At logger heads

[SpagBol29]

OH and I can’t agree on name for DS2 who’s due any day now.

I’m getting in a bit of a state about it as have anxiety and prenatal depression anyway.

Our current situation is:

1. We have a name OH loves and I dislike
2. We have a name I love and OH dislikes
3. We are struggling to find a compromise but could find some that neither of us hates but neither of us loves either so it’s hard to pick one ‘meh’ name over any other!

It’s our second and possibly last baby, not sure on that one. We agreed without issue on DS1’s name.

Anyone been in a similar situation? Or does anyone have any words of wisdom/advice/possible approaches?

I’m not keen on the ‘wait and see what he looks like’ option for various reasons and if we’ve not found one we agree on in 9 months I doubt an extra six weeks will make a difference unless we can find a drastic change of approach!

This sounds so hard!

Is it possible to move away from love/hate and think more about names you think are "usable"?

For example, print out 2 copies of the current top 100 (or 150 or 200 or whatever) names. Each of you gets 48 hours to cross out any name that you don't think is "usable". Then compare the names left on the two lists.

I feel your frustration - I found it way harder to name my boys, compared to my daughter. Are you disagreeing because you like modern and he likes traditional names? (or vise versa). There will be a name out there that you both like, you just havent found it yet. Can you give an idea of what names have been turned down already so as to avoid repeating them on here.
I ended up writing a list with as many names as I could find (from baby books and internet) and we both had a copy each. We crossed off the names we didnt like and were surprised to find there were a few that we had both kept on our list, we then narrowed it down from there.

This seemed to work better than just asking 'do you like so and so name? (might not work for everyone but its worth a try).
Good luck!

Cross posted with BumbleDevon - so it does appear to be a useful method perhaps.

I'm asking this in the gentlest way possible ...... is there genuinely not another name either of you have suggested that the other would like? Or any chance one or other of you is caught up in not wanting to give in?

If it's stalemate effectively on anything you've suggested so far, then yes start again - with lists of popular names, or other sources of "names" eg births/marriages/deaths column in the local paper, the credits on a film or TV programme, your work email system ....

Would you like to tell us the names ?

Whose surname is the baby getting?

I agree with a pp, put aside the names you both love and start totally afresh. Each of you need to come up with 10 'fresh' names and work from there. View it as a fun task and then it will feel less like war of attrition.

Try namedtogether.com to get a compromise name.

With dd I managed to get everyone to like the name I chose before she was born. There were lots of people who hated it at first including dh. I have no idea how I won them round.

Ds was very difficult to come up with. I had my heart set on one name which he vetoed. I then based another shortlist around names of a similar genre and origin. One of those names was also the lead character name of a tv programme we were really into at the time. Dh liked that name but didn't love it and couldn't come up with anything better. All his alternative suggestions were so awful they made me angry and new lists were stressful not fun!

In the end I said to dh I refused to argue with him while I'm in recovery then my elcs was bought forward and I got my way. So ds got the second name on my shortlist with a diminutive of dh's name as a middle name.