I allowed my five-year-old daughter to legally change her name – she hated my choice from the moment she could talk

A mother has allowed her five-year-old daughter to legally change her name after she ‘rejected’ her parents’ choice, having ‘hated it since she could talk’. 

Amanda Biddle, 33, and her husband Dan have gifted their daughter, whom they named Margaret at birth, a new name after she ‘rejected’ it entirely and instead insisted that she would only respond to the name Maisie. 

‘My daughter began expressing that she hated the name Margaret basically as soon as she could talk,’ Ms Biddle said.

‘”I don’t like Margaret, I’m Maisie”,’ the five-year-old would declare.

Mr and Ms Biddle eventually decided to honour their headstrong daughter’s choice and are now surprising her with a legal name change as a birthday present.

Their petition for the change of her name is now set to be granted and made official on March 11. They plan to tell her the good news on her sixth birthday later this month.

She will soon be granted a new birth certificate with the name Maisie Margaret-Olivia, retaining her birth name and original middle name as one, hyphenated middle name. 

While the Michigan-based couple were far from against the name Maisie, they had initially chosen the name Margaret as a loving tribute to Mr Biddle’s late grandmother. 

However, over time, it became clear that their daughter’s insistence on being called Maisie would not waver.

Reflecting on their decision, Ms Biddle said: ‘It just sounded more and more like we just should have named her the name we originally wanted [Maisie].

‘So when she began rejecting it, we accepted that and immediately began thinking about changing it even before she asked for it.’

She revealed that while their young daughter was ‘clearly unhappy’ with her original name, they waited ‘until she was old enough to have a conversation about it so that we could find out her true feelings’. 

‘It just never felt like it represented her and she was clearly unhappy with it.

‘We did wait until she was old enough to have a conversation about it so that we could find out her true feelings.’

‘It wasn’t a difficult decision at that point because it was so clear that it needed to happen for her, and that it was finally time,’ added Ms Biddle. 

While perhaps unconventional, Ms Biddle revealed that ‘family and friends have been so supportive’ and are ‘so excited’ for her daughter.

‘They all knew that her name should be Maisie,’ she said. 

Ms Biddle added: ‘Everyone just knows her as Maisie and only a handful of [people] actually knew that she also had the name Margaret.

‘So they are all excited for her to have the name that everyone knows and loves her by.’

Ms Biddle, who also has a 10-year-old son Jack, shared the news of her and her husband’s unusual name change to social media platform Threads.

The post has since amassed more than 14,000 likes. 

Describing the response online as ‘overwhelming’, she added: ‘I had no idea that this would be such a huge deal and the support we’ve received has been amazing.

‘Sure, some people don’t agree but so many people think it’s amazing and shared their own personal experiences with names they hated, and it really just solidified our decision.

‘After the response we got, I knew that we were doing right by her [Maisie] and that she would be thankful now, and in the future as she grows older.’