To continue calling DD by the name I gave her

[bannsise]

My DD is 22, her first name is Isabella, I chose the name as I love it and think it’s very pretty. Since she was little I’d always call her Isabella or Bella, her dad who I wasn’t with called her “Isa” (ee-sa).
As a teen she insisted I didn’t call her Bella, I happily just used Isabella.
Now she is insisting I call her Isa, she says she doesn’t like Isabella, no one apart from me has called her it in 10+ years. She also complains I say it wrong anyway (her dad is European and pronounces it ee-sa-bell-a, I say is-a-bell-a). I replied that I can’t say her name wrong as I picked it!!

AIBU to say I will continue to call her Isabella (with the English pronunciation) and not by Isa as that isn’t the name I chose for her and I don’t like it.

She went to a boarding school in France from 16-18, it made no difference which country I was in at that point.

Your daughter gets to choose the pronunciation and shortening, not you. YABU - respect her wishes.

Then she's entirely reasonable in wanting her name to be pronounced the way that everyone around her (but you) pronounces it.
She's grown up in that country, presumably speaking that language. So she'll pronounce her name that way, naturally.

Did you miss the part where the OP says her DD was born and raised in Italy and lives in Italy the pronunciation is how it's pronounced for her entire life. It's her mother that's refusing to acknowledge that because she now lives in the UK having left her DD at the first opportunity as soon as she turned 16

I have a name that is frequently pronounced differently in Europe.
My whole life my name has been said in shortened ways and with a different accent.
It never occurs to me to be rude to nice people over their accent.

@bannsise

Can I ask what your aim is in refusing to use the name that she wants? What’s your goal?

Are you keen to highlight her British heritage? Is it about respecting your authority as her mother? Do you wish to annoy your ex partner? Perhaps you want to lessen the Italian influence? Are any of these reasons more important than your relationship with her? Because that is what’s at risk.

Insisting on calling her a name she doesn’t like seems rather stubborn and counterintuitive. You risk alienating her and damaging your relationship as a consequence. If that’s a risk you’re willing to take, carry on, but if actually you love her and want her to love you back, you need to respect her as a person, and respect her choices.

'made no difference'. To you. Maybe it did to her. There is a lot more going on here than just her name.

I ask this as reasonably as I can but I wonder why you posted in AIBU. The majority of people (88%) have said you are BU and have told you why, but you are insisting that you still want to say the Anglicised version of her name, even though she has never lived in the UK.

Posters aren’t going to change your mind, so you wanted validation of your thinking, rather than an opinion on whether you were BU.

Yup. It’s very clear that the relationship with her DD is strained

OP said her DD went to boarding school when she moved to the UK as by that point it “didn’t matter where she (OP) lived”

If my relationship with my DD was so strained across seas I would absolutely do everything in my power to mend it and address her in a way that made her happy. I certainly wouldn’t be fighting an arbitrary power struggle to assert what little dominance I felt I still had over a 22 year old. No wonder it’s strained.

It doesn’t sound like she’s asking you to put on a fake accent. She’s asking for a different pronunciation. I have a friend called Matthew and he prefers (because he spent his childhood in France) the pronunciation that sounds like Matt-chew rather than the more English Math-You.

Regardless, you asked if you are being unreasonable and the vast majority say you are. Why wouldn’t you want to make your daughter happy by doing such a small thing?

Sorry you need to respect her wishes, do you not like it because your ex chose that nn? If so get over yourself otherwise you will damage your relationship with your daughter.
My dd is Imogen and we used the nn Immy until age 5 when she said she didn’t like it, we respected her wishes. She uses a completely different nn these days which is an unusual variant of her name.

I think calling people by a name they have asked you not to call them makes you disrespectful and a bit of a tw@t if I am honest.

I would prioritise your daughter’s feelings and call her the name she likes and is comfortable with.

She's a 22 year old Italian woman who has lived in Italy all her life. Of course she uses the Italian pronunciation of her name and the shortened version. As will everyone that she comes into contact with.

Exactly, fully agree. Oh, I - your MOTHER - who gave BIRTH to you gave you this name, so suck it up, whether you like it or not. Just...weird.

Incidentally, my own DD doesn't like the name I gave her. It's a Swedish name. She plans to change it in the future. She's a bit on the younger side now and might change her mind, but if she doesn't and will change it to whatever she likes - I have zero issues with that. People have different tastes and she's not a dog for me to name, she can choose herself.

My dad named me and luckily I do like my name. I know my mum's version and I hate it. I would have definitely changed that, if she would have won.

