Dad holds Internet vote for baby name
Categories: Newborns, Babies, Media, Gadgets & tech
Naming your baby can be one of the joys of new parenthood - and it can also be a first lesson in the lifelong back-and-forth compromise that two parents make when raising their child.I consider myself lucky that Rob and I both loved the name Nolan equally. He didn't have to convince me, and we didn't have to resort to second and third favourites as a compromise.
But I'm sure many parents will relate to this article about a British man who passionately wanted to name his baby boy Gerrard, after an English sports star. His wife disagreed, preferring William or Matthew.
Apparently not one for compromise, this Dad-to-be set up an Internet site, encouraging website visitors to vote for a name: Gerrard, William or Matthew. Gerrard won the popular vote on the site, with William coming in second and Matthew third.
However, the effort was futile and the baby is named Matthew. His dad still insists on calling him Gerrard.
This made me wonder how many compromises are made out there over baby names and who usually 'wins' the battle - wife or husband. In your house, who got to choose the baby's name?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
thordora 7-02-2006 @ 9:13AM
I got the first, he got the second. I got the last name though, which was the bigger victory. :P
We agreed with eachother anyway, once we found "the" names. So it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
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Ginny 7-02-2006 @ 9:49AM
My husband actually wanted to name our second baby, if it was a boy, "Jr." after we had named our first son using his middle name. I asked him if he thought he was George Forman or something. Luckily, we ended up with a girl. Whew
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Angie 7-02-2006 @ 9:55AM
This has been a controversial issue in our home. I named the first three, and found out that my husband was very disappointed in his not being able to name his children. He named the next two, and will name the one on the way. The father is the one who should name the child, since he is the one that names the child spiritually, anyway.
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Lacy 7-02-2006 @ 10:29AM
As said in a previous comment -
"The father is the one who should name the child, since he is the one that names the child spiritually, anyway"
Seriously Angie?!? I'm sorry, I have to disagree. We grow these little people IN OUR BODIES for almost a year. While it is a wonderful thing and a privelage to be a woman, I certainly think that the WORK and PAIN involved entitles us to the upper hand as far as naming the child! My husband and I were in agreement for naming our two boys, but they were my idea's to begin with. Had he hated the names, I wouldn't have wanted to give them to our children. Luckily for me, he liked them.
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ann adams 7-02-2006 @ 10:37AM
I caved in to my husband and his mother on our older son and hated it. Still do and my son is 38. I named the next one.
My son hates his real first name, never uses it, and darn if he didn't turn right around and name his first born son the same thing. People are strange.
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Amanda 7-02-2006 @ 10:52AM
We decided early on that if it was a boy, I would name him and if it was a girl, the husband would name her. The first one was a boy and the second one was a girl so it turned out we had equal naming rights. If our girl had been a boy I probably would have let my husband name him to be fair, though.
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Cathy 7-02-2006 @ 10:52AM
I narrowed down the choices and my husband picked his favorite from all the ones I liked. We are both happy.
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Waya 7-02-2006 @ 10:54AM
Hey, since the kids get their father's last name already...I got to choose all my 3 children's names. I think he caved in after hearing "I carried them for 9 months, bloated, weight gains...blah blah blah" and that always won the argument. LOL!!
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Keri 7-02-2006 @ 11:41AM
I really wanted my husband to feel involved as a co-parent so we made sure that we both liked the names we chose. Before I got pregnant, I would throw out names and he disliked every one of them. I was getting worried about how we would agree on names. Also, he wanted to named our future son the IV. I was like "Eek!" because his father was already Nick and he was Nicky (to his dad) so that left nothing for the IV. My mother convinced me to respect his wishes so I did but only if our son had a different nickname like 'Cole' or something. In the end, he decided that he only wanted the IV for egoistical reasons and we picked 'Lochlan' for our son on the day we found out we were pregnant (5 weeks). That was easier than I thought! =D
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Andie D. 7-02-2006 @ 1:11PM
With Benjamin, Mick and I made lists, compared them, crossed off the ones we couldn't stand, and then narrowed it down to two we could agree on. We didn't finalize the first name of our son until the day he was born. In hindsight, we may have overanalyzed the decision. But more than anything, I wanted our child to have a name we both loved, and one he would (hopefully) love as well.
It was more simple with Sophia. Ben picked the name, and wouldn't budge.
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daisy 7-02-2006 @ 1:12PM
Did anyone read the BBC article? The most charming part of it all is that the baby is actually named after his father--and his father didn't want him to have his name!
I love my son's name, and none of it came from us originally. His first name was his birth father's first name; his middle name is my father's first name; and his last name is his father's last name. So like this: BirthDad - Maternal Grandfather - Dad. So he has connections through his name all around. Okay, it helps that I love his birthdad's name and actually considered using it before we even had identified our son.
The only part I caved on was the last name. I really wanted to use a hyphenated name, but our names together are just terrible. So when I came up with the final name combo, my husband was really happy. I got the middle name because he got the last name.
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Cheryl 7-07-2006 @ 11:18PM
We were going to name our son Anthony, after my husband - and then he decided he would feel weird saying his own name all of the time. he informed me of this 2 weeks before my due date - it took us 9 months to agree on our daughter's name!
We sat, read 3 baby books in alphabetical order, neither of us agreeing with one another. Finally on book 3 at letter W, DH liked the name Weston.
I said the name over and over for a week, and it grew on me. Now we have baby Weston - and he looks like a Weston too!
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