K. writes:<\/p>\n
Where do I begin?<\/p>\n
When I was pregnant, I wanted nothing to do with baby names. See my first pregnancy was a second trimester miscarriage. Call me superstitious, call me crazy but I didn’t want to come up with names because I was afraid to jinx this pregnancy. You know, the first time we started with names and got some baby things right off the bat and that didn’t work out so well.<\/p>\n
Skip to eight months pregnant at my small baby shower where I was asked what the baby name would be. I said, “The only name I don’t like is David. We also have Lincoln and Franklin on the list.”<\/p>\n
When my husband would bring up David, I would tell him that it was the only name I didn’t want. Skip to the birth and after a beautiful natural birth at a midwife center (where you only stay for a few hours after the birth) my husband kept campioning for David and refused to let me bring home the baby unnamed. I caved. Actually, I don’t remember signing the birth certificate, I only remember him saying, “If you don’t like it we can change it”. At that point I really just wanted all the comotion to stop so I could enjoy my baby boy.<\/p>\n
Well, I still didn’t like David after the birth. When my son was 2 weeks old, we were changing it. Then my husband said we couldn’t. When my son was 4 weeks old we were changing it and then my husband said we couldn’t.<\/p>\n
My husband says that the name doesn’t matter to him, that it doesn’t mean that much and he would change it but doesn’t.<\/p>\n
The catch, it’s his father’s name. My husband named my son after his father because he felt kind of obligated to.<\/p>\n
Now his father has gotten word that I hate the name.<\/p>\n
I don’t even know what to do at this point. How to make peace. I am sure his father feels hurt. My husand is stuck between telling me he doesn’t care about the name and would change it for me but not wanting to hurt his dad. I am hurt because I assocciate the name with kids I went to high school with and the name isn’t transceding the assoccation.<\/p>\n
By the way, I hate Dave, Davey, etc. And my husband refuses to allow me to call him by his middle name.<\/p>\n
I have an 8 month old with no name. I cry about it a lot. Like why didn’t I speak up for myself more and name him Lincoln which I really wanted. Why did I let him persuad me. It’s a big mess and I don’t know what to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nYour 8-month-old is not nameless. He has a name, and his name is David.<\/p>\nIn most cases, I would not say that. We’ve addressed<\/a> the<\/a> topic<\/a> of namer’s remorse before, and my usual advice is that a name CAN be changed. There is an exception: when the name is a family name, it can’t be changed. It’s too hurtful and damaging.<\/p>\n
In your situation, I say it not only because it is a family name, but also because your husband is not willing to change it. He says he is, but his actions are speaking louder than his words. He’s not willing to compromise on the name at all, not even to allow you to call your son by his other legal name.<\/p>\n
Whether you should or shouldn’t have given in on this, and whether your husband should or shouldn’t have pressured you into using a name he knew you didn’t like, is irrelevant at this point and will only drive you crazy to think of it. Just as with similar obsessions (wishing we had\/hadn’t said something, wishing an accident hadn’t happened), the wishes are counter to reality, and the inability to change reality can lead to mental cycling. At this point, the answer to your question is that what’s done is done, and it is time to accept the name even if you always hate the name. Brush the hands briskly together and learn for next time. Remind yourself that loving or not loving a name is not the same as loving or not loving a person.<\/p>\n
It may help to know you are not alone: many families have naming traditions that one or both parents hate but feel obligated to accept anyway, and many parents give in to the other parent and later wish they hadn’t. Will your husband allow you to call your son endearments such as Sweetie or Honey?<\/p>\n
The situation with your father-in-law is unfortunate. If you were publicly announcing during the pregnancy that his name was the only one you didn’t want to use, it isn’t something you can correct as a misunderstanding. At this point, the solution is to stop talking about how much you hate it, and hope that with time the issue blows over. Ideally, the pleasure of having his name used will trump the unpleasant but universal knowledge that there are some people who don’t like it. Your husband could perhaps spin it as “Whether we liked the name or not, it was important to us to honor you in this way.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
K. writes: Where do I begin? When I was pregnant, I wanted nothing to do with baby names. See my first pregnancy was a second trimester miscarriage. Call me superstitious, call me crazy but I didn’t want to come up with names because I was afraid to jinx this pregnancy. You know, the first time […]<\/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-6284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Dm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284","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=6284"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10020,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6284\/revisions\/10020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}