A mother has faced sleepless nights pondering over her daughter’s name as she thought that the name would cause her a lot of embarrassment and shame. It was a mere accident that her daughter’s name happened to be the name of a hi-tech speaker. While choosing a suitable name for your children can be a task, going wrong in the process can cost huge guilt.
The name ‘Alexa’ has caused trouble to many people in the past ten years due to the rise of the hi-tech Amazon speaker Alexa which happens to be a virtual assistant. Though the device has brought ease to many, it has also caused trouble to the people with the name ‘Alexa.’
While many around the world rely on the device to carry out their virtual activities, in Massachusetts, USA, Mother Lauren Johnson initiated a campaign to bring people’s attention to the troubles caused by the device’s name. She named the campaign ‘Alexa is a Human.’ With the rising awareness of the issue, a mother was abashed and desperately wanted to change her two-year-old daughter’s name.
On a social platform, she described that she was entirely sure of the fact that her daughter will be poked fun at and ridiculed due to her name. The mother was further stressed as her ex believed that there is no great need to change the name. Mortified by what would happen if her name wasn’t changed, she was also ready to take the issue to the court and convince the judge.
Though the mother felt that it was an amazing name for her daughter but due to the people’s opinion about it she did not want to hear the same comments all her life. She added that the issue reached heights when her father purchased the device and had conversations with the device thinking of it as his granddaughter Alexa. She said, “I just feel like I’ve set her up for a lifetime of being told to turn the light off, or play the music or tell a bad joke.”
As Amazon would never change its famous device’s name, she knew that she had to change save her daughter from the trouble it would cost her. She faced sleepless nights thinking about the issue. People tried to console the mother that it wasn’t that big of a deal. A person commented that eventually, the hype would fade away, and even if in the future everyone would have the device the joke ‘Alexa, turn off the lights’ would be too old to be used.
Another person had a viewpoint that it was a lovely name and meeting a person name Alexa would never make her think of the device but she joked that a Siri would have. A third person added that it was a stupid thing to change her name for such a silly reason and recommended that the mother should leave it to her daughter to change the name if she wants so in the future.
As the issue gained a lot of attention, an Amazon spokeswoman addressed that the device was created to glorify good human qualities like smartness, empathy, quick responsiveness, etc. She added that teasing and bullying were completely terrible things and shouldn’t be promoted in any way and the team condemned it.
Other than Alexa there were others words that existed to call the device like Echo, computer, and Amazon. The spokeswoman added that customer feedback is crucial and they will continue to offer a variety of choices to the customers regarding the name used to call the device.