I personally dislike Isabella, a very traditionally girly, Disney princess name and also would like to shorten it into something more mature and unisex, so don't blame the daughter at all.

No, it’s your daughter’s name, she gets to say how and if it is used. Essentially you ‘gift’ them their name at birth and ti becomes theirs to do what they wish with thereafter. It’s galling - my DD has a gorgeous birth name which she rejected entirely for an ungendered off name that I, frankly, loathe. But it’s her choice, so I use the name she asked for, even though it took months and months to remember and I still occasionally slip up when tired.

I feel really strongly about this.

When I was a teenager I asked my family to call me by a shortened version of my name. I hated my name and didn't feel it reflected who I was.

My parents not only refused but scoffed at me. Despite calling my sister by the shortened version of her name as she had asked them to do.

It was just one of the ways my parents treated me differently to my siblings and one of the ways they emphasised my feelings and opinion didn't matter to them.That I didn't matter.

So yes OP I think you very much should call your daughter by the name she wants to be called: the name she feels best reflects her personality and her sense of self.

One of the hardest part of raising your children in a different culture to your own is realising that that DOES make them different children to you, with a different cultural background and yes, quite possibly a different understanding of how certain words, that seem written the same, are pronounced.

She is telling you she is a non-English, or at the very least not exclusively English, girl, and that her name is pronounced accordingly. You apparently didn't see this coming, but that is the result of the expatriation choices that were made for her.

This is who she is, and even if it were just a personal preference, I still don't see why you wouldn't go with it.

She's a human, not your property. Call her what she wants to be called, simply because it's beyond fucking rude to call an adult a name they don't like, regardless of whether you chose it for her or not. If you were my mother I probably wouldn't be speaking to you at all at this point.

@Doloresparton how is she being asked to put on an accent? As others have pointed out, if the OP can say Lisa, she can say Isa without coming over all Sophia Loren

I think you need to get a grip and respect your daughter. You don’t need to put on an accent for goodness sake. Can you pronounce the ‘ee’ sound in your accent? Of course you can, it’s easy (see, two words there I’m sure you can pronounce without putting an accent on), you literally need to say ee-sa.
Yes you chose her name, but it’s her name, you also chose to raise her in a country other than the UK, this is ridiculous, is it worth damaging your relationship (or damaging further I would say from what we can see here)?

@Moreinheavenandearth such a special role that OP left her child in Italy at 16. If being a mother was that important to her, she might have stayed in the same country and been integrated into her child’s life the last 6 years, no?

I didn’t choose to raise her in Italy I had a very short relationship with her dad and ended up pregnant, he promised me the world, broke up with me before her 1st birthday and refused to let me return to the uk where my family and support network were. Spoke to lawyers and was basically told I’d be wasting my time as it would always be ruled that she should remain in the country she is ordinarily resident. He kicked off so much that my family would have to come and visit us in Italy as he always claimed he didn’t trust me to bring her back if I took her to the uk!

Why is it odd for someone who has an Italian name and was born and brought up in Italy as an Italian citizen with an Italian parent to want to use the Italian pronunciation of her name.

You’re getting a tough time here OP.

It’s no surprise you’ve dug your heels in - your daughter told you - who picked the name - that you are pronouncing this name wrong! How ignorant, stupid and disrespectful.

It sounds like she’s trying to fully identify with her dad’s heritage and country and wants to sound more exotic than plain old Bella, or Issy. It’s pretentious and she’ll probably be embarrassed when she’s older.

Claiming that no one has called her anything except Isa is a lie. None of her UK friends or teachers would have called her that naturally unless she attempted to enforce it, which would have met with limited success. As an adult, every time she gets a non-social phone call, or called into an appointment they will call her Isabella with the English pronunciation.

A child changing their name is a rejection of their parents’ choice for them, so it will sting. It is also asking something of you that will never feel right or natural. Ultimately, it’s their choice, but she has not been respectful about it at all.

It’s not like she said, “Mum I prefer Isa and it suits me much better. This is what feels right for me and what everyone else is calling me now.” She’s stupidly said you are wrong about your own baby name choice which is incredibly rude, she is blatantly lying/exaggerating about “no one” else calls her that, and it seems like this new insistence is to make herself seem more exotic which is juvenile and may not last. And the short name she has picked is not sustainable in the UK, she will have to keep enforcing it. None of it is sensible or authentic.

I suspect she’s pretending that Eesabella is her “real name” (as opposed to different pronunciation of the same) and doesn’t want you to embarrass her by letting it slip that she’s just regular Isabella to anyone English.