u/Jazzlike-Honey-9157

I was sitting on my back porch with a friend while our kids played in the yard. She noticed my toddler picking and eating some flowers. The conversation went like this:

Friend: ”Oh! Oh no! She eating some plant!”

me: *glances over* “oh yeah, clovers are her favorite.“

Friend: “and you can just eat them? From the ground?”

oldest daughter: “Yeah! Mama lets us eat all sorts of things. *Other daughter* loves sorrel the best, but I like serviceberries and sticky weed juice.”

My friend definitely thought it was a little weird but at least I know my kids won’t starve right away if lost in the woods 😅.

I made a post in the other name group about my youngest’s name, Thalia Photini. In that group and others I’ve noticed a trend of preferring more American sounding names. Lots of people like Thalia. It’s not common but I can think of at least two popular book characters with the same name. Photini sounds different. It’s clearly not American. It definitely gets more negative reactions, some even calling it “unfortunate“ or questioning my parenting.

Look, I like razzing on bad names as much as the next person, but sometimes it’s just an ethnic name. Do I personally like the name Chinunzo? No it’s not a name I’d ever use. Probably because I’m not Igbo though and not because it’s a weird name.

I don’t plan on changing her name because that seems like a bunch of fuss over nothing, but I definitely prefer my baby’s middle name over her first.

Her name is Thalia Photini, but we knew Photini was going to be part of her name since we knew she was a girl. I’ve been calling her Tini or Photini and almost never Thalia. If I do, I call her Thalia Tini because it sounds like a pasta. I know people go by their middle name but that’s usually when their name is something like Trafalgar James. The “weird” name is the secret name.

edit: We are Melkite Catholic (think Greek-Lebanese and looks Orthodox) so Photini and its variants are not uncommon in our circle. It’s the name given to the woman at the well in the bible. Means something like “illuminated”.

Her mom is Kara. Her dad is James. Kames.