'Wife wants to name our twins Romeo and Juliet.' AITA? + UPDATE
"Wife wants to name our twins Romeo and Juliet."
My wife is a huge Shakespeare fan, and she loves the idea of naming the twins Romeo and Juliet. I'm against it, I can’t get over the idea of naming our kids after a fictional couple who die.
I do really like the name Juliet, I even suggested that if we go with Juliet, maybe we could name our son Tybalt after Juliet's cousin. She insists that if we use Juliet, we have to use Romeo.
I'll admit Romeo and Juliet is one of the only Shakespeare plays I've read, but I've tried to look online for some other Shakespearean sibling names we could use, like Ophelia and Laertes from Hamlet or Claudio and Isabella from Much Ado About Nothing.
She hasn’t liked any of them because either their source isn’t serious enough or the names aren’t recognizable/famous as Shakespearean. She’s just really stuck to this choice.
On their own, I think they’re lovely, but I don’t think they work for twins. Is there a way I can convince her this is a bad idea, or does anyone have other Shakespearean name suggestions that might win her over?
I'm not sure if I'm overthinking the meaning behind the names and being weird about it, but I can't talk with anyone about this because she wants the twins' names to be a surprise.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP’s initial post:
Naming twins after famous lovers?? It’s not good, don’t do it!
YOUR KIDS WILL NEVER EVER EVER FORGIVE YOU EVER, ITS STUPID!
Weren’t Viola and Sebastian twins in Much Ado About Nothing? I think those are both lovely names on their own and I’m not sure many people would immediately think of Shakespeare the way they would with Romeo and Juliet. And they’re actually siblings not love interests. Edit- it was Twelfth Night, sorry! Not Much Ado about Nothing!
RopePsychological567 (OP)
I didn't know about this play, I'll check it out, but I love those two names and the fact that they are twins might sway my wife. Thank you.
Twins are individual people and future adults, not your accessories. Please have her speak to actual adult twins.
Four days later, the OP returned with an update.
Thanks for all the comments and name suggestions. I didn’t want to speak badly about my wife, but yes, I’m well aware of how deranged it is to name a pair of siblings after a fictional couple, and I was too much of a coward to bring up the incest thing in my original post.
In defense of my wife, her pregnancy has been very hard on her. It’s her first, and naming the kids is the only thing she’s seemed happy about these days. For context, she’s seen the Romeo and Juliet play in person and is an avid reader of plays in general, but she’s always liked Shakespeare most because they were the ones she studied.
A few years ago, she even ran a Shakespeare club for kids at the local library. More recently, she was rereading the play and suggested we name the kids after the main characters. I was taken aback and told her we’d sleep on it, but the following day, it was all she’d talk about, and she was so happy I didn’t have the heart to talk her out of it.
She became more and more fixated on it as the weeks went on. After making this post, I asked her again why it had to be these two names. She told me she always liked symbolic meanings and grand declarations of love, and she wanted that sort of bond to carry over to the kids in a family sense.
She also mentioned that out of all the plays she’d read, Romeo and Juliet was the most iconic, that people would be able to recognise them and that it would make it easier to talk to other parents if they asked why the kids were named Romeo and Juliet.
I sat on this for a few days. And honestly, it felt like I didn’t know her. I pray this is her pregnancy brain talking, but this isn’t her. She’s always been a romantic and fixates on trends/ideas but this is just weird. Yesterday, I finally told her point-blank that we were not naming our kids after such a famous couple under any circumstances, and I showed her this thread.
She refused to look at it and broke down. My wife asked me why I couldn’t just let her have this. Some suggested she needed to hear how crazy she was from someone who wasn’t me, so I told her best friend what was happening, and she was more horrified than I was — how I probably should have reacted.
Her best friend came over after work, and I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I know they watched the 1968 movie version of Romeo and Juliet together, which I’ve been told has an intimacy scene. I think that snapped some sense into my wife. Her friend left a few hours ago, and my wife’s been quiet, but she asked if we could look over the names I’d picked out again.
Thanks again for all the comments; I think we both needed reality slapped into us, her from her delusion and me from my apparent lack of common sense. She’s still dead set on something Shakespeare/theatre-related and somewhat matching, but now that her head is clearer, I hope we can pick something better.
From the quick read of the comments I showed her, she did like the name Sebastian, but she’s on the fence about Viola. I’ll let her off the hook for now since she’s so sick, but once we’re back to normal life, I’m not letting her forget this happened. I'll update this again once we finally have names picked out.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP’s update:
I think Sebastian and Viola would be so fun! And if she’s a fan of Amanda Bynes - that’s her character’s name and her twin’s name from She’s the Man!
She's The Man is actually a retelling of Twelfth Night, so that's why the names are the same! Even if you already knew this, I find it pretty funny to imagine the process of convincing an exec to make a modern Shakespeare retelling about high school soccer ?
How about Cersei and Jamie, then?
I'm honestly surprised a person can be considered a "Shakespeare fan" yet be unfamiliar with the connotations of Romeo and Juliet.
A+ for the friend. The friend was like "I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE!!!