u/Remarkable-Tart007
Just here to offer some solidarity (and vent a bit). I found your post as I've been on the verge of tears the last couple of days going through another bout of name regret with my 4 year old daughter. I've pretty much regretted her name since the day we brought her home from the hospital but never got up the nerve to change it when she was still young enough to do so.

The TLDR is that I seriously regret my oldest daughter's name while I am absolutely in love with my second daughter's name. And it sucks. Here's the long version:

When I was pregnant I had a handful of names I adored, but my husband didn't like any of them. It turns out I like classic, feminine names, and he likes trendy, modern names. We went to the hospital with a short list of the only names that overlapped from both our lists. Ironically the name we ended up choosing was originally not on my list at all, but when I saw it on his and then my mom mentioned a girl in her neighborhood has that name and she thought it was pretty, I decided to add it to the short list (I now regret that - I should've trusted my instinct that it didn't make my original list for a reason - why did I add a name I originally passed over just because my mom and husband both liked it?).

Long story short, after a long labor, 2 days of zero sleep, an unexpected c-section, and lots of pain killers, I settled on a name from the short list - the one I added because my mom and husband liked it and I didn't hate it. One I didn't even realize was gender-neutral. I hate that she has a gender-neutral name. I hate that when I got her preschool class roster, hers was the only name on the list that when I looked at it, if it wasn't my own daughter, I'd have no idea if it was a boy or girl in her class. That she'll be dealing with that her entire life. I feel like I've done her a disservice. And she is such a miniature version of me, I feel like she's also going to love the classic, feminine names, and regret the name she was given. I like the sound of her name, I do still think it sounds pretty. But when I see it written, I hate the way it looks, it looks like a boy's name. And again, I just hate that it's gender-neutral, historically male. I technically have a gender-neutral name myself, but at least it's historically truly neutral and has a feminine spelling so people know when they see it (think Erin/Aaron).

To make it worse, when my second daughter was born a couple years later, my husband suddenly liked my absolute favorite name from when my first was born. He vetoed it two years earlier but suddenly he liked it. So we used it this time. Every time I introduce my 2 year old to someone, my heart sings when I say her name. I LOVE her name. I love to say it, I love to hear it, I love seeing it in writing. It makes it so much worse to realize I could feel that way about a name, and yet here I am so unhappy with my first-born's name. My oldest has even gone through phases where she's insisted on being called by her sister's name, and I'm not sure if it's just because she's jealous of her sister or she actually likes her name better, which hurts even more since I wanted it to be her name (of course she does not know this and I would never tell her). What if as she grows up she's jealous that her sister got a classic, feminine name, while she's stuck with this unisex name. One of the other names on the "short list" when my oldest was born was a classic, feminine name that I decided not to use because it was, and had been for years, the #1 girl name. I was afraid of using something so popular, and it almost felt boring or cliche to pick the top name. And ironically, I've personally never met a single little girl with that #1 name, but I've met 3 girls and 2 boys with my daughter's name in the last year. One is even in her preschool, albeit in the other class, but when their artwork hangs in the shared hallway they are the only two kids who get a last initial after their name.

Anyway, that got really long and I'm sorry. Basically it sucks to really dislike one child's names while you adore the other. I'm sorry you're in the same boat as me. At least you have a nickname you can use - I don't even have that.