My Sister Just Announced Her Baby’s Name. Her Initials Would Spell Something Ridiculous.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My sister and her husband are expecting a baby girl in January. The trouble is the first and middle names they have chosen for her.

When combined with her surname, it will result in her initials reading as “FUK.” Should I point this out and try to persuade them to come up with something that won’t be a point of lifelong amusement and/or ridicule for my future niece? My husband thinks the prospect is hilarious and says we ought to keep our mouths shut. Who’s right?

—Did You Check the Spelling?

Split ruling from me: Yes, you should point this out to them (they truly may not have considered it). No, you shouldn’t try to persuade them to choose another name or two. If they take FUK into account and still choose to go with the first and middle names they’ve already picked—because they so love these names (which perhaps they arrived at after a long process of elimination, a brokered compromise, or—the way my husband and I did—after one of them came up with a list of many names she [ahem] loved and the other vetoed all but one of the options presented)—it’s not your business. They may insist that nobody will even notice what the initials spell. They will be wrong about that, but that’s their right. And their daughter, like all children whose names invite jokes—for any reason—will eventually learn to deal with it.

But please tell your husband for me that it is not hilarious. When I first started teaching, I had a student whose name unfortunately sounded like a suggestive innuendo.  By semester’s end, I’d learned that her name was the bane of her existence, but that her parents very much enjoyed the joke—and that their defense, when she was old enough to become aggrieved by the name, was that they had figured nobody would catch on: that it was meant to be a private joke. (Feel free to share this anecdote with both your husband and the expectant parents. But then leave it at that—don’t go any further.)

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