Reddit Post About Naming Child Adolph Goes Viral, Gets Removed For Trolling

A Reddit post claiming to be from a person whose sister wanted to name a baby Adolph went viral after being shared on Twitter this week.

The post was removed from multiple communities on the messageboard website after it was uploaded on Wednesday by a new profile with the name u/nametaw2. The account was created on December 30 and has uploaded two posts at the time of writing.

Both of the posts—which were uploaded to r/namenerds and r/BabyBumps—contained the same story under slightly different titles, with each managing to attract significant attention from members of the communities, known as subreddits.

The post on r/namenerds, a community focused on the discussion of names, was titled "My sister is trying to name her son Adolph (not for the reason you'd expect)." While a version on r/BabyBumps was "My pregnant sister wants to name her son Adolph."

In the post, removed from r/namenerds for breaking rules against trolling, u/nametaw2 claimed they were seeking advice after their sister sent a Facebook message defending her decision to intentionally give her son a "problematic" name so he could experience what other children "from less privileged backgrounds" may experience.

"Will the name Adolph prevent him from getting a few jobs? I'm sure it will. That's the point," the Facebook message from the sister claimed to have read, seemingly meant to be referencing the former leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler.

It continued: "BIPOX struggle with judgement over their names and to give my white (as far as I know) cis male son an 'easy' name like Peter just perpetuates the oppression from which he benefts. You cannot truly be anti racist unless you are willing to put others in front of yourself and your kids. Adolph will be a better man for it."

Seemingly a grammatical error in the person's post, the term BIPOC is sometimes used as an acronym referring to black, indigenous, and other people of color.

The claims went viral on Twitter after a screenshot from r/namenerds was uploaded on Wednesday by Isabel Zaw-Tun, a Toronto-based comedian and illustrator. Much like the reactions on Reddit, users expressed a mixture of shock, alarm and suspicion.

In her viral tweet, Zaw-Tun commented: "Naming my baby Adolph because I've reached the pinnacle of wokeness." As of Thursday, it has been "liked" more than 40,000 times and at one point was among the top 20 trending Twitter topics in the United States.

Broadly, the tone of the reactions to the post was echoed in the Reddit communities, as some members in both quickly suspected that it was a prank or troll.

"This seems more attention-seeking than revolutionary," one person wrote. "I sincerely hope she just doesn't want to share the name and is trolling you," another added.

The post was ultimately removed for just that. The subreddit's rules state: "Please be honest about the help you are wanting to receive. People caught lying/changing their stories for karma and attention will be banned permanently."

A moderator for r/namenerds told Newsweek the story by the user was "not legitimate" and indicated the team is aware of their history on the website. "This person is a known ban-evader who very frequently spins crazy lies for attention," the moderator said.

Reddit and u/nametaw2 did not immediately respond to a request for comment.