Toddler Is Absolutely ‘Convinced’ This Is Her Name—Except, It Isn’t

Toddlers are constantly learning new information and trying to process it, so it can be easy to get mixed up and forget essential information from time to time, even if it is something as important as their own name.

With three children under the age of 3, it would be easy for Allanah Harris to get their names mixed up sometimes. However, she wasn’t expecting her daughter, Ellie, to get her own name confused with her brother Chase’s.

Harris, from Queensland, Australia, shared a video on her TikTok account (@the.harris.familyy) showing the moment she asks Ellie what her name is; the toddler replies by saying it is Chase with such self-confidence. As much as Harris tried to correct Ellie, it just didn’t work and she still “thinks her name is Chase.”

Since the clip was posted on January 8, it has delighted many social-media users, and it has already been viewed more than 1.8 million times and gained almost 200,000 likes at the time of writing.

It is thought that most children will recognize the sound of their own name by around 9 months old. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says that kids should be able to look in the direction of whoever called them by that age. At this point, though, they are usually making babbling sounds, and they won’t be able to start saying words until they are around 1 year old.

In their second year of life, children’s language skills really start to develop, and the AAP says they will pick up around one new word a week, leading to a vocabulary of around 50 to 100 words by the time they are 2 years old. Of course, every child develops at a different pace, so some may learn their name quite early, while others need a little bit longer.

How Did TikTok React?

As much as Harris tries to correct her daughter and assure her that her she doesn’t have the same name as her brother, the toddler is still adamant that she has got it right.

Alongside the video of Ellie getting her name wrong (but doing it with the upmost conviction), Harris said on TikTok that she is “convinced that her name is actually Chase,” despite repeatedly correcting her.

“I have tried to tell her so many times and every time someone [asks], she always says Chase,” Harris added.

She may not be sure of her own name, but Ellie has earned many new fans on social media since the clip went viral, leading to more than 460 comments on the TikTok post so far. One person commented: “I think she wants to be Chase.”

Another responded: “She’s so confident with it too.”

A third TikTok user wrote: “She says it without any hesitation.”

Newsweek reached out to @the.harris.familyy via TikTok and Instagram for comment but didn’t receive a response.

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