Just call her by her name?!

[FF7RGEEK]

I have 4 DD, my youngest is 1 next month.
My MIL won't use her name, just calls her baby she says it is impossible to pronounce (it isn't) in the beginning she would try to say her name and call her something not even remotely similar to her name.
She now has other family members doing the same and they won't use her name either, even though they did to begin with.
DH, tells her all the time that she is being silly and to just use her name, she will then just fall out with us.
I know her name is unusual but it is beautiful (in our opinion) am I being unreasonable to tell her she has to use her name?

What will she say when people ask her where her name is from, once she’s older?

Why would they ask? If they don't know the video game, they will just assume it's Celtic/Gaelic.

I never understand why names are so hard for people to cope with. I've been teaching nearly 20 years and have obviously encountered many weird and wonderful names - after the first lesson it simply becomes that child's name and you rarely even think about it! Some of them provoke a smile initially or even a raised eyebrow but by the end of the first week you just associate that name with that child and it's not weird at all. The only time I've been frustrated by names is when you get several students with very similar names who pronounce them differently and get irate when you get them mixed up (eg if you had two students called Ayesha and one pronounces it aye-EE-sha and one AYE-sha...I'm only human!)

It's Aerith! You really are a FF7R geek :) but I don’t blame you, brilliant game and a lovely name. It's not hard to pronounce at all. She is being unreasonable and needs to learn your DDs name.

You named your child after Japanese computer game. Seriously (assuming you are not japanese) While your mil is being unreasonable I don't think that's a name your daughter will thank you for at school. Awful.
Seriously , wind your neck in.

If she can say 'fair' and she can say 'pith' then she can say your DD's name. Put this to her. If she objects, suggest she speaks to her GP about possible confusion/mental faculties. If she 'falls out' with you, let her.

@Zwellers

You named your child after Japanese computer game. Seriously (assuming you are not japanese) While your mil is being unreasonable I don't think that's a name your daughter will thank you for at school. Awful.

Aerith's surname is Gainsborough, it's not exactly a Japanese name. I don’t see why OP's DD would have an issue with a perfectly normal name.

Normal name for the English language, I mean

I think it’s a lovely name, my DS is a gamer and I’m sure he’d appreciate this! Robin Williams famously named his daughter Zelda after the game, I remember them both starring in Nintendo adverts together.

They’re purposely being difficult, perhaps because they don’t like the name but who knows. We have never shortened DS’s name but MIL always tries to shorten it, she also adds in his middle name as if it’s a hyphenated name which makes us cringe.

My sisters kids are named after a vampire slayer and a vampire. Mine is called after a particularly gorgeous car. You wouldn’t really know the origins if we didn’t tell you (hint they are not called Buffy, Dracula and Ferrari!).
Your daughter has a lovely name. I’d just call family members on it each and every time they call her baby.

Names comes from all sorts of sources.. If you love it and so does your dd who else matters? My mil declared she hated ds's name and wouldn't be using it. Told her there was no need to see him then. She soon stfu.

@MissTrip82

Surely the kind of ppl who are snobby about games won’t realise it’s from one?

I assumed it was a traditional Irish name just from looking at it.

I also openly laughed at the muppet who claims she’s still ‘struggling’ with it. Good grief. There’s no way in hell MIL can’t pronounce this name - she doesn’t want to. Staggeringly rude.

That's what I thought! The vast majority of the people that even twig will be people that know FF7, it's not like the name is a heavily featured part of the marketing that anyone uninterested would have picked up on.

That would seriously wind me up and says an awful lot about her as a person.

She doesn't struggle to pronounce the name, she just doesn't like it and is entitled and selfish enough to place her own opinions above the wellbeing of a child in that she is willing to not use the child's actual name. What messages will that send to your dd when she is old enough to realise her grandmother doesn't call her by her name?

My fil does this. He never uses shortenings for names, even when the child is only known by the shortened name and doesn't like the long version. I just think it shows how utterly self centred he is. A fact he demonstrates in myriad other ways. It's so disrespectful.

@DysmalRadius

You can't dictate what she calls her

Isn't that what names are for?

This properly made me laugh out loud

P. S. Really pretty name OP. Start calling your MIL a different name til she sees the error of her ways.

I don't think it's the case with MIL & encouraging/joining in with the 7 year old's corrections might be a potentially good tactic with her in the most likely case that this is an attitude issue, however I know plenty a devoted FF7 fan who say Aeriff or similar th-fronting adaptions, including some who actually cannot hear the difference.

What's easy to pronounce varies from person to person. In fact the original 'mistake' is because the pure /th/ sound doesn't exist in Japanese and at the time of the original, a lot of places were trying to be more faithful to that (after some really bad examples) and sometimes there wasn't good communication on choices between teams in different areas. When transliterating between alphabets there are sometimes multiple options and in this case, Aerith, Aeris, and Earith have all shown up in game files and artwork, and are all ways her name can be romanized from the attempt to make a loan word into a name. As TTCAbroad said, it isn't Japanese for earth, it's the English word earth written in kana and that changes how it's said and sounds as Japanese is very different from English. There are quite a few JRPG and anime names that were made this way, some which have had similar transliteration issues.

Does MIL like chocolate? If so, by her an Aero and tell her she can only have it if she pronounces the bar's name correctly.

Never heard of that name but it's lovely OP and not at hard to pronounce . That would really annoy me too, it's very rude and disrespectful of her

@WhateverHappenedToMe

Does MIL like chocolate? If so, by her an Aero and tell her she can only have it if she pronounces the bar's name correctly.

It's a pretty name but it's not from the Japanese word for earth, it's a play on words.
If you say it fast and over and over it sounds like 'earth'. It's spelt like that probably to make it able to be written in katakana.

It's very pronouncable.

Oh my @Marimaur, for a moment I thought that you were going to tell us the name was translated as “restaurant” or something of the sort

Our DD also shares a name with a video game character! It was suggested by my DH as I'm not a gamer.

People often ask where it came from and I've been trying to think of a different story for 3.5years but I can't come up with one... It's also the name of a lamp in Next (which we have in the living room) but I'm not sure that's much better...

@ThatWasCrazy

Our DD also shares a name with a video game character! It was suggested by my DH as I'm not a gamer.

People often ask where it came from and I've been trying to think of a different story for 3.5years but I can't come up with one... It's also the name of a lamp in Next (which we have in the living room) but I'm not sure that's much better...

@ThatWasCrazy

the Next lamp made me spit my tea out.

OP Its a beautiful name and you can only continue to correct her. My mother struggled with my youngest Irish name (Aoife) she kept calling her Fifi so I corrected and corrected She never fully got it but towards the end of her life at least she was trying and not just calling her Fifi (which I hate)

Just don’t put her in the corner!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist 😆

One of my children is named for a member of the Greek pantheon. Got some raised eyebrows, but I just stared it out.

I'm not keen on the name myself.

Just correct her every time.