The Reddit community r/tragedeigh is probably not a place you want to see screenshots of your social media posts or text messages ending up—especially if you have children.
Here’s what makes a good post “tragique,” as they like to call it: It must be about a given name that’s either been deliberately misspelled to make it seem more unique than it is (e.g. Emmaleigh instead of Emily) or original in the sense that it’s a name that seems completely made up (e.g. Dugsly, Brylie, Kaydynce). The more tragique the name, the better.
Poking fun at the more unique names isn’t the only thing to do on the subreddit. You can ask other users whether they think a certain name you’re considering for your own kid is a “tragedeigh” or even ask other users to roast your name.
ADVERTISEMENT
But most of these posts are memes, lists, and “in the wild” pics of odd names users find. Frequently, these are screen grabs of social media posts from other platforms, text messages from a group chat, or pictures of classroom displays from elementary schools.
It’s the “in the wild” posts that create the most spectacle. A lot of these users are parents involved in one way or another in other online communities—some dedicated to name trends like r/namenerdscirclejerk—that dig into different aspects of parenting.
“Trag is more, mean? But in a fun bullying critical way the kind of place that’s like a very low ball humor,” a r/tragedeigh user who asked to remain anonymous told The Daily Beast.
After chatting with other users to better understand their motives, it quickly becomes clear that r/tragedeigh is a place where some parents feel more comfortable letting out a collective, exasperated sigh. To say that parenting in 2024 is hard would be an understatement. Many parents still owe thousands of dollars on their student loans and have to contend with higher costs of living than previous generations.
These factors have many adults foregoing parenthood altogether. Those who have taken the leap aren’t finding parenting to be any less polarizing than any other aspect of life these days. Everyone has an opinion about how children should be raised—even non-parents.
“[The subreddit is] a narrative on current society and absurdism,” the user added. “[These] names are trying to achieve this balance of being unique and acceptable by society simultaneously. However, many people miss the mark.”
Missing the mark is the joke. It’s kind of the point. Either the person who came up with the name—typically a parent—is getting roasted for coming up with it, or they’re pitying the person who has to move through the world with such a name.
Tawfiq Ammari, an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University whose work examines the complexities of technology and social interaction, has studied online parenting communities and has also noticed high levels of politically-driven polarization. He says he definitely laughed out loud at some of the content posted to r/tragedeigh, but he also has some concerns about how users are thinking about privacy.
“There’s very little you can do to completely provide yourself with a cloak of privacy online,” Ammari told The Daily Beast. “That’s especially true on Reddit because it’s pseudonymous. It’s not anonymous.”
Users often share enough personally identifiable information, making it possible to deduce their identity. This completely defeats the purpose of pseudonymity.
Ammari described a picture he was looking at on the subreddit of what looked to be a birth announcement, where the mother was in the hospital with a newborn. In the post, he said the infant’s face was covered, but other identifiable information about the mother and newborn wasn’t.
“This is where it becomes really messy,” he added. “If I share something in my family group, my estimation is that it stays in my family group. Once that boundary is broken, once there’s a perturbation there and the parents find out it’s on Reddit, obviously they’ll think of the people they know who use Reddit.”
A Privacy Violation Minefield
In February 2024, r/tragedeigh got into some hot water after one user, a health-care worker, posted an image of a patient’s name from an emergency room to the subreddit. The user took measures to redact some of the personally identifiable information, but not enough to keep internet sleuths from tracking down the patient on Facebook.
The giveaway is obvious: She had a pretty unique first name.
“We in the United States exist under a patchwork of laws at the state and federal levels that don’t cover a lot of what commonly takes place online,” Leah Plunkett, a faculty member at Harvard Law School who studies the digital lives of kids, families, and communities, told The Daily Beast. “So when we talk about choices around posting or other forms of digital sharing, ultimately a lot of that is going to be left up to people’s individual discretion, good judgment, and whatever type of community standards or content moderation a given platform is doing.”
r/tragedeigh has a pretty sizable list of rules. Chief among them is “Don’t be a jerk.” The second is “Censor all identifying information.” The rule goes on to say that all faces, last names, addresses, phone numbers, usernames, and any other personally identifiable information should be censored. “We only want to see the first name,” the rules say. But Plunkett argues there’s an inherent flaw in that logic.
“Even if it’s just a first name, I do think there’s still harm,” Plunkett said.
Kids are especially vulnerable to identity theft because they usually can't get credit cards on their own. They might have debit cards linked to a parent’s account or savings accounts, but criminals target them because their clean credit history is appealing for fraud. In other words, a thief can use a kid’s identity to open new accounts or get credit cards easily.
In 2018, the BBC reported that Barclays bank had estimated that by 2030, “sharenting”—or when an adult shares private details about a child online—would account for nearly two-thirds of identity fraud cases affecting young people. While the long-term repercussions of sharenting remain to be seen, privacy experts like Plunkett are monitoring this issue.
The moderators of r/tragedeigh did not respond when reached for comment.
What’s In a Name?
So why do we, as a culture, care so much what other people are named? As it turns out, it’s not just extremely online parents who have taken an interest in what other people choose to name their children. Researchers have also taken an interest in how cultural trends influence the types of names parents choose.
Russell Goldman, an associate professor in the department of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon, uses mathematical models to make sense of how people make strategic choices. In 2022, he and his co-authors published research exploring how given names become popular using public data. Their findings suggest that uniqueness and conformity are equally important factors that parents consider when charged with naming a child.
“People do have motives they’re trying to achieve when they’re choosing a name for their baby,” Goldman told The Daily Beast. “Sometimes you have a grandparent who you want to name your baby after. Sometimes it’s a junior, and it’s like naming it after yourself. But in a lot of cases, you’re just looking for a name that kind of sounds good.”
But r/tragedeigh is more about the shock value. It’s purposefully subversive, platforming unique—or seemingly unique—naming conventions over familiar ones. Goldman and his co-authors picked up on the fact that behind the posts are expressions of shock or disbelief that cultural trends are moving in what seems like a very unexpected direction.
Obviously, these names are challenging some preconceptions of what’s in a name. Maybe we’ve grown too comfortable with our assumptions of what a name is supposed to look or sound like. Maybe it turns out the names that feed r/tragedeigh cynicism aren’t unique at all, that Emmaleigh is the new Emily, and every Dugsly and every Kaydynce will be able to find their name on a keychain in a novelty shop for tourists. Time will tell. In the meantime, count on the internet to make a comedeigh out of a tragedeigh.
