{"id":13468,"date":"2018-06-21T07:41:37","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T11:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13468"},"modified":"2018-06-21T14:51:22","modified_gmt":"2018-06-21T18:51:22","slug":"baby-naming-issue-father-wants-child-named-after-him-mother-dislikes-the-whole-concept-and-also-the-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/06\/21\/baby-naming-issue-father-wants-child-named-after-him-mother-dislikes-the-whole-concept-and-also-the-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Father Wants Child Named After Him, Mother Dislikes the Whole Concept and Also the Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello!
\nWhat do you do when you and your husband can’t agree on a baby boy name? I’m currently due with our second child in a month, and don’t know the sex of the baby. We can agree on girl names fairly easily, but for a boy name, he wants the boy named after him.<\/p>\n

Mind you there is no tradition in his family of this, so it’s not like it’s a family tradition. He just really wants his son to be named after him. I have issues around that, one that it’s sexist to baby girls, completely egotistical and a bit chauvinist. As if boys are better than girls so they have to “carry on” this family name. But the worst of it all is that I really don’t like my husband’s name for my own child. It’s not a name I would choose at all!<\/p>\n

What do we do?!?!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here is what you do when one parent strongly wants to use a name and the other parent strongly doesn’t: you don’t use the name. The name is taken out of consideration.<\/p>\n

First, I hope, the parent who doesn’t want the name tries very hard to want it because the other parent feels so strongly about it: serious time and effort should be spent on this. But if that doesn’t work (as it has not in this case), the parent who wants the name has to come to the realization that the strength of their desire doesn’t mean they get what they want. It is hard. It really is. I have a lot of sympathy for a parent whose favorite, favorite name is not going to happen.<\/p>\n

If it helps, he can know that he is in good company, not only with other parents whose baby-naming partners didn’t like The Name, but with parents whose favorite name is impossible with the surname, or impossible with a sibling name, or where there is a severe family reason not to use the name (it’s the name of dad’s new wife and no one can stand her; it’s the name of ex-wife’s child with new husband; the name we’ve loved since childhood is coincidentally the name of our detested sister-in-law; etc.), or where someone else used the name first and now the parents feel they can’t use it without causing extreme interpersonal issues, or where someone horrible with that name has just come into the news, or where royalty\/celebrity just used it. There are so many reasons why a beloved name has to be taken off the table, and so many of us have to cope with that reality and then find our favorite names from all the names that remain. Some of us always pine a little for those lost names, but there it is.<\/p>\n

In this case, there are so many reasons you don’t want to use this name, it’s clear the name should be out (and possibly long-since out; how long have you two been arguing about this?). The fact that you’re still asking me what should be done, and presenting this as an issue of the two of you not agreeing on a name when it’s actually an issue of him wanting a name you don’t want and apparently continuing to insist on it, makes me feel a little worried. I wonder if you’re feeling pressure because what he wants is his own name? Like, if he wanted any other name, and REALLY REALLY WANTED it, and you REALLY REALLY DIDN’T, would you be struggling in this same way to say “I’m sorry, but no”? Do a few test runs of this in your head: pick a name you strongly don’t want to us for a number of reasons (name of ex-boyfriend, name of real jerk you know, name you just hate the sound of, name someone else in your family\/friend group recently used, name of someone terrible in the news) and imagine your husband really pushing for that name. Is the trouble that you don’t want to say no to a name he really wants, or is the trouble that you don’t want to say no to a namesake? Society\/custom can exert a surprisingly amount of pressure.<\/p>\n

Or is the issue not with you saying no but with him accepting that no? Is wanting to pass down his own name something he feels he ought to be able to have as a man in this society, and so instead of backing off as he would if you rejected another of his favorites, he is persisting on principle? My high school boyfriend felt it was his Right to have a son named after him. Like, that that wish was enough to override any future partner’s wishes. We had a number of fights about it, and in the midst of the later excruciating pain of the break-up, one bright light was realizing I would not have to deal with that issue with him. (The way he and his eventual wife solved it was by making the child a namesake, but never ever ever using that name except on paperwork, and calling the child by the wife’s first-choice name.)<\/p>\n

At this point, you have two tasks and your husband has two tasks. Your first task is to make it clear to your husband that his favorite name is not going to be the child’s name. I don’t know how clear you have already been, so I don’t know if what’s needed here is a gentle, sorrowful, “I’m sorry, honey; I’ve really tried to like that idea because I know how important it is to you, but I’m afraid I’m just not willing” or if there has to be some shouting and table-flipping to get your point fully across, but the communication needs to happen in a way that lets him know you feel sad for him but the decision is final. Your husband’s first task is to accept this, and to let go of the idea of using his own name.<\/p>\n

The second task for both of you is to find the name you both like best out of the names that remain. To be clear, the task is NOT for either of you to find him a name he likes as much as the idea of using his own name. The task is for the two of you to look at all the names that are not his name, and find the highest-ranked one that the two of you agree on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello! What do you do when you and your husband can’t agree on a baby boy name? I’m currently due with our second child in a month, and don’t know the sex of the baby. We can agree on girl names fairly easily, but for a boy name, he wants the boy named after him. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3ve","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13468"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13479,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13468\/revisions\/13479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}