My parents are ‘massive America lovers’ & gave me a patriotic name – I was teased as a kid, now they’re mad I changed it
CHILDHOOD bullying can be rough, especially if your parents gave you an extremely unique name.
One woman revealed the patriotic name she had before changing it as an adult.
In her viral post, Reddit user Educational_Team_377 explained the reasoning behind her one-of-a-kind name.
“My parents decided to name my sister and me after American states,” she wrote.
“They’re massive republicans and America lovers so maybe they wanted to be patriotic.”
The original poster revealed that her birth name was Pennsylvania while her sister is called Arizona.
She pointed out that her sister’s name wasn’t too bad and was even normalized during their teenage years when the Grey’s Anatomy character Arizona Robbins. was introduced.
“I guess they thought geographical names were cool but I think there’s a huge difference between calling your child Arizona or Dakota or Paris versus Pennsylvania,” the Redditor said.
She went on to describe her lifelong effort to avoid using her full name.
“For as long as I can remember, everyone has called me Penn or Penny,” she explained.
“My parents insisted that everyone was to call me by my full name but most people could see how ridiculous my parents are.”
She recalled being “mocked and teased as a child in elementary school” because of her parent’s insistence that she always go by her full name.
“They would literally berate my teachers for letting me write ‘Penny’ on my work,” she said.
When the Reddit user turned 21, she decided to change her name to Penelope since people assumed that was what Penny was short for.
“Even my boyfriend’s mother called me Penelope because I was too embarrassed to tell her that Penny was short for Pennsylvania,” she explained.
The poster avoided telling her parents about her name change for fear of their reaction.
They said that I was disrespectful, I was calling their choice dumb.
Reddit user Educational_Team_377
However, her upcoming wedding meant the Redditor had to admit the truth to her family five years later.
“I tried to tell them in a really calm way that I had changed my name but they freaked out,” she explained.
“They said that I was disrespectful, I was calling their choice dumb.”
She said her parents were now refusing to attend her nuptials and had put her sister, the maid of honor, in the middle of the spat.
Reddit users shared their thoughts on the situation in the comments section.
“From what you’ve written I suspect your parents would’ve blown up whatever and the five years is just a pretense to hang their anger on,” wrote one reader.
“If your parents spent 13 years of your school life trying to force everyone to call you ‘Pennsylvania,’ I suspect they would have spent the past five making you miserable,” said another person.
“If I was a kid I wouldn’t bully you but I would insist on meeting your parents and then I would bully them,” commented a third Redditor.