Here’s a simple rule we think couples should follow when it comes to baby names: Both parents should like the name, or at least not actively dislike it. It can be hard for some to find this middle ground, but it’s important that you make the effort, as it will set the tone for how you raise your child together. For this reason, we’re a little worried about an expecting mom who posted on Reddit about her name disagreement with her fiancé.
“Last month we found out we’re having a little girl of our own!” wrote LoonaMoony, who is 23 and whose partner has a 12-year-old and 11-year-old with his ex. “I was kinda convinced I was gonna have a boy and I didn’t have any names picked out that I loved. My fiancé wants to name her Scarlet tho. It’s not a bad name but his other daughters are named Rose and Ruby.”
It turns out, this red-name theme was the ex-wife’s idea as a way to honor the dad’s late mother, whose middle name was Redd. LoonaMoony thinks this is super cheesy. Though she never says as much outright, we suspect her objection also has to do with the ex-wife — which is totally understandable! She doesn’t need the other woman’s shadow to be cast in this important decision of her child’s life, after all. The fiancé does not understand any of this.
“He doesn’t get why I dislike it and says our baby would feel excluded when her sisters have matching names and she doesn’t, but they’re so much older than her!” Loona said. “I asked if we had more kids would we have to keep on theme and name ones ‘vermillion’ or ‘crimson,’ and he said I was being mean and hormonal and blowing things out of proportion, which maybe I was but he wasn’t even trying to see my side.”
Strangely, in this hypothetical scenario, the dad wouldn’t object to a boy getting a name outside of this red theme. We find that kind of infuriating. The AITA subreddit also saw some red flags in the fiancé’s behavior and words.
For one thing, it’s not great to know that this man wants to overrule his much-younger wife’s opinion on the matter.
“[Original poster] is 23 and pregnant by a man whose last wife was pregnant 13 years ago, when she was 10. Fill in the blanks,” planting_progress wrote.
“Also guys don’t get to use hormones as a weapon in arguments with women,” Whocaresevenadamn wrote. “I am a guy and I still don’t understand why men think this will help them win an argument. It’s insulting in the extreme.”
For the most part, Redditors have the same rule as we do: “Name choice should be mutual, not themed unless both people want it,” trumpsniece wrote.
But on the other hands, some readers also wanted to point out that the fiancé might actually be right about the daughter wanting to have a connection to her big sisters’ names.
“My name starts with the same letter as my half siblings, but they also got a middle initial that spells out a word, and I didn’t and I’m still jealous, even though my siblings are much older than me,” AnUnchartedIsland wrote. “So the dad might be right that the daughter could feel left out in the future.”
“Instead of thinking of it as not acknowledging you’re a new family, maybe the husband’s thinking of how to blend the families to keep what he still loves from his first marriage, his two daughters,” IowaHeartland agreed. “So in his mind he’s not leaving you out as much as being an involved dad. In a way, it’s as if he’s trying to protect his two older daughters from feeling rejected.”
If she wanted to opt for a related name that’s less obviously red, Quetzacoatyl77 listed some other options: “Rowan. Poppy. Roisan. Clancy. Radley. Rory. Amber. Autumn. Sienna.” And others thought she might want to choose something that begins with the same letter as the stepdaughters’ names. If this is the compromise they go with, we may be able to help with that, beginning with this list of R baby names.
We wonder how these celebrities’ baby name conversations went down.
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