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Baby names

Find baby name inspiration and advice on the Mumsnet Baby Names forum.

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Original poster

Those of you who didn't use your all-time favourite name...?

26 replies

HardCheese · 26/03/2012 13:43

This is down to my own idle curiosity, following the thread in which people posted their all-time favourite girls' names.

Quite a few people said that though they adored a particular name or names, they hadn't used ever them for their own children. Sometimes the reason was because it didn't go with the surname/didn't have a child of that sex etc, but a small but significant number said their husband/partner had vetoed it as too unusual or not 'ordinary enough', or because it 'would need explaining'.

Obviously, I'm not disputing the right of either parent to veto a name they loathe, but it looked to me slightly as if people's male partners' had more conservative tastes in names than the posters...?

Is this true in your experience? If so, what kinds of name got that kind of response from your OH, and did he say why? Is it fair to say that men have more conservative (don't stand out in the school yard) tastes in baby-naming than women, and is it equally true of baby boy names and girl names?

[Obviously, not assuming everyone naming a baby is in a het couple situation, but it seemed to be women posting about male partner's preferences in the original thread...]

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shoobidoo · 26/03/2012 13:47

My dh was far more adventurous when came to naming both ds and dd - whereas I preferred more classic names, his suggestions were far more unusual (e.g. Thaddeus, Felix, Antigone etc). So I'm not sure that men are always the more 'conservative'.

But it is true that there are more girls names than boys name in use.

Devora · 26/03/2012 13:51

Well, I'm not in a het couple, and I'd say my dp's choices reflected her ethnic origin, and my choices reflected mine. She thought my choices sounded like gnarled old bagladies, and I thought hers sounded like Creole harlots .

In the end we opted for a lowest common-denominator (though nice) name that was the only one appearing on both our long lists. It turned out to also be the brainchild of every other parent of a girl born that year. So I do regret it. But I suspect that if we went back and tried again, we wouldn't get much further on.

Original poster

HardCheese · 26/03/2012 13:59

at Devora's partner and her horror at gnarled bagladies' names - can I ask what kind of names these were? Not to mention the Creole harlot names - this must have been the all-time Battle of the very Different Shortlists!

OP posts:

ReshapeWhileDamp · 26/03/2012 14:01

at devora and the 'gnarled baglady/Creole harlot' cultural confusion!

ViolaCrayola · 26/03/2012 14:04

Very true in my case. He loved Michael best, I wanted Osian. We settled somewhere in-between.

Currently pregnant with DC2 and he has vetoed lots of names.

FondleWithCare · 26/03/2012 14:04

My partner likes names that are quite traditional and commonly used in his country (Slovakia). He ruled out any name that isn't pronounced as it's spelled because it would be too hard for his family which cut out a lot of names. He did have odd choices for boys names, so thank God we had a girl or we would never have been able to agree. He said he likes manly names like Eric and Maximus (watched Gladiator too many times).

lovingthecoast · 26/03/2012 14:14

True in my case. I have 2 boys and 2 girls. All 4 have probably the most boring stereotypical m/c names you could imagine. My boys are J&W and my girls are C&E (think kings and queens). DH was quite insistent on this. I don't dislike their names but I wanted to call the boys Riley and one of the girls Edie. DH looked at me in horror and said 'don't be ridiculous'. So that was that. I got to name the dog!

Devora · 26/03/2012 15:08

HardCheese, Reshape, just to give you a flavour: gnarled baglady names apparently include Dora, Rachel, Milena and Thea. Creole harlot names include Fifi and Kiki.

I'm right, aren't I? And she's wrong?

javotte · 26/03/2012 15:34

We used my all-time favourite girl's name, but not my all-time favourite boy's name.
DH didn't like it but even if he had, I couldn't see myself naming my baby boy Yaroslav when he has no Russian roots (I don't think my obsession with all things Russian counts).
I am delighted with the name we chose. No regrets!

3boysgirlontheway · 26/03/2012 16:50

DH really only vetoed one name and that was Hattie, I loved it and still do, but, I am very glad of the choice we made when naming our DD, she is only 4 weeks old, but, she is her name already.

3boysandagirl · 26/03/2012 17:03

True in our case. My dh chose 2 of the names for our 3 boys, I had slight reservations a they are 'safe' names.
I
chose name for ds3. Dh wasn't keen on my chosen name, but we had twin boys so he named one and I named the other.

