These Parents Changed Their Baby's Unusual Name When She Was 3 Months Old

The baby formerly known as Ottilie.

This is the Kessler family from Los Angeles. Mom Carri and dad Will have two young daughters, 3-year-old Hadley and 4-month-old Margot.

But Margot's name has a pretty interesting backstory, because for the first three months of her life her name was Ottilie.

Carri Kessler told BuzzFeed News that the couple knew immediately when their first daughter was born they wanted to name her Hadley.

For their second baby girl, the only name they agreed on was Ottilie, (pronounced OTT-ti-lee), an uncommon name of German origin.

"Sure, it was a little unique, but so beautiful," Kessler said. "A former colleague who lived in the UK was named Ottilie and I loved it from the first day I heard it."

However, after their daughter was born, the Kesslers found themselves running into some issues with her name. Namely, people weren't pronouncing it the way they expected.

Kessler said she was used to hearing the name pronounced in the UK, where people pronounce their Ts more sharply. In an American accent, we pronounce Ts more like Ds, and the name just didn't sound right.

"Apparently we didn't say it out loud enough before the baby was born because we didn't realize this until we started introducing her, and people were like, 'wait. what is it?'" she said.

People were pronouncing the name "Oddily," she said, which...wasn't great.

"We all said Oddily, and that was just not her at all," she said. "It honestly, just wasn't the same name in the US. Who knew? This was a huge bummer."

In addition, people couldn't remember the unique name, and were calling her "the baby" or Ollie.

Kessler said it started to bother her and her husband and culminated one day at a doctor's appointment when a nurse pronounced the name wrong as well.

"I thought this was going to be a lifelong issue, maybe it's not too late to do something about this," she said. "I brought it up to my husband and he was like — let's do it!"

They told their close friends and family what they were doing, and spent two weeks coming up with a new name. They settled on Margot Mae.

Kessler said she and her husband were a little worried people would think they were "insane," but got over it.

"I was like, 'we will still have each other!'' she said. "It just felt like the right decision."

To introduce their daughter's new moniker, they texted some people and then sent out a mass email announcing the change.

"I included a super-cute picture of Margot to distract from the craziness that they were reading, and the response was really super positive," Kessler said.

The family's story went viral this week after they were featured in an article by Today. Kessler said all of the attention and comments have been pretty nuts.

"Our names, our pictures (pulled without permission from my public Facebook profile pics) are online in British tabloids," she said. "The story has been changed and translated – I have seen this story online in Dutch, Spanish...Estonian!?"

She added that while they still love the name Ottilie and think it is beautiful, they are happy they made the change.

"We still love the name Ottilie, but again - it just wasn't the same name here, and just didn't feel like her," she said.

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