DH and the unpronounceable baby names

[Olinguita]

DH (Indian) and I (white British) have our first baby on the way in September. I suggested that we give the baby an Indian name to reflect their culture. We don't know if we're having a boy or a girl. We have a girl's name shortlist sorted, but boy is proving tricky.

The problem is, the only names that DH has come up with are things that are tricky to say (Atharv, Satyameva), or that sound a bit odd to the British ear - stuff like Shlok, Parth, Sachet, which I worry that a kid could get teased about, or which would be constantly misunderstood/mis-spelt in adulthood. I don't want to be insensitive to his culture or narrow minded BUT I also don't want to give the child a name that is going to cause challenges in daily life as they grow up. The problem is that my normally easy-going DH is getting REALLY defensive about it and is refusing to budge (maybe late pandemic/Dad-to-be jitters, who knows....!)

He has vetoed all of my suggestions of 2-syllable Indian boys' names on the grounds that they are too common, or there are acquaintances of ours that already have those names, or he just doesn't like them.
To give you an example of where I was going, my list included:
Roshan
Pranav
Ishaan
Rohan
Ivaan
Vivek
Niren
Nayan
Varoun

I'm pretty familiar with Indian culture and speak Hindi, and from what I've observed, most of my Indian and British/Indian friends have tended to favour more contemporary, easy-to-pronounce baby names similar to those on my list. So I don't think I'm wildly off-base but I could be wrong.

My questions for you:

1. Has anyone hit an absolute roadblock with their partner about baby names, and how did you deal?
2. Any cool Indian boy name suggestions? (If you hadn't clocked from the names suggested already, DH is Hindu)

On top of all this, my very traditional British family are piling on the pressure to give the child a "proper" English name like William or George and won't drop the issue. The joys of baby-naming....

Congratulations new wee baby

Oops sorry didn’t see last post! Congrats on your baby and name OP. You sound really sensitive to keeping your DH’s culture.

i think its nice to pick a name that will reflect his heritage ,but i agree with you it has to be fairly easy to prounounce , if its really difficult it will cause problems for him when hes older , your child is constantly going to have to correct and explain over to his peers and teachers how to say it . years ago i we had a locum pharmacist covering in our store with a really hard to pronounce name , i tried my hardest , but so many times i misprounced it and it was embarressing for me to say the least , luckily he was a great laid back guy and laughed when he had to correct me , i really like niren ,nyan ,ishaan and rohan . they are great names for him .

its up to you what you and your husband call him ,not your family , why would you want to call him a boring english name like george or charles when you can name him niren or nyan honestly
my daughter is white and goes to a school where shes likely outnumbered by the high ratio of bame students , most of these kids im sure were probobly born in the uk yet they all have names to reflect their african or asian heritage , their parents havent called them a tradtional english name so they fit in and so they shouldnt . two of her good friends are indian and have lovely beautiful names that are easy to prounce as well .

Ooh lovely 😊 congratulations

Thanks for the update OP. Congratulations on the birth of your son (and on the agreement on naming him).

Congratulations x

I’m really amused by the post as I once had an Indian friend called Dave. His parents had named him this as it was an abbreviation of both David and Dewinder, so in their eyes suitable for both India and the UK. Poor boy spent his life trying to explain this to people who insisted that he couldn’t be called this on official documents!