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What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, as Shakespeare told us, but sometimes when you find out the origin of your own name, things start to get a little bit stinky.
TikTok user Amy had her own feelings about her name upturned when she belatedly discovered the truth behind it, and it’s a strange, outrageous tale that somehow begins with infidelity and ends with royalty by way of a talking gorilla. With impeccable high-speed storytelling panache, Amy told her twisted tale in just over a minute in a video that has since gone viral. In it, she reveals that she was originally supposed to be called Adelee (spelling confirmed in the comments) before her mom received an unpleasant surprise when she was seven months pregnant: that her partner, Amy’s dad, had gotten another woman pregnant (“that very busy man!”) and this woman’s name was… Adelee.
Obviously, Amy’s mom now needed a new name for her unborn baby girl. Enter the little-remembered 1995 film Congo (a kind of jungle-set Jurassic Park rip-off). Amy explains that her mom watched the film before she was born and took a liking to one of the character’s names, Amy. The problem? In the movie, Amy is the name of a talking gorilla.
“Alright, cool, my name’s Amy, whatever,” Amy goes on, before admitting the part of her sorry story that really stings. Amy explains that, nine years later, her little sister was born, and this time her mom took her naming inspiration from a very different source. Her sister is called Gracie, and she was named after Princess Grace of Monaco, aka the actress Grace Kelly, universally known for her elegance and beauty.
“So, we have Amy… the ape… and Princess Grace,” she sums up incredulously. What no one should tell Amy is that she wasn’t just named after an ape, but an ape that won two Razzie Awards: one for Worst New Star and one for Worst Supporting Actress. Yikes.
As much as Amy seems ashamed of the monkey business that led to her name, others think she should embrace it. Think about it: she’d never be short of a conversation starter ever again. “If you don’t use this as the icebreaker for everything, job interviews, first dates, etc. I’m gonna sue,” one commenter suggested. “I can feel your anger thru my phone ma’am. so true,” another quipped. Other unfortunate elder siblings can relate: “Is it the default setting that the eldest gets treated the worst? We were the trial run.”
The good news is that Amy can take some small solace from the fact that she’s not the only person in the world to have discovered the sub-optimal origins of her name. “I like my name but when i watched Madagascar to fine out one of those lemurs name Maurice…,” another human-simian hybrid came clean. “I was gonna be named Joaquin Phoenix,” said some joker. “Thank god that wasn’t my name.” Meanwhile, at least Amy can now use this against her sister: “My dog name is also Gracie after Princess Grace of Monaco if it cheers you up.”
Amy’s tail tale is a warning to all would-be parents out there to quit monkeying around and make sure you settle on an ape-propriate name for your kid. To be named after a gorilla is bad enough, but one from an infamously terrible movie? That’s just foul. We can only hope that Amy breaks the vicious cycle and doesn’t one day name her own kids Kraven or Madame Web (for the love of Reba, Amy, don’t do it!).