'My wife has changed our baby girl's name twice. I'm really worried.'

Choosing a name for your child is an incredibly important decision. You’re choosing something that will be with them for their entire life. You’re choosing what will often be the first thing others know about them. You’re choosing a bit of their identity.

It’s a big decision that shouldn’t be made lightly. But, that being said, it needs to be made. And, perhaps more importantly, stuck to.

Redditor rad_dad2016 took to the relationships board on the site to ask for some advice regarding his daughters name. Or should I say names, because his wife keeps changing it.

In a post that has since been deleted, 35-year-old rad_dad2016 explains that his 28-year-old wife changed their 18-month-old daughter’s three months after she was born and now wants to change it again.

Using letters instead of the actual names to hide the identity of the innocent, rad_dad2016 explains:

“We decided on A after nine months of deliberation,” he writes. “A is born and everything is roses. At the three month mark, my wife says she feels weird about the name. It’s too common, it doesn’t feel right, it seems like the wrong name. So I ask her what she would prefer and she says B sounds more ‘right’ to her, but we still refer to her as A. Now at the 18 month mark, she thinks C sounds better.”

This Glorious Mess discuss the practicalities of having an original name. Post continues after audio.

He explains that his wife has a tendency to get extremely obsessive about hobbies, collections, and then drop the obsession and never look back. He’s afraid that the same thing is happening with the name of their child.

“She was very obsessive about the name A at the time, looking up all meanings, symbolism, famous people with the name, etc.” he writes explaining that he’s scared that they’re just going to keep moving on to new names. “Say we do start calling her C” he poses, “what’s to say she won’t tire of it and move onto D?”

Realising how confusing this has the potential to be for his daughter, rad_dad2016 says he wants to put his foot down regarding the name changing, but doesn’t know how to do without being combative or making his wife defensive. “I want to keep everyone happy and certainly keep her as low-stress as possible for our daughter’s sake,” he writes, asking Reddit for advice.

The general consensus is that rad_dad2016 is right to want to stop the name changing.

“Yeah, about your daughter,” writes mm172. “A’s a year and a half old already. She’ll have her own feelings about what she wants to be called soon enough, and she’s not a blank slate for your wife to project her own ideas about her personality or what’s cool. So tell her to try and remember what she liked about the name originally in case A didn’t inherit the same indecisiveness, because it’s not up to her any more.”

The most popular comment comes from user punch_dance who advices rad_dad2016 to, “Just say no.”

“She can’t keep changing a kid’s name,” he continues. “It is going to confuse the heck out of the kid when she starts school. Tell your wife no, her name is A. She can have all the pet names she wants but it should be clear what her legal and definitive name is.”

Others suggested getting some outside help.

“I obsess over things like this too, and then they disappear from my mind after a few months,” writes thelawsdelay. “I have generalised anxiety disorder with obsessive compulsive features. I think your wife should see a psychiatrist. Medication has really helped my obsessive thoughts.”

The general consensus seems to be that it’s not abnormal to feel like you chose the wrong name for your child. Especially at about a year and a half old when you really start to get an idea of your child’s personality. It’s even not that strange to actually change the child’s name like Libby Copeland explains in a piece for Slate about changing her son’s name.

What is odd is changing it more than once and so late in the game. A baby starts responding to his or her name at about seven months old. So, you have about that window of time to make a name revision. Anything longer is just going to be confusing.

This article was originally published on Mamamia’s US sister site Spring.St.