A HUGE secret sent shockwaves through a family following the death of a matriarch.
Her granddaughter said the revelation instantly made her aunt regret the name she had given to her son when he was born.
She shared her “wild but true story” on Reddit’s Name Nerds forum, which has over 373,000 members.
The woman said her grandmother kept a secret from their family until the day she died.
She spoke in response to a Redditor asking parents if they regret the names they gave their children.
“My Aunt, now in her 60s, named her firstborn son ‘John’ after her maternal grandfather whom she never got to meet because he died in World War II,” she said, writing under the handle AlienGaze.
“Or so her mother always told her.
“After her mother (my grandmother) died, we found out that she had run away from home as a teenager and completely made up her family history.
“Her father’s name had been Gerald.
“He never fought in World War II and lived to be 96.
“My Aunt was furious that she had named her son after nobody.
“After a lie, as she said.
“Big-time name regret — although not exactly what you’re looking for just had to share.”
“It was a trip unraveling it all in the weeks after her funeral!” she added.
Many people were shocked by the story and shared their own name-regret stories.
One person said there were three other children with the same name as their son at daycare.
Another said she regrets compromising after struggling to agree on a name with her husband.
“My aunt changed my cousin from LouLou to Wendi when she started school because she was getting made fun of,” a third said.
“She’s totally a Wendi and LouLou seems so foreign to her now.”
According to The Bump, John is a Hebrew name meaning “God is gracious.”
The Biblical boys’ name has remained popular throughout the years.
It is currently ranked as the 26th most popular boys’ name in the U.S.
“I gave my kid a name that almost everyone struggles with,” another said.
“It’s spelled correctly, it’s a little unusual but not heaps out there, and it isn’t hard to pronounce.
“I honestly didn’t know it would be controversial. And I am so sad they will have to repeat and correct people forever.”
The confessions come after a mom was mocked for naming her son Krystopher.
The now-deleted Reddit user told members of the Tragedeigh forum that her ex-partner named the kids he had with his new girlfriend Tempest and Leviathan.
She was left speechless when people defended his choice of names but said her son being called Krystopher is “so so so bad.”
One person said misspelling a common name looks “uneducated as f**k,” while another said her son would be correcting the spelling of his name for life.
