After 50 hours of labor and lots of morphine, mom added one wrong letter to her son's name meaning 'king' — it now means duck instead
The blunder was caused by part exhaustion and part high dosage of morphine that the mom was given to soothe her delivery pain
Shakespeare famously said, “What’s in a name?” Seems like, sometimes, there’s a story. In an August 26, 2026 Reddit post, a person who goes by the username u/RingoRoadagain97 shared the story of how their name resulted from a hilarious misunderstanding in the hospital room on the day of delivery. Drugged with copious amounts of morphine, their mom threw a Hail Mary when asked to spell the baby’s name. What was initially a Sanskrit word for “king” became a species of duck after she mistakenly added a “d” to the spelling. The author shared this lighthearted episode from their life as a comment to a post by Cara (u/PhyndoraKez), which has since received 9,100 upvotes.
From king to a duck
When the labor hours stretched from 24 to 50, their mom was going bonkers from exhaustion. She was yanking at the nurses by the collar to help her soothe the pain. They gave her an enormous dosage of morphine, which got her as high as a kite. When asked to spell the kid’s name, she rolled the dice and spelled an unusual name she had selected, with the letter “d” added to it. “Radjah,” the name originally crossed her mind during an interaction with an Indian coworker. She knew that the name translates to “king.” But the additional letter acted like a curveball and twisted the entire meaning. As the author explained, the name “Radjah” coincides with the scientific name, “Radjah Radjah,” a distinctive species of duck found in tropical northern Australia, New Guinea, and parts of Indonesia.
Named by mischance
The tone of the author’s post suggests that they took the little misunderstanding in their name as a lighthearted or poignant instance from their life. But hard statistics indicate that many mothers, about one in five, actually regret their choice of the baby’s name, according to a survey cited by The Guardian. Channel Mum also surveyed over 2,000 parents and found that 14% of individuals go through a legal process of name change, as reported by The Bump.
'My mom was supposed to be Janice'
Most Redditors found the author’s story entertaining. Many jumped in to share similar stories behind their names. u/procrastimom shared, “My name is misspelled because of the scopolamine and Demerol that they gave my mom during labor (mid-60’s). To maintain my privacy, it is almost equivalent to 'Pamla' instead of 'Pamela.'” In a comment to the original post, u/honestrewd said, “My mom was supposed to be Janice, but the nurse wrote down Janine. My Grandma said, 'Oh, I like that, too,' and rolled with it.”
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