Alexa Klein is a nearly 3-year-old girl from Montgomery County, Maryland. Her friends call her "Lex" and her parents call her "Lexa."
These nicknames are the result of the Amazon Echo. The popular smart speaker device allows you to get the news, weather, play music and more just by saying the name Alexa.
Lew and Lisa Klein say they thought long and hard on what to name their future child long before the Amazon's Alexa came along. They both decided on Alexa, a name that would be inherited from two grandparents.
While the couple had heard of the device before their child's arrival, they didn't think much of it.
"Who knew what it would become?" Lew Klein said. "It's just another passing technology and we had already fallen in love with the name. So, we named her Alexa, which we still love to this day."
But, with the rise of the smart speakers came more and more jokes.
The parents say they're over it.
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"It doesn’t happen anymore with our friends," Lisa Klein said. "They all know us now, but all the time with new people. Like when she was getting her tonsils out the nurse actually said to her 'Oh, your name is Alexa. Can I buy you? Can you tell me the weather?'"
So, the couple is using nicknames. At home, the couple says there is only one Alexa and they have a Google Home.
"We don't know what’s to come, so we're sort of taking a bold move to try and alleviate any future issues for her," Lisa Klein said.
The couple is so concerned that they wrote to Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, and proposed a different name to the popular device. Lew Klein said they did hear back.
Amazon explained to them that the product was named after the famous Library of Alexandria that "stored the knowledge of the ancient world." While the message said the suggestion would be passed along, Amazon has no plans on changing the name anytime soon.
“It's just this sort of society change where these machines are being treated very similarly to the way we talk to each other and, therefore, our kid is being sort of put in that," Lisa Klein said.
