When DH vetoes your favorite name

I sympathise OP! My DD is named after somebody I greatly admired as a child and I’ve loved the name since I was about 11! DH wasn’t keen at first at all but I spent 9 months trying to persuade him and thankfully he relented and I got my choice in the end! It was just a name I was so in love with and from the age of 11, I could only ever imagine having a daughter with that name. It would have broken my heart to have not been able to use it.

For dc1 we both had a separate name we loved and agreed we'd wait till birth. It was a pretty traumatic birth and when we finally saw dc1 I just blurted out my name and DH agreed it was the name. Dc2 I was convinced was the same sex as dc1, refused to discuss opposite sex names as didn't believe I'd have the opposite sex. Only liked dc1 name. Said DH could name dc2 whatever he wanted. Turns out dc2 was the opposite sex and DH said he loved the name I'd picked for dc1 had they been the opposite sex. I think seeing me going thru labour made him vulnerable!

Can you each write a list of names, toss a coin and the loser picks from the winner's list?

Having re read you seem to be asking whether you should just name your child & not worry about your partner having a say? How would you feel if your partner did the same to you?

I realise someone has commented that it’s fine to just put a foot down & decide you’re not equals & baby naming is just for you but I really don’t think that bodes well for a healthy relationship

I don’t understand how he has one veto but has also vetoed multiple names?
Also there are only 2 of you so veto is a little odd - you either agree on a name or you don’t. Surely you wouldn’t want a name for
the child you’re both bringing in to the world together that you knew your partner didn’t like??

It is difficult finding a name you agree on. I ask my partner about names quite a lot and the ones I like the most I tend to ask him about again every so often and some of them have grown on him! Albeit not the ones he hated which I just removed from the list all together!

If he hates it that much I wouldn't there must be other names you like.

aren't we supposed to LOVE the name we give our kids??

Yes - both of you! So if either isn't keen - for any silly reason - you keep looking. I sympathise. It took DH and I forever to find a name we both liked for DD. It was the only name we agreed on out of hundreds. Now we're expecting another girl! We're struggling, but if one of us doesn't like a suggestion we just move on. We'll get there eventually!

There are loads of nice names, of course you both have to agree and be gracious about it.

I loved a certain girl's' name and was determined from when I was very young that if I had a daughter she'd be called that name. Fortunately DH liked it too but if he hadn't I'd have insisted.
Your DH's reasons for not wanting to use your choice of name are spurious. Once you've called DD the name, he will no longer associate that name with another person but with his own child.

You can't choose a name he doesn't like. Imagine if he insisted on a name you didn't like. I had to choose international names for my kids as my husband is from an Asian country. Their names are not even in my top 20 list of names!! Maybe not even my top 50 but they're nice enough names and I do like them.

I had this with ds3. We had used three of my favourite boys names between ds1 and ss2’s first and second names, and we struggled to think of boys names when I was pregnant with ds3.

I liked Dominic but dh vetoed that - he just didn’t like it. So I accepted his decision, and in the end he came up with a first and second name combination that used a name I liked as the second name, and one I hadn’t even thought of as the first name.

When he suggested these names, it all fell into place for me - they were exactly right - so right I’d have been a wee bit disappointed if ds3 had been a girl (I didn’t know what I was having).

Long story short - if your dh really dislikes the name, I think you have to accept that - and you will know when you hit on the right one.

Choose another one maybe use your fave as a middle name. We did this with my DD. My H had a very silly reason not to like the name I always thought I'd give my daughter.

And on the other hand my H wanted the name Sophie but I couldn't face it because there was a girl at nursery with that name who always was wetting herself!

So silly reasons or associations are normal. They just get in the way. We ended up picking a really pretty name that out now talented DD totally owns.

We went practical. We each went through a name book and drew up a long list of names we either loved or liked. The. We shortened our personal lists down to about 15. Then we compared lists and any that overlapped were contenders. We had a couple on there.

Our DD is the only name in a baby book that my DH didn't have some snarky retort to (that's a strippers name etc). Literally the only name.

Choose a different name that you both like. To pressure him would be very, very unreasonable.

^This. Also I wouldn’t name my child a name someone in our family already has.

I think you have to choose a name you both like, rather than a name one of you adores but the other dislikes.
Could you use Catherine as a middle name?
It's one of my all time favourite names btw.

There are squillions of names left.

Download the lists of all names used in England and Wales in 2017 and work your way through it. You'll find some common ground!

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsgirls

You have to work together to come up with a name you are both happy with, you will think of one at some point.

I used the name I wanted for Dd as a middle name as OH didn't like it. He wasn't too keen on her first name either but likes it now. This wasn't due to him associating the name with someone he doesn't like though. Imagine it's quite different. I'd still push for having it as a middle in some form.
OH chose ds name. I'm still not keen 9 years on...

We didn't use any names that we weren't in agreement with. For me that meant names I loved (Thomas, Keir) became no-no's, as DH disliked them. Similarly, some names he suggested, I disliked, so we didn't use those either.

We have three sons and we managed to find six boy's names that we both like, and which work in both our cultures and first languages. Funnily enough although we never had a daughter, we were always in complete agreement as to what we would have called one.

What do you do - you choose a different name.