RAIDEN TO RAY

A pregnant mother's search for a baby girl name reopened a much older naming mistake: her 4-year-old son's legal name.

She said she was "Currently pregnant with a baby girl due in the summer," and in the middle of that search, she ran into a feeling she couldn't shake. She realized she hated the name she had already given her son.

The name was Raiden.

It had been her husband's pick four years earlier. She didn't have a favorite she loved, so they went with the name he wanted. At the time, she said it felt like the best compromise. Now, she wrote, she wished she had said no.

What bothers her most is the sound of it. She said she dislikes "the dreaded "-Ayden/aiden" train," and added that "we aren't huge mortal kombat fans either!" Raiden, to her, is tied both to a naming trend she cringes at and to a reference the family doesn't even particularly care about. She said flatly that she "cringe[s] whenever [she] hear[s] any "ayden/aiden's" out in the world knowing we contributed to that stupid trend."

At home, though, the name has already been softened. She calls her son Ray every day. On paper, though, he is still Raiden.

That led her to the question she put to Reddit: "Would it be ridiculous to change his legal name to Ray at this point?" She also asked, "Is the name Raiden as awful as I think it is? Help."

In an edit, she said her husband thought she was being dramatic about the "awfulness" of the name. He still liked Raiden. Even so, she said he was willing to change it to Ray because she has made it clear how much she dislikes the original name. She also admitted that being pregnant might be making the feeling stronger.

Then she added one more detail: her son has not been told any of this, and he never will be. She said her son "does not know and will never know on how I feel about his name." So far, only her husband, her parents, and Reddit know. She said she has not asked her son how he feels about it, and as far as he knows, "his name is perfectly fine."

For now, the family is left with one name on the birth certificate, one nickname in daily use, and one baby girl on the way, all while the question of whether Raiden should officially become Ray hangs in the air.