After you choose a name for your baby, does that mean the name is off the table for future children of your best friends?
Co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager pondered that very question in a segment of Hoda and Jenna’s Social Dilemmas.
A viewer wrote:
"One of my best friends, Charlotte, is expecting a little boy. When Charlotte announced she was having a boy, she also declared she'd be giving him the same name as my 15-month-old, Cooper. She never asked if it would bother me and I never said anything to her because I feel like it makes me a bad friend telling her she shouldn't name him that. Am I right to be annoyed? Should I talk to her about it?"
A "Social Dilemmas" viewer Question
"I would be flattered," said Hoda. "I would be flattered if someone said, 'I love the name you chose so much.' I wouldn't be like, 'That's my kid's name.' 'Cause there are other Coopers ... Cooper Manning ... he's a Cooper."
“I had a boyfriend named Cooper,” added Jenna. “Probably shouldn’t have dated him so long. But anyway ... fine, fine!”
Hoda and Jenna have put a lot of thought into the names of their own children.
Hoda named her older daughter Haley, after Halley’s comet, because she pictured her “sailing through the sky.” Younger daughter Hope’s name was inspired by Hoda’s yearning for a second child.
Jenna named her oldest daughter after her mother and husband Henry’s mother: Margaret Laura, nicknamed Mila. Middle child Poppy has a name that is a tribute to her grandfather, the late George H.W. Bush, who went by “Poppy” during his childhood. Her youngest, Henry Harold Hager, or Hal for short, inherited his name from his father and his middle name from Jenna’s grandfather, Harold Welch — father of former first lady Laura Bush.
“By the way, Cooper is a great name, and I think it’s kinda cool,” said Hoda to wrap up the naming dilemma. “Can you imagine they’d be friends growing up. ‘Cooper!’ ‘Hey, Cooper!’ ‘Coop!’”
“Or they could go by Cooper 1 and Cooper 2,” Jenna offered. “Right? Why not?”
Hoda concluded, “I think it could be kinda fun.”
