If you loved someone but couldn't stand their name, what would you do?

Yes, I have. I’ve mentioned it here before. I met a guy that called me and asked me out for a date. I was probably 18 or 19. He picked me up and halfway down the block says “I don’t really like your name. What is your middle name and I’ll just call you by that.” I tell him my middle name. “No, I don’t really like that either.” Keep in mind he knew my name before asking me out. I told him to just go on around the block and drop me back at my house. He did.

^^ Who would ever object to the name @chyna? :-) Seriously, though good on ya for having the moxie.

If I were in the situation you describe, @Jeruba, I would probably try to come up with some kind of version of their name that I liked and they liked. If I couldn’t and everything else was good, I’d suck it up and use their name.

I would just use their name. I mean, come on. Wouldn’t you learn to love the name as much as the person?

Find a name that is synonymous with it.
Norma is close to “Normie”, so I would call her “filthy casual”.

I can’t imagine being dissuaded by anything so trivial. I can’t think of a girlfriend in my past that I didn’t wind up nicknaming. My poor wife has been “Bunky” for 30 plus years. Her predecessor was and remains “Snooks”.

I think over time I would get more used to it, Or, even grow to appreciate it, especially if I love the person. When I was very young I thought my grandmother’s name wasn’t pretty, and now I like it.

I can think of names that are difficult for me to say though. Uncomfortable for me to say.

I would call them by nicknames. I call my husband by various nicknames more often than his given name. I guess once in a while you get someone who doesn’t like to be called a nickname.

I just realized now that my maternal grandparents always called each other by their given names and my parents do too. My dad uses the shortened version of his name with everyone including my mom uses it, but my family doesn’t use honey or pork chop or something similar.

@longgone “Wouldn’t you learn to love the name as much as the person?”

Eh, I don’t even like my own name.

@Darth_Algar Try loving someone with your name, and then update us.

^^^ What’s wrong with the name “Darth”?

I don’t like my own name, but it is mine, and I’m not going to change it at this point.

A BF/GF objecting to your name? Walk away. If the person wants to deny you your own identity right up front, that’s the end of it.

Wow its almost as if the person doesn’t want to be identified with you, so he/she changes your name so that the group that he/she belongs to won’t recognize you as being with them in a relationship?

Yeah if that was me and a BF told me to change my name here is what my response would had been…...

.” When you change your name to “JERK” then I might consider
changing my name, that way everyone will know that YOU ARE a jerk, so get lost !”

@longgone

Nah. Most people with my name end up being creepy sleazeballs or serial killers. There’s a few exceptions, but very few from what I’ve seen.

Option A. I’d go with the nickname. I do this with my wife now all of the time for fun (her real name is great). I enjoy trying to make up as many pet names as possible and keep them constantly mixed up. But yeah, Ursula, Velda, Gertrude or Esmeralda… sorry you’re getting a nickname.

“If you loved someone but couldn’t stand their name, what would you do?”
– I think I probably would become able to stand their name.

I haven’t had the experience of being unable to stand the name of someone I was enamoured of, but I have become enamoured where the name the name might’ve seemed odd if I were not enamoured, and instead it just went along with my general interest and approval.

If that were not the case, I expect I’d just come to use other names for them most of the time. It seems to me very often that lovers use other forms or even invented names rather than their formal names anyway.

Bartholomew, Horace, Wilhelmina, how bad could it be?

I have a friend whose son named his four children very Germanic names. The grandfather (my friend’s husband) is from Germany and so the son and his wife liked the idea of almost medieval sounding names. It’s cool to be unique but the names are such that the kids might get their asses kicked based on their names. They use nicknames, I believe.

I’m not bothered. It’s not like they chose their name. They can change it if they want. If they are fine with it, why shouldn’t be I?

Unless the person’s name was Hitler, or something similar in horrific notoriety, I can’t imagine, attempting to call them by some other name, or leaving them, just because of their name.