Mom-of-2 Makes Shock Realization After Watching Childhood Video

A woman was left stunned after discovering the unexpected origins of her daughter's name on an old family video. There are many challenges facing parents today, but the first one is arguably deciding on a name for their newborn. It's a choice that could have far-reaching implications for the recipient, as David Zhu, a professor of management and entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, who specializes in research about the psychology of names, previously explained to the BBC. "Because a name is used to identify an individual and communicate with the individual on a daily basis, it serves as the very basis of one's self-conception, especially in relation to others," Professor Zhu said. When it came to naming her baby daughter, Katelynn Mackey and her husband, Josh, who live in Minnesota, were very happy about the choice of name for the younger of their two daughters: Sunny. "The name Sunny feels so optimistic and warm," Mackey told Newsweek. "It fits my smiley, happy baby perfectly." It wasn't her first choice for a girl's name though.

Katelynn Mackey found something entirely unexpected while rewatching her family's home movies. Suddenly her fondness for the name Sunny made sense.TikTok/katelynn.mackey"I have always thought it was a really cute name, but it wasn't always at the top of my baby name list," Mackey said. "It wasn't even on the list when we were picking a name for my first daughter [her two-year-old daughter is called Arbor]." That doesn't mean Sunny wasn't a name that Mackey had been thinking over. In fact, it's one Mackey has had in mind for over 20 years now, as she discovered while looking back through some old home movies on VHS. "We were all home for Christmas and someone found the old tape recorder and tapes tucked away in the storage room and we thought it would be fun to go through some of them since we were all together," Mackey said. She found it fascinating to look back at the footage of herself as a kid. "You get so much better of a feel of what you were like as a kid when you can actually see your personality and see how you act on video," Mackey said. One video in particular proved so interesting that Mackey ended up sharing a clip of them watching it to TikTok, under the handle katelynn.mackey. In the footage, a three-year-old Mackey can be seen being asked what she wants her parents to call her unborn sister. She answers: "Sunny," sparking shocked reactions from those watching the video in the present day, most notably Josh, who appears stunned at what his wife describes as a moment of "foreshadowing." Mackey had no memory of saying the name, so her comments as a child on the video came as a "total surprise." She said: "I definitely didn't know I was carrying it around with me for that long! The first time that clip played, we almost missed it because we were all preoccupied. It wasn't until my mom went 'wait, did she just say sunny?' that we were able to watch it back. We were all shocked!" Though it might be a lot easier to do so today, Mackey hopes her video provides a reminder of how important it is to document family moments. "They may seem like small mundane moments right now, but the old tapes are truly such a special way to bring your family back together and relive the joy from your childhood," she said.