A mom was left devastated after she realized she "accidentally" named her daughter after a pasta dish.
Taking to Reddit's infamous 'Am I The A**hole' thread, the concerned mother asked for some advice from a bunch of strangers on the internet - as one does in a dire situation such as this one - after she realized that her daughter's name sounded exactly like the popular Italian dish lasagna.
While the name might not be spelled as uniquely as the word, it is pronounced in almost exactly the same way.
One may be questioning how she even managed to do that, so here's the full story.
"My husband and I welcomed our first child about nine weeks ago," the new mom started. "We found out it was going to be a girl and we quickly decided on the name Elizabeth for her. Her middle name was originally going to be Jane, with the intent to call her EJ, however, when I was seven months pregnant, my husband's mother lost her fight with breast cancer. Her name was Anya (pronunciation: Ahn-Yuh). I loved her so I offered to change the middle name from Jane to Anya."
The kind gesture touched her husband's family and the pair agreed to go with it so their daughter's name now read Elizabeth Anya Jane plus their last name.
However, after a group-Skype session, the mom was made aware of her blunder.
"My sister pointed out that we named our baby 'Lasagna'," she continued. "I hadn't made the mental connection but if you put her first and second names together 'Liz Ayna' it really does make 'lasagna.' I then told my sister that I doubt anyone would make that connection, especially considering people rarely use their middle names in daily life. But then my whole family chimed in and now everyone keeps calling my daughter ‘Lasagna.'"
Yikes.
While the family's jokes seemingly come from a place of innocence, the mom is now concerned that her child will be bullied because of the unfortunate name choice.
"Now I'm scared that when she eventually starts school her classmates and others will latch onto this and make fun of her," adding that she's even had a word with some of her family members too.
Thankfully people in the comments were supportive of the mom-of-one, telling her that it's not that big of a deal and she is not the a**hole for the mistake.
"NTA," wrote one user. "It’s ok that you didn’t catch it. Your family should drop it once you said it bothered you. Could be worse though, I have friends that named their kid T-bone Ham."
"NTA," another added before recalling her own experiences. "My name is Lorelei, a perfectly fine name, and you would not BELIEVE the range of insults kids pulled out of it. I heard SO many. My point is, if kids wanna pick on your kid it doesn't matter WHAT you name her. They'll find something. Just do what you can to teach her how valuable she is, she'll love you for it."
"Also your family are childish assholes," she added.
A third offered some tough love on the matter, commenting: "Your kid will be called lasagna at school 100%. And probably also by your family. Either start calling her Beth for short or pick a new first name. Understandable mistake I guess since you didn’t seem to know you would be using Liz."
It's unfortunate, and slightly awkward but it definitely could have been a lot worse. And who knows? Maybe Lasagna will actually catch on and more people will get inspired to name their children after the iconic dish.