With dd I completely took over, I was extremely hormonal and cried everytime dh said he didn't like a name. The name I chose, I liked long before I'd even had children. Whereas dh was just picking names out of a book. If he'd really not liked the name I may have backed down but he was ok and on the day agreed!

agendabender · 26/03/2012 17:10

true here too! I wanted a name, my mother said it sounded like a swear-word (RL-outing alert!), and my husband vetoed it. I will secretly never forgive him, and am very sad about it. But i'd never tell him! In terms of playground name calling, it was for the best.

lovingthecoast · 26/03/2012 17:15

I'm on your side, Devora! I'm sorry but Fifi and Kiki sound like either cats or hookers! But then I also liked Dorothea shortened to Thea but DH was having none of it.

bronze · 26/03/2012 17:16

My DH is very very BORING
I am not

TeWihara · 26/03/2012 17:31

I didn't get the name I wanted for DD (Maya) because I think DH was being quite PFB about her needing to have a really ordinary proper name and even Maya was too out there, apparently.

He changed his tune with number two and was suggesting all sorts of ancient greek options! As it happened we didn't name DS my number 1 name (which DH was happy with) because I didn't think it suited him after he was born.

anewmotivatedme · 26/03/2012 18:17

I'd always wanted to call my daugher Isabel, but DH was not so keen. He kept saying Issy and this put me off. I loved Isabel, not Issy.

We both liked Ffion, and we'd not discussed this name with any of our friends, but DH's best friend used it first.

DH's all time favourite girls name is Seren, but I didn't like it.

Boys name, I used my all time favourite name, but with the welsh spelling, as a compromise with DH.

bubby64 · 26/03/2012 18:23

DH vetoed Sebastian, which I loved, so we now have a cat of that name!

bubby64 · 26/03/2012 18:30

Oh, and DH wanted names out of Star Trek - Spock, Quark and Tiberius were over-ruled by me- in the end we went for "safe" biblical names that wouldn't embarrass them in later life, everyone could spell and pronounce, and one still had a Star Trek influence!

Janoschi · 26/03/2012 19:08

My DP was more conventional, but he comes from a rather posh German background and was getting a lot of 'influence' from his snobby traditional parents. My own name is unusual and it's been really helpful career-wise so I wanted something memorable for our DD.

But I'm not sure if men are more conservative. My dad picked my name and was up for some of the weirder suggestions for his GD. My mother refused any name she'd not heard of, which included most of the German ones. We wanted Ronja but my DM refused to learn how to pronounce / spell it.

BellaCB · 26/03/2012 20:33

DP did tend towards more usual names than me, though ironically he came up with DD's name which in its longer version is uncommon (though her nn is common).

However we didn't use my all time favourite names because when it came down to it I decided that however much I loved certain names, I wanted to give DD a relatively 'normal' name. Not that my favourite names were weird, but I just worried slightly that if DD had a quirky or cutesy name and then grew up to, oh I don't know, play rugby, or be a superpowered businesswoman, but had to introduce herself by a name that just didn't match!

All the names we actually considered for DD were long names that could be shortened in a variety of ways to hopefully suit DD all through her life. So that was actually both of us being conservative, I guess.

babyblabber · 27/03/2012 21:09

yeah, every remotely unusual name i mention DH tells me it's the hormones getting to me!!! the cheek! really like the idea of something that is a recognisable name but not hugely common but DH likes names like michael, mark, matthew, luke etc which while nice names, are not what i'd like. i got my way last time (after a 2 day induction and 11lb baby, DH said i could choose!) but not looking good this time!

JoInScotland · 27/03/2012 21:25

I dreamed of naming my son Mackenzie when I was a teen.. . I just loved the sound. It's not so unusual to give children surnames as Christian names in the US where I was born.

Then this name caught on, and became more common as a first name. Then it began to be used for girls as well. I emigrated and moved to the UK, and ended up in Scotland.

It just strikes me as outlandish now, to use a Scottish surname as a Christian name now. So I never did use it, not even for the cats!

cory · 28/03/2012 08:04

We didn't use my favourite because dh pointed out that it would sound really really odd in the UK. It wasn't about dh being conservative, more that as a native speaker he could hear things I didn't. He was happy to let ds have another strange outlandish name, so not conservative as such.

birdofthenorth · 28/03/2012 10:32

Well, I'd say on the whole I'm more adventurous with names than DH who tends to favour Ted, Jack, Fred, Tom types, but then again he'll through me off kilter by lobbying for Hercules or Leviticus, and I'm stumped!

ShowOfHands · 28/03/2012 10:41

Dh likes ridiculous or comic book names (Sinister, Vitale ), I like quirky, unusual or OT names (Abraham/Bram, Sacha, Emrys, Inigo, Erasmus, Amos, Ezekiel, Elijah etc) so we let dd pick ds's name in the end... DD likes ninja turtles .

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