Well, yes. At the end of the day, the mother is the one sure parent of the child, and what she says goes in the hospital ward. In an extreme case, she could bar the OP from the delivery room and fill out all the forms herself in his absence.
I’m assuming that “nuclear option” is neither healthy nor helpful here though, and the OP is not making this a line in the sand either (“I should mention that this is not a major bone of contention between us, but rather a bit of good-natured banter. But I am intrigued…”).
His actual question was whether this droit de la mère attitude was “a tradition” anywhere. It certainly is prevalent in modern Western culture, as you point out (and I would concur with). But it’s not an attitude in traditional Asian cultures, which I find amusingly ironic given the nature of the dispute.
This is very true! Parents love to spend time picking out “just the right name” for their baby-to-be, because it’s the ultimate stamp on preparing for bringing a new person into your life. It’s fun and meaningful because you can invest and project hopes and ideals into an imaginary being that way.
But as soon as that baby comes out from the womb and into the world, the imagining is over and the living begins. That child will become whatever she will become, and the name will go with her - she will flesh out the name, not vice versa!
Friends of mine recently went with “May Lin” because of this conundrum. And “Sun” is another I sometimes hear that might work. You could also think of translations, like “Jade”.
AFAIK naming traditions are usually structured around other things than which of the parents gets to pick, and I’ve never heard of that as a particular tradition. It might be somewhere though.
My papa always wanted a traditional Dutch name for one of his kids, which my mum always vehemently opposed because nobody in our family would be able to pronounce it. He got his way with his youngest, who is stuck with “Mechteld” as a middle name. Seeing how nobody anywhere in the world knows what to make of that, combined with the problems with my own surname, has convinced me that the most important thing is that it is somewhat understandable in several languages that are important to you.
As others have pointed out, there isn’t a universal “Asia” culture. For our first two, we found names which worked in all three languages, English, Chinese and Japanese. For our youngest, we went with American names on his US passport and Chinses name for his Taiwanese passport.
I know many couples whose kids have mixed names with one child going by an English name and the other by a Japanese name.
Doesn’t matter what’s on the birth certificate, it’s what the kid answers to as they get older and takes on as their name.
(cue old Bill Cosby joke about thinking his name was Jesus Christ until he was 10)
Let the wife have her way if it means so much to her. Most Asians I know have an anglicised version of their first name that they use anyway, so put the name the wife wants on the certificate and just call the kid whatever you want once they’re home.
Why can’t you do both? Asian name and Chinese name.
My wife is Mainland Chinese. Our kids all have an English first name and their full Chinese name as the middle name.
For the first name, my wife and I both veto’d names until we found one we both liked. I also checked to make sure the name wasn’t too popular since I am named after one of the 4 apostles as my middle name. I also have a first name that 99.5% of the time is a female name, which led to me learning how to both fight and be an asshole when it comes up. And in the computer age, it comes up a lot that things are first name middle initial.
For the middle name, my kids use their full name in Chinese pinyin style. For example, Chenxiaomei. Which also matched their Chinese passport and hukou names.
Thanks everyone, this is some really excellent discussion. I think I am clearer now on the question of the mother’s right. Formally, no this doesn’t exist. But in practice, it may play a small role, in light of the trials of childbearing.
I guess there is no harm mentioning which Asian nationality it is since most people are assuming it is east Asian, which I think has some different implications. My wife is Indian, from India. Our first daughter has an Indian first name and a European middle name. We live in Europe, and although I was concerned about how people would be able to pronounce the Indian name (it is not too tricky on the tongue, but it has 3 syllables and is not commonly known), in fact people have picked it up really easily.
I would say that I can see where my wife’s presumption of an indian first name for the second girl would come from. I am not that close to my own family, and I would say that generally we tend to embrace the Indian culture more than the American culture (whatever that is…). We met when I was living in India, we have lots of Indian art, Indian cooking, Indian literature etc. I am as interested in the Indian side as my wife is. As I mentioned, when the first girl was on the way, I don’t think I even thought twice about the culture of the name (and yes, to respond to Ludovic, I guess if I didn’t make my agreement on the first conditional on the naming of future kids, I guess it does weaken my argument a bit). At the time I don’t think either of us expected to have a second kid. But now that we have a second kid on the way, I find myself just feeling that it would be nice to have a balance. I have a couple of names from my side of the family in mind. If we did go for the European first name, I would be happy to have an Indian second name.
That said, Thudlow’s very good point never occurred to me. Although I did briefly wonder whether having kids with two different cultural names might lead me to more closely identify with the European named-kid and my wife to identify with the Indian-named kid (but there is no way this would ever happen), it did not occur to me that it might lead to assumptions by other people. Not only that one was adopted, but also that they are from different marriages. That is something to consider…
Oh! Well, in that case, this is easy-peasy. You both win. There are a bunch of European names that also exist (or have an almost-identical analogue) in Indian names. For instance, just a few from here:
Alisha
Anita
Brinda
Leela
Leena
Marisa
Maya
Meena
Nikhita
Nina
Pia
Salena
Serena
Sheela
Sonia
Tara
Trisha
Vallari
Yasmine
And oh my stars, so many more to choose from here. Seriously, just browse some Indianbabynamesites, and you’ll be sure to find something that sounds equally European and Indian and pleases you both.
Whose surname are you using? To me, the fact that my husband got full naming rights on the last name meant that I had more say on the first name. It wasn’t my decision exclusively and we certainly talked about a long list of names, but I had the ultimate veto power. Fortunately, we were able to agree on a name relatively easily.
My daughter’s name is 善 (shàn) 安 (on). The first Character means “kindness” and the second means “peace”.
Her Chinese friends and relatives call her by this name and her English speaking friends and relatives call her “Shannon”.
My wife (Chinese from Taiwan) and I (White American) didn’t have a problem coming up with this name. There are many names that can be used for both languages and cultures.