Mom Suggests She & Her Husband Each Call Their Baby A Different Name Since They Can't Agree On One They Both Like
If they can't even agree on this, how are they going to parent?
pixelshot / Canva Pro Naming a baby used to be a fairly simple process. But nowadays, it has become a decision many parents agonize over — which often seems to become an extension of their identity.
A dad on Reddit and his wife are a perfect example of this. Their inability to agree on a baby name for their daughter has led to the wife suggesting a downright bizarre compromise.
The mom wants her and her husband to call their daughter different names because they can't agree on a baby name.
Choosing a baby name has become such a big deal in recent years that it has even given rise to an entire business genre. Baby name consultants charge astronomical sums of money to help parents find the perfect moniker for their tykes.
But if that's not "late capitalist hellscape" enough for you, some of these consultants also offer extremely expensive, full-scale "branding services" for parents to ensure their baby's name properly reflects who their parents are as people. One such consultant charges $30,000 for these services.
From the sounds of it, it doesn't seem like this couple on Reddit has gone quite that far into baby-naming insanity. But they have still taken this quandary to an extreme that is downright bizarre — not to mention potentially psychologically damaging for their baby.
He likes unique, modern names, while his wife likes classic, old-fashioned names, and they cannot agree.
The man and his wife are basically caught between two opposing clichés — er, trends, rather — when it comes to baby naming nowadays.
"My wife likes very common, very classic names, and she likes to go a touch old-fashioned too," the dad wrote in his post. "Her three favorite girls' names are Elizabeth, Esther and Hannah. She also strongly loves the names Emily, Beatrice, Constance, Patricia, Catherine and Geraldine."
He, on the other hand, likes "more uncommon names and names that aren't super used or classic… Names I adore are; Indigo/Indie, Lyric, Elodie, Lyra, Dove, Sunny, Scout, Calia." That last one is absolutely going to be misheard as "cholera" that kid's entire life, but fine.
His wife suggested they use a classic first name and a modern middle name, and then each call their daughter different names.
The problem is that he and his wife "strongly dislike" the names the other likes. They had come to a couple of compromises, one of which was the name Briony, which ticks both boxes — it's old-fashioned and unusual.
But his wife quickly decided she hated it, and they were back to square one. "My wife has decided the fairest compromise is one picks the first and the other the middle name, and we each call her by the name we picked," he wrote.
That is utterly insane, but nonetheless, the dad says he's fine with it, except that he knows his wife won't follow through on the plan.
"Give it a month after our daughter is born before my wife is annoyed that I don't call our daughter by her first name," he wrote.
He's particularly unconvinced, given the obvious confusion this will cause among family and friends. This should honestly be reason enough to stop being so unhinged about naming the baby and just pick something for the love of God.
Psychological research shows that names have a powerful impact on our lives and a child's sense of self, making this a terrible idea.
People on Reddit were left slack-jawed by this man's post. "You know who's gonna suffer here? This poor kid who won't know her own name and will constantly have her parents forcing their preferred name on her until she's expected to 'pick a side.'"
Babies begin recognizing their names around 6 months old, an important developmental milestone. How on Earth is a baby supposed to gain her bearings around her own identity when mom calls her one thing and dad calls her another?
Plus, it turns out our names affect our psyches far more deeply than you might think. University of Michigan psychologist Jean Twenge found in a study that, even when controlling for things like background, a person's discomfort with their name was correlated with poor psychological health. Twenge concluded that "the name becomes a symbol of the self," for better or worse.
Studies have also found that our names strongly impact other people's actions toward us, well beyond the well-known ways names are often used as tools for discrimination.
For example, another study found people were less likely to offer help to a stranger with a name they didn't like. This, in turn, impacts people's sense of self, too. Subtle negative feedback from strangers was found to be correlated with a higher likelihood of negative life outcomes, like being involved in a crime, for example.
If names have that big an impact on us, we can extrapolate the impact having two completely different names, depending on which parent is present, might have on a child — and it probably isn't anything good.
The bottom line: This is not only an insane thing to do but a potentially damaging one. It is bizarre to be so attached to a baby name that it would come to this in the first place.
More importantly, it ultimately raises a far more important question: If you're this at odds over a name, are you even ready to be parents in the first place?
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.