"Who's Gonna Tell Him?": Woman Encounters a Mom Who Named Her Son Oedipus, Can't Stop Thinking About

A woman taking her children to the zoo overheard a mother shouting for her son. That would be completely normal if that kid's identify wasn't Oedipus.

I'm obsessive about names. Once upon a time, I had the commonest identify in the America for kind of 12 years. You could not throw a slap bracelet in a mall without hitting a child named Jennifer. When I requested my mom why she proficient me with such an bizarre identify, her solution was once lovely easy. "It was popular at the time," she mentioned. I later learned my father sought after to call me Melissa, after the cat, so I guess Jennifer was the lesser of 2 evils.

Because of the albatross that is my title, I'm acutely aware of any and all monikers that are out of the ordinary. And, like @itsthemomjeans on TikTok, I too would have misplaced my mind if I encountered one explicit identify out in the wild. How could somebody bestow this title upon their very own child? Don't they know the kid would possibly one day take a Psych One zero one magnificence in faculty? This can simplest end unusually.

This identify is giving us a complicated.

A amusing day at the zoo with her youngsters become an workout in obsession for @itsmomjeans, who I'm calling Iris, when she overheard a fellow parent call out for his or her child. Obviously that's a commonplace factor to come across, particularly when a child is at a position as exciting because the zoo, however it wasn't the motion itself that gave Iris pause.

"I heard a mom calling for her son and she was like, 'Oedipus! Oedipus, don't walk over there. Oedipus!" Iris is pronouncing out loud what we're all thinking. Who would name their kid Oedipus?

I do not need to think everyone understands why this is a very bizarre choice. So, let's briefly get into the importance of the identify Oedipus. It comes from a Greek mythology that was once made into a play via Sophocles titled Oedipus Rex, per Brittanica.com.

Obviously I've to chop out a lot but the gist is, Oedipus used to be a king of Thebes who by accident murdered his father after which married his personal mom. There are other versions with varying details, however the true scary crux of this story is Oedipus marrying his personal mom and having kids with her.

You can see why Iris can be puzzled and perplexed by means of the decision to land on Oedipus as a name. "You guys, I keep thinking about baby Oedipus," Irish says later in the same video, after a bit of time has obviously handed. "Why would they do that to their child," she asks. "Their child is doomed." I'd say he is handiest doomed if a positive prophecy comes down the old pipeline.

In order to care for some semblance of sanity, Iris has satisfied herself that those parents had been in some way unaware of the Oedipus Rex tale. Perhaps they heard it somewhere benign and determined that it sounded stately, as a result of it does! Although, doesn't everybody nowadays google a title prior to deciding to saddle their kid with it, for life?

In a follow-up TikTok, Iris addressed a couple of the feedback she received essentially the most on her unique TikTok. The first thing she tackles is the concept that she misheard the name. "It was 100 percent Oedipus," said Iris. "It was not Atticus. It was not Orpheus. It was not Odysseus."

Something I believed, and obviously I wasn't on my own, is in all probability this was a dog. "It was 100 percent a human child," Irish assures us. "We were at the zoo and ironically, you can't bring dogs to the zoo."

I additionally wish to take a 2d to remind everyone about the Oedipus complicated. Iris primarily centered on the Greek story this concept is based on, but the theory itself used to be posited by famed psychoanalyst and lover of cocaine, Dr. Sigmund Freud. It after all theorizes that kids possess a "desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process," in keeping with Brittanica.com. It should be famous there is not any empirical proof supporting this idea so Baby Oedipus is almost certainly OK.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pbXSramam6Ses7p6wqikaKhfoba1wMueZKShlGK7ornEnWSonZSevba%2F