Bacteria Gets Laughed At

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Recently, there have been quite a few headlines about poorly chosen baby names. One child's moniker was so bad that a nurse called child services, another's name was an actual crime, one mom's name choice got her ghosted, another didn't realize the gross meaning of the name she chose, one name was so unusual people thought it was a joke and one parent got slammed for calling their kid Kevin. Now, there is a mom-to-be who is set to name her child after a deadly bacteria.

Her sister shared the news in a post on Reddit, where she asked for commenters opinions. She was upset because at the baby shower, when her sibling revealed the baby's name, she laughed at it and was kicked out of the party. She explained how her sis, Ella, wanted to give her daughter a name that was a combination of "Ella" and her husband's name, "Sam." The problem is that they settled on the name "Samnella."

When they announced the bacteria-sounding name, according to the sister, "There were a few 'woo' [noises] but [then] dead silence, and I laughed, thinking it wasn't real. Then I said, 'Salmonella, like food poisoning?'" It didn't go over well. Sam's mom then effusively said how "it's a beautiful name" but by that point, Ella was screaming that her sister "ruined everything and the name was meant to signify the coming together of them." The sister's mom told her she should've kept her mouth shut and that the kid would probably just "go by Sammy."

She wrote in her post, "I do think I shouldn't have laughed, but also, how have multiple people heard Samnella and just thought 'Yeah sounds cute?' My sister says everyone else loves and compliments the name, I think they're just being nice." She asked if she was a jerk for her reaction, but most commenters were equally perplexed by the name and concerned the child would grow up and be bullied. One person wrote, "All I could think of is that poor kid in biology class in the future. We used to get teased if a character from an English lesson or an example sentence for grammar had our name in it. The kid is named after a disease!" and another said, "You are doing them a service. Now they’ll hopefully be embarrassed out of using that awful name."

No word on if Sam and Ella were swayed at all by her sister's reaction.


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