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Mood Spoiler: tragedeigh averted

Original Post: November 19, 2024

My sister is due after in early January and we’re planning her baby shower for early December. She decided she wanted to use my mother’s maiden name (Rafferty) as her daughter’s name. Not a Tragedeigh itself and I guess it works as a unique name.

But yesterday I texted my sister that I needed to get the custom items with my niece’s name ordered ASAP so they arrive in time for the shower. My sister then let me know they’re going with an alternative spelling of Rafferty.

I texted back, “An alternative spelling… of our mother’s maiden name?”

My sister wants to spell it Raefarty.

So I sent back a bunch of laughing emojis and she asked “What’s so funny?”

I tried to explain that no one will pronounce that as Rafferty and she’ll probably get plenty of the same mispronunciations. She told me I was being ridiculous.

I texted back, “My poor niece, Little Miss Farty Rae.”

I was uninvited to the shower and my mom told me today my sister doesn’t want me as the Godmother anymore.

But, like, Raefarty is really bad, isn’t it? Someone needs to tell her, right?

Some of OOP’s Comments/Top Comments:

barge_gee: Yup, it’s Ray Farty, no matter what sis wants to believe.

OOP: Thank you!

BalloonShip: Ray Farty (MGM, expected release 2025). A hardboiled detective living and working in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Sulphur District, is tasked with investigating the theft of 12,000 durians. In an unexpected twist, the alleged mastermind of the crime, the CEO of Chipotle, was also Ray’s high school chemistry teacher.

OOP: OMG, I needed this!

estamosready: That’s terrible. She is going to hate her name. Out of curiosity how old is your sister?

OOP: My sister is 26. We both have fairly plain names and my sister was always jealous of people with more “exotic” names.

She told my mom that spelling it Raefarty will be obvious that it’s pronounced Rafferty, but it makes it look more girly. I mean, yeah, girls fart, too.

Happy-Big3297: Rafferty comes under the category of names I wouldn’t use (not a big fan of surnames as first names) but which I can see tick some boxes that would make them appealing to some people (honours your mum, sounds gender neutral, could use the nickname Raf)

Raefarty comes under the category of names that sound like jokes. No wonder you laughed! Do what you can to dissuade her. Everyone’s going to pronounce it rae farty.

OOP: I agree. I wouldn’t use it myself, but I get that it honors my mom and her family and it’s not too out there. Thank God my mother wasn’t born a Lewandowski (no offense to the Lewandowskis out there).

My mom is mildly annoyed she wants to honor her last name but totally respell it. But my mother’s opinion is that it’s my sister’s child and no one but she and her husband really have a say in the name. Apparently my sister insists everyone will understand it as Rafferty and not Ray Farty, smdh…

What about BIL?

I texted him last night to ask if he knew about the colorful respelling.

Surprise, surprise, he HATES it and immediately thinks “Ray Farty,” too. But he doesn’t know how to approach it because my sister’s pregnancy has been increasingly emotional and he’s already walking on eggshells. :/

Update Post: November 21, 2024

[editor’s note- I combined the post and the continuation of it in the comments into one section.]

I don’t know if updates are allowed here, but here it is and sorry it’s long and I’ve been having a hard time submitting it (is there a character limit?). I’ll try posting some and put the rest in the comments.

So we had an intervention on Raefarty.

I know everyone said to send a link to the original post to my sister to show her that 103% of the global population would call her daughter Ray Farty and that would be the easiest thing to do, but some commenters said some pretty gnarly things about my sister that she doesn’t need to read and feel worse about herself. But I wanted to address a few things that came up.

First, for those saying I shouldn’t bother paying for the baby shower anymore, I had no plans to not continue to pay and help out. Disagreements and fighting aside, I love my sister and want her to go into motherhood filled with love and support, regardless of whether she wants my support or attendance at the event.

Second, my sister’s husband was made aware of the spelling change of Rafferty to Raefarty about a month before my original post. He said he didn’t think much of it until he saw it written down and immediately saw it as Ray Farty, too. He said her emotions had been getting worse throughout the pregnancy and he didn’t know how to approach her about going back to the original spelling. He had hoped that once she gave birth, all the hormones would somehow leave her body, she’d come to her senses, and it would be a non-issue.

Third, a lot of you were lumping my mom in with my sister and said some pretty horrible things about her, too. All my mom knew was from my sister calling her to complain that I laughed at her for “slightly” changing the spelling. My mom just assumed it was a minor change like Raffertie until I told her to grab a pen and paper and I’d spell it out for her. Once she saw it was Raefarty, she was Team Save This Child.

The rest of the saga is in the comments.

[continued]

The rest…

Now for those of you who told me I didn’t have any tact and my reaction was mean, my reaction was because 1) people would call the poor girl Ray Farty her entire life for the sake of my sister being quirky, 2) pregnancy brain aside, surely my sister would realise her child will be called Ray Farty once it’s pointed out, have a laugh, change her mind, and this will end up being a funny story to tell at her daughter’s future wedding or something, and 3) my sister is a bit of a joker so I also initially thought she was just pulling a prank or joking.

But if she was joking, she took the joke really, really far. She spent $400 on a mural painted on one wall in the nursery (she wanted to “debut” the finished nursery to everyone at the baby shower, including her husband, who was forbidden to see it beforehand) that had RAEFARTY incorporated into it that now needs to be repainted. She also bought herself a “birthing gift” (is this even a thing??) she’d have my brother-in-law present to her in front of everyone at the hospital: a $900+ gold bracelet with R, A, E, F, A, R, T, and Y charms. The baby book also has Raefarty embroidered on the cover.

I contacted my sister’s best friend Katie (not her real name) if my sister has told her anything about the spelling change. She found out about Raefarty after the blow up with my sister, as my sister wanted to get Katie on her side. Katie, who’s a teacher, was equally horrified about the spelling and told me this is the worst attempt at a creative name she’s ever seen.

The intervention of sorts (the Farty Party, if you will) included me, my sister, her husband, his mother and father, my mother, and Katie. My sister refused to believe anyone could possibly see Raefarty as Ray Farty and that we were just mad that she was taking creative license and that “everyone does that nowadays.”

My sister said children are not that cruel to bully her daughter for her name and Katie said plenty of kids are cruel enough and the others would join in so they’re not singled out themselves. My sister countered that as long as all the adults are pronouncing it correctly that it’ll be no problem and Katie told her that not only would the adults not know how to pronounce it to begin with, but that as long as ‘fart’ is in the name, kids will latch right onto that.

I was happy Katie was there because she’s shared “interesting” names her students have had over the past few years, so I knew her opinion on this would probably be the only one to sway her.

My sister cried for about 10 minutes and finally agreed to entirely change the name because even Rafferty was tainted because we had all ruined it for her. We told her to take her time to consider a new name. She told us she still wanted to honor my mother and she suggested she’d combine my mother’s first name with her mother-in-law’s name and created a name on the spot that included a crass term for a lesbian. When my mother poi…

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I laughed at my sister's Tragedeigh and now I'm uninvited to the baby shower I'm planning.

I laughed at my sister's Tragedeigh and now I'm uninvited to the baby shower I'm planning.

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Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is 7 days old per the rules of this sub. This has NOT been posted here before.