Personally, I wouldn't think twice about it, nor would I handle that friend w/ kid gloves. My DH doesn't want our babies to have the same name as any of our friends, but doesn't mind if the baby has the same name as him. /eyeroll/

We did check w/ one friend about a name for our son as they had a stillborn son w/ that name. If it's a case like that, then, yes, I think you should check w/ your friends b/c you wouldn't want to cause them any pain. If it's just a "normal" case, then I wouldn't bother. I think anyone who gets offended by someone else naming their kid the same name as yours is being a wee bit silly.

I would feel pretty weird about using the exact name of the child of a really close friend or family member, even if it was a common name, absent a family connection or something. Now, if your best friend's son is named Andrew after his grandfather and you want to honor your son's grandfather, also named Andrew, that is less weird to me.

That said, I really loved the name Grace but when DD was born, I worked with a really awful woman named Grace, and the last thing I wanted was for this woman (who was already behaving uncomfortably familiar with me before I even went on leave) to think that we were honoring her with our name choice. DH had similar issues with other girls' names, so we chose something that didn't have negative connotations for either of us.

Anonymous wrote:
Right now we are on the opposite side of the conundrum: we have chosen the name Beatrix for our new baby, but we don't announce our children's names before they are born. I am wondering what to say to semi-close friends whom we have known for 20 years but only see half a dozen times a year whose daughter is named Beatrice [Italian]. Though our choice of the name is not related to her at all it does seem appropriate to acknowledge the close link between the names.

Are you Dutch?

We did it and we did not give the friend's a heads up. Both families are Jewish and both needed the same letter as both were naming after deceased family members. Both families also are very practicing and used Hebrew names as first names. The kids are three years apart. We didn't set out to use this name, but it worked and we loved the meaning of it. The two families spend a lot of time together now. But in 20 years? We hope so, but who knows. We named our kid what we wanted and what we loved and what would honor our families. To us, that was the most important thing. They didn't bat an eye after the baby was born. At least not publicly and if they did, then it would have told us a lot more about them. Good luck and go with what you love.

Just ask her, not us ... you said that she was a friend, no?

No.

I think the problem really arises with a name like Beatrix, which is unusual, but becoming more trendy. Those are the names that people feel that they have an exclusive right to b/c they are so trendy and unusual. (I thought of it first!) It is a real problem when the name is very unusual and someone uses it -- as the above poster mentioned. Not that there is any point in making a big issue about it because what can you do about it? It speaks volumes that the friend did not mention it.