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9 months ago
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In a post that's gone viral — with over 6,300 reactions and nearly 4,000 comments in a matter of hours on Sunday — a woman on Reddit asked other people for their help in solving a personal dilemma.
She titled her post, "AITA for rejecting the worst name ever for our offspring?"
"So, my husband (38M) and I (36F) are expecting our first child, a bouncing baby girl due in a few months," she wrote this weekend on Reddit's "AITA" page ("Am I the a--hole").
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"We were both over the moon when we found out the gender, but now things have gotten … complicated, to say the least," she said.
She said that when "we first started talking about names, the ‘boy name’ was immediately decided: Stuart Jr., after my husband. No problem there — it’s a classic name and carries family meaning. But, for a girl, things got murky."
She added, "My husband suggested Stuarta."
The user named "Beginning_Date1924" went on, "Apparently, his logic is that since Stuart ends in ‘t,’ we can just add an ‘a’ to make it feminine."
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The mom-to-be continued, "I tried explaining why that doesn’t quite work, how it sounds more like a furniture brand than a human name, how she’d be endlessly correcting people and explaining its origin."
But she said her husband is adamant, however — insisting the name would "honor" him "while giving our daughter a unique name."
The Reddit poster said she's already tried suggesting some alternatives.
She said she's tried including "feminine names that maybe share a similar sound or meaning to Stuart, names he’s mentioned liking in the past, [or] even just going back to the drawing board entirely."
Still no luck.
"He's fixated," she wrote, about the name he likes.
The woman added in her post, "I love my husband dearly, and I understand wanting to honor family. But I can’t imagine subjecting our daughter to a lifetime of awkward stares and endless questions about her ‘unusual’ name."
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She said as well, "I also worry about potential bullying and the impact it could have on her self-esteem."
She asked others on the platform, "Am I the jerk for refusing to budge on Stuarta? Is there any compromise I haven’t considered? Help a soon-to-be mama out!"
She added in a summary for others, "Husband wants to name our daughter after himself in a really, really bad way. I think it’s terrible and will set up [our daughter] for a lifetime of awkwardness."
She also said she was "looking forward" to other people's thoughts — and hoping for "some sanity checks" as well.
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Fox News Digital reached out to a psychologist for thoughts on the couple's challenge.
Said Dr. Kathy Nickerson, a licensed clinical psychologist based in California, "[The woman's] feelings are valid and [the husband's] feelings are valid. She is completely entitled to not want to name her daughter Stuarta and he is entitled to feel like that would be a lovely name that honors him."
Nickerson added, "The critical thing in situations like this is to honor the other person's feelings by validating what you hear that makes sense and offer some type of compromise."
She also said in emailed comments to Fox News Digital, "Perhaps they could name the baby Arta and the inside family story could be that this is a derivation of Stuart. They could also bring in Stuart as the middle name."
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Either way, she said, "I'd encourage both of them to compromise without agreeing to something they feel strongly against. This is a name that they will all have to live with for a long time and it's important for the relationship, as well as for the baby, that is a name that doesn't rub either one of them the wrong way."
Comments, meanwhile, continued to come in from others on the online site.
The mom-to-be is not wrong for the way she feels, wrote "pollythepony1993" in the top-upvoted post on the site.
"Naming a child is a ‘two yes’ and ‘one no’ situation," this poster wrote. "Means you need two times yes for a name to be it and one no to make sure that name is not the name you choose. Works both ways, if you ask me."
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Added this individual, "Also, I am not a fan of naming the first name of a child after a parent. Because then the child will always be compared to their parents and need to fight harder to be their own person."
The user also said, "I have less problems with the middle name being connected to someone else (parents, grandparents) because that is only a formal name and not used in everyday business."
The user further asked, "Why is he dead set on Stuarta? I mean, there are so many beautiful names but he only wants to name his daughter after him? Why not after the mother? … It is a bit misogynistic to only want to name the baby after the father. Whose last name will the baby get? His as well?"
Said this same person, "Maybe you could find a way, like name the baby with the same first letter as your husband (Stella, Sally, etc). Make sure the baby has a middle name (if she shares the same last name as her father). Because it will be annoying for simple things like mail and stuff."
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