A US mother has legally changed the name of her three-month-old daughter because her original name was ‘too hard to pronounce’.
The mother from Maryland was met with a confusing dilemma when her friends and family were unable to pronounce her newborn daughter’s name, Ottilie. Speaking to TODAY, Carri Kessler revealed that she and her husband had fallen in love with the name after hearing her British friend say it, but the sound turned out to be a little bit different in her native Maryland accent!
“No one could remember it and no one could pronounce it,” Carri told TODAY, “I was like, ‘If you say it with a British accent, it sounds really good!’ And people said, ‘But you’re from Maryland.'”
But the real turning point came when Carri’s grandmother kept forgetting Ottilie’s name, resorting to writing it on post-its around her house to remember.
“She said, ‘I don’t know how to say her name. I have Post-its all over the house so I can remind myself,'” said Carri, “And I was like, f—. We’re f—ed. We’re totally f—ed.”
“Introducing her made me sweat,” she said. “I thought, We’re going to keep having to introduce her! This is going to be a problem forever’.”
But once Carri and her husband had figured out that a name change was in order, the two didn’t have a problem deciding on their ‘take two’. The name was reportedly offered up by their local barista and is, thankfully for them, a little bit easier to pronounce.
“We sent out a mass email,” she says, “It was like, ‘Hey! Remember Ottilie? Her name’s Margot now’.”
Now, that’s an easy name to pronounce… Wait, is that ‘Margot’ with a silent T?
