Any suggestions on a good technique to resolve a naming disagreement that's got quite strong?
My wife is not from the UK, and in her country's tradition they always name the children after the grandparents or other significant family members. We discussed this when we had our daughter, and decided not to follow that tradition (which, by the way, I really, really dislike, for all sorts of reasons - I don't like the fact that you don't have a choice, or that a hell of a lot of pressure is put on you to conform. Since we live in my wife's country, this gave us some fairly unpleasant scenes with her folks and other family.)
With forthcoming son, who's due just after the New Year, it seems that we can't get to a compromise. We've mutually decided, as with our girl, that we would use an Anglophone name. Both of us have come up with loads of suggestions, all the way from the dull to the exotic.
With our little girl, we went through some heated discussions, but ended up by writing lists of ten each, then vetoing suggestions the other person made that we didn't like. We gave each name a like/dislike score, added these together to reach a top three that was mutually satisfactory, then decided which of the three to choose in the hospital.
I assumed that we'd do the same in this case. I have my favourites - half of which including the top favourite were originally suggested by my wife - and obviously she has hers. We did the lists, vetoes & votes, ended up with a list and left it there.
But what's been happening since is that she's been vetoing names from the top five and insisting on re-introducing names that I'd already said I disliked. More, she gets very insulting whenever I try to push back - she's told me that I don't really care about my child's name, that I just want to make a statement, that she should get to choose by herself, that I veto too many names, that all the names I suggest are dumb. She's posted on internet forums presenting herself as someone who wants "solid, traditional" names, while I'm apparently the guy who wants "unpronounceable, made-up" names (not true: I don't want a "Top Ten" name, that's all).
Now she's decided to push for the son to be given a name that's the English equivalent of her father's name. It just makes me feel that there's some sort of other agenda here.
It might not be obvious from this rant, but I love my wife and normally we work very well together in making decisions. But in this case I'm at my wit's end to work out what we can do to get a unanimous decision.