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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Worth-Yam-8673 on 2023-08-12 21:28:01.
My wife (28F) and I (33M) are pregnant with our second child. Our first child was a boy and we named him after my uncle. Now it’s important to know that my uncle is like a father to me because my real dad was in and out of jail my whole childhood, my wife loves my uncle and they are very close too. Both of us happened to like my uncle’s name and since we found out our first kid was a boy, we thought why not honor this man who we both love so much.
We just found out that our second baby will be a girl. And my wife wants to name the new baby after her mom. Well the problem is that her mom’s name was Karen. I don’t want to do this to my baby girl because of all the horrible stereotypes and jokes about this name. We are both white and our daughter will obviously be white as well so I think that makes it even worse. I told my wife I won’t name our baby Karen and she told me she really wants to honor her mother like we honored my uncle. I told her that was different, my uncle has a normal name unlike Karen which is basically an insult/ punchline. My wife says that lots of people named Karen are perfectly nice, she thinks it’s a beautiful name and we will teach our daughter to be kind to others so it doesn’t matter and she wants one of her kids names to have a connection to her mom. I said that she’s behaving like an idiot for pretending it doesn’t matter. Plus her mother died when my wife was a teenager so I have never met this woman so I don’t feel comfortable naming my daughter after her. My wife said i was an asshole for calling her an idiot even though I didn’t actually call her an idiot, I only said that about the way she was behaving. I also suggested that we can use Karen as a middle name but she didn’t and said that she’s the mother so her opinion is more important. She also said that since she “allowed”me to choose our son’s name that I should let her choose this one’s name even though we both liked my uncle’s name and agreed to it. And since both kids will have my last name since I am the dad it’s not fair to her family.
So AITA for trying to save my unborn baby from a life of misery and being teased at school. I guess I could have been more polite but she’s being really unreasonable and I can’t let her do this to my daughter
TLDR my wife wants to name our daughter Karen after her mom. I said no and we fought, AITA?
YTA. Not because I don’t agree that bullying is an issue with the name ‘Karen’, but because of how dismissive you are towards the importance of her mother when you were so eager to name your son after your uncle.
Plus her mother died when my wife was a teenager so I have never met this woman so I don’t feel naming my daughter after her.
Her feelings towards her mother are equally valid and the name carries a significance to her that goes beyond what people on social media think. The issue here is that your outright rejection of the name ‘Karen’ instead of coming to a compromise is the problem. In her eyes, you got the name the boy after someone important to you, and she doesn’t get to do the same with the girl. Essentially, it appears as though your feelings towards your uncle matter, and her feelings towards her mother doesn’t.
A good compromise might be to have Karen as a middle name and come up with a different first name, or the other way around. A good way of getting her to see your perspective might be to find someone named Karen (like her mom) and ask them what it has been like for them since the name has been relegated to ‘an entitled woman’. Maybe show her graphs of how the name has declined in popularity because of cyber bullying.
