No matter how hard you try, sometimes you really do regret the baby name you picked — it happens! But one dad really goofed things up after his own 6-year-old daughter came to him and told him how much she hates her name — and he agreed. Now she's more upset than ever and his wife told him he should apologize, but he straight up refused.
The dad picked his daughter up from school recently, which is when she dropped the bomb.
She hates her first name — Mildred.
“Usually she's excited when I pick her up, but she was quiet,” he wrote in a post on the Am I the A–hole forum. “I kept asking her what was wrong and when we were almost home, she finally confessed and said that someone in her class had said that her name ‘sounded like a grandma.’ Basically, old.”
Even the dad had to admit that the name was sort of old-school.
“Who even names their kid Mildred anymore? Are we in the 19th century or something?” the original poster wrote. He even fought against the name when they were naming her — but his wife really, really wanted it.
“She said she didn't like her name anymore, and I tried to sympathize by saying, ‘I'm sorry kiddo. Yeah, I never liked your name either. I thought it was a stupid name when I first heard it, but everyone in the family thought it was OK, and I got shot down. But on the bright side, you can change it when you get older,'" he recalled.
His daughter looked at him “with horror” — ”You don't like my name either?”
She then ran inside the house crying and told her mom that the OP told her “her name was stupid.”
“Even after I explained the whole situation to my wife, she was mad and wanted me to apologize,” he wrote.
But the OP refused.
In his opinion — he had nothing to apologize for.
“I don't like the name, I never liked the name, and our daughter doesn't even like the name,” he told her.
He later went into his daughter’s room and asked her why she was crying “because I was genuinely confused (still am, to be honest) but all she said was that she wasn't ‘happy at me’ and that she didn't want to talk to me right at the moment,” he recalled.
He’s pretty confident that his daughter will be able to bounce back from what happened — or at least, she’ll soon forget about it.
But his wife is another story — she wants the OP to apologize to their daughter “and I kept saying no.”
“I think she just feels guilty that she named our daughter Mildred, but I'm curious if I'm the A–hole here,” he wrote. “All I did was agree with my daughter when she said she didn't like her name. I still want an explanation why she just started crying like that.”
The OP's post received a huge response from the comments section — but many people thought he'd made a big mistake.
“[You're the A–hole] a huge one," one person commented. "You just sided with an elementary school bully, congratulations. So when the kid comes up to you in 4 years and says 'I don't like my face' because some kid made fun of their freckles are you making fun of that too? Your JOB is to tell her that her name is beautiful, even if you hate it. That's your job. Which you have epically failed."
"[You're the A–hole] big time," someone else agreed. "How can you not realize that 'thinks my name is ugly' gets kinda liked to 'thinks I am ugly' or 'loves me less because he let me have a ugly name' in the child's mind? How oblivious can you be? You better work on your emotional maturity, emotional inteligente, ability to read the room and empathy."
A third person wrote: "[You're the A–hole] Your young daughter now thinks that her dad hates her name and thinks it’s stupid. She shouldn’t feel that way as a child… ever."
But other people thought he shouldn't apologize.
"[Not the A–hole], your wife gave your poor daughters social life a death sentence with that name," one commenter asserted. "You were just honest. Your wife should apologize for even thinking of such an archaic name."
"[Not the A–hole]," another person agreed. "You should have had more vote than the rest of the family for what to name your daughter. I wanted Hazel for a name and my husband did not agree. It’s between husband and wife for what is a good, strong name. Mildred is an archaic name that can be polarizing."
"As someone who also got saddled with an old lady name, [Not the A–hole]," a third commenter wrote. "I told my parents over and over how much I hated my name and they just told me how great it was and how grateful I should be that I didn't have a more common name and what a beautiful name THEY thought it was. And I will never stop resenting them for that. I would have been so much happier if one of them told me it was okay to change it, or even agreed to start calling me by another name. Where OP might be TA is in not putting their foot down on the name when the kid was born."
In the end, the OP wasn't going to let a little thing like public consensus stop him.
In an update to his post he conceded that while most people seemed to want him to apologize, "I think I'll wait and see if my daughter even remembers this in the morning."
"And I'm definitely not apologizing until she tells me she just randomly started crying like that. She said she didn't like her name, I agreed, and she started crying. Makes no sense," he continued.
"Also, anyone just reading this for the first time, you don't need to leave anymore comments, if you're just gonna say YTA. I get the point," he added. "I would be interested to see if anyone has any NTA comments and I will definitely try to look and read those tomorrow."
Woof. Good luck with that, OP.
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