Pissed off DH dismisses my name ideas

I feel like most men would be so much more laid back about girl’s names and let their wife take the lead

What a weird thing to say. Why would a man be any more laid-back about a girl's name than he would about a boy's name? She's his daughter. Her name should be just as important to him as a son's name would be.

how can he truly hate every name I come up with!

Why would that be implausible? The names you like are very much of a type and I think it's perfectly reasonable for him to hate them all. I hate them all as well, so there's no reason why your DH wouldn't/couldn't hate them all too.

Clearly, it would be helpful if he could think of some names that he liked himself. But other than that, I don't understand what he's done wrong other than have different taste to yours.

How many months pregnant are you? Maybe he just can't see the rush to decide on a name. Plenty of parents don't decide on a name until after the baby's born.

And why should that matter?

I don’t think it’s excessive of him to have turned down the names you’ve mentioned. It’s not that many. My DH rejected far more names than that when coming up with name ideas for our baby. Though it must be annoying that he’s not coming up with any ideas of his own. Tell him you expect him to think of the next name suggestion. I ended up letting my DH name our son because there was a specific name that he loved which was why he didn’t want any of mine (I do like the name too).

Yes to this.

Is he jealous of the attention you're already giving to the baby?

Tell him he needs to come up with a list of ten names he likes, and you will also list ten names you like.

Each of you can strike five names off the other's list immediately.

You discuss the remaining total of ten names seriously.

Tell him if he won't participate in good faith, you'll go with a name of your choice.

His response to this is the response of a man who seems resentful of this demand on his time and energy and I'd be curious to know why he doesn't feel this is something he should be engaging whole-heartedly with.

Charles Dickens used names from Gravestones for some of his characters.
like the Dorrett family buried in Rochester

I believe Imre is Hungarian and Arika although also British is more common in Scandanavia

This is going to sound quite morbid but as well as movie credits, graveyards can give good ideas for names. Try and find modern headstones though, all the older ones the names are either Mary or Elizabeth for women or William and John for men!

Think you’ve always got be be careful about names that have bad associations when connected to surnames too
A friend with surname West were thinking about Fred for their son……. luckily someone suggested maybe not

Give him a date where he has to come up with a list of names. That’s what I did for DH with ours. Make him commit to delivering the list by a due date. Funnily, all of our kids have names from DH lists, as honestly they were better than mine. One I didn’t like, but I liked another version of it so we settled on that, otherwise everything ended up coming from his lists.

I know someone whose daughters are called Imre and Arika!

See if this changes his mind:

Thank you for the voice of reason.

Names are so hard, I could have written your post 16 years ago.

Whilst my DH was also not up for putting much effort in to think of a name but more than happy to shut down all my suggestions, I did manage to get him to tell me what he disliked in general about my selections. It turned out my DH didn’t want any names that ended with an “y” sound, such as Holly or Daisy or Esme etc.

So that narrowed it down. I also second a PP’s suggestion of looking at movie credits together. That’s how we landed on our chosen name. It went past in the credits and we both suggested it at the same time. Perfect.

Ironically, my DD’s name ends with an “a” and my DH is the only one who shortens it to have a “y” sound 🙄

In your original comments, you said the three names I suggested were, firstly, "awful and pretentious!!" and then, when I replied, "I guess more people would agree with me than not. Partly because in my 61 years I have never met anyone called Venetia, Sibylla or Pandora, which suggests that people don't rate them as names!"

So, you dismissed them on the basis of a personal opinion, and because you'd never met anyone with those names in 61 years.

Of course you're "perfectly at liberty to dismiss them as horrible!" (lol)

The fact remains that it's merely your opinion, and you aren't the supreme arbiter of taste AFAIK.

As a teacher I have come across all of these. The most common being Pandora. And since when does a majority vote carry an automatic endorsement ? Does what the majority 'rate" determine all your decisions?

OP if you’re looking for naice feminine names that are DH-proof may I suggest:
Charlotte
Louisa
Thea
Sophia
Evelyn
Layla

If I was the Op, I'd develop a list that included her absolute favorites and a few names that he might like so they can gently argue about it for the next 7 weeks. Then he will watch you give birth and the last thing you scream as you push that baby out is, " She's called Margot (or whatever your favorite name is), you mother**cker!" and he will be so busy crying and proud of you and not fainting he will say, "Yes, she is!"

Job Done. Namaste.

I haven't met a Hippolytus. I've met 2 Phaedras.

Peaches Geldof called her son Phaedra but it's a female name. [He isn't one of the 2 I've met]

Murder and mayhem in Greek mythology, I just love it!

thats not what a pun is. But no it sounds like a disease.

Have you ever met a Ryangiggs then?

I’ve never met a Hippolytus. Must have a narrow social circle 🤣

I presume a lame pun on syphilis.

I think she’s dismissed it because they’re awful names.

I do feel sorry for kids with “unique” names not least because they’ll spend their entire lives repeating, spelling out and correcting pronunciations and spellings of names all because their parents were a bit vain a few months before they were born