When it comes to picking baby names, it’s tough to balance personal preferences with family history.

A husband faces backlash for vetoing his wife’s top name choice for their daughter because it was the birth name of his adopted sister, who underwent a traumatic name change process.

Read on for the rest of the story.

AITA for using my veto on my wife’s favorite name because it was my sister’s birth name?

My wife’s #1 girl name is Josephine and Josie Joy.

She wanted it to be our daughter’s name, telling me it felt just right for our girl.

The name Josephine has a not so great history in my family. My (bio) parents fostered kids and adopted some.

My siblings (the kids who were adopted) all had their own pasts but I have a sister who now has a different name, who was Josephine at the time of her birth and it was her name until she was 6 when the name was changed before my parents legally adopted her.

It was a very complicated process for my sister’s name to be changed.

There was a childhood psychologist, a trauma therapist and a psychiatrist involved in stating that it was in her best interest for the name to be changed because of the trauma she had surrounding her name.

That sounds horrific.

For context she was 5 when she was removed from her birth family and has memories of them using her name.

They also called her Josie.

My sister still has some trouble with the name. But she only hears it occasionally.

She never tells people to use another name. But our family knows that it can trigger some memories for her and unpleasant feelings (putting it mildly).

She is still in therapy. But this isn’t something that is hugely controlling her life.

But there’s a difference between hearing it occasionally to hearing it all the time because someone in the family has that name.

Yeah. You can’t name her that.

My wife knows it was my sisters name but not everything about the trauma surrounding it.

She knows it was bad enough for professionals to get involved to help her get the name formally changed. But doesn’t know the details I know about why.

I also won’t share it all here because that’s my sisters story, not mine.

So I told my wife that I was vetoing Josephine and Josie Joy. I told her it wasn’t a name I could live with knowing it would remind my sister of her trauma. That I also had a very negative association because of my sisters past with it.

My wife was disappointed and asked if we could talk to my sister about it first.

I told her my sister would give us her blessing so she wouldn’t burden us but I would feel horrifically guilty.

Oh gosh. So wrong.

She said okay it and we have a short list of other names now. But she had talked about the name enough that her family were calling our daughter Josephine already.

When my wife said Josephine wasn’t the name they asked why and she told them a name should be agreed on by both and we weren’t on the same page so we’d choose one we both loved equally.

My wife’s parents took me aside and asked me why I would deny my wife this name when it means so much to her. They said we could have worked on a middle name I loved.

I told them the name had a bad history for me and I couldn’t get past it. They told me I was being selfish.

When I talked to my wife about it, she told me she wished I could have done more to try and make it work but she’d talk to her parents and tell them to back off.

AITA?

No you are not.

What does Reddit think of this name game?

This person says naming is a two-way street.

This person thinks the in-laws re the real AHs here.

And this person is using reverse psychology to make his point.

Geez.

Talk about a name that’s more trouble than it’s worth.

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