A Queens couple is battling like Spartans and Atheneans over what to name their firstborn son.
Nicholas Soukeras wants his child to be named after his father, Spyridon, but his better half, Kseniya, says the name is as ancient as the Parthenon.
Now, Nicholas has escalated the miniature Grecian war by launching an online petition. If enough people sign it, he’ll take that as a signal to go ahead on Spyridon.
“I’ll settle for 100,000 — this is an approximate population of my hometown Maladzyechna,” said Belarus-born Kseniya, 33, who is due in August and who favors the name Michael, to honor her late father.
“I don’t want to call my son something I can’t even pronounce,” the flustered mom-to-be said.
So far, things are looking good for Michael — the petition has just four signatures.
But Nicholas, 37, said Michael just doesn’t cut it, as it would surely be “diminished to ‘Mischa’ by [his] Russian-speaking wife, a name also shared by B-list Hollywood actress Mischa Barton, star of such films as “Virgin Territory” and “Zombie Killers: Elephant’s Graveyard” he writes in the online petition at ipetitions.com.
Nicholas argues that his wife’s “Russian ear” is simply not trained “for the sweet, musical sounds of our Greek nomenclature” to appreciate his ancestor’s austere appellation.
“The petitioner’s wife is a native of the Republic of Belarus and has been exposed to such barbaric names as Arman, Osip, Igor, Rurik, Ruslan, Artem, Vadim and Zoran (to name a few) throughout her Soviet childhood,” the petition reads.
Spyridon, on the other hand, has a noble history, he declared.
“Had President Nixon resigned a mere ten months earlier, in fact, the 38th President of the United States would have been Spyridon Theodoros Agnew . . . Additionally, the current President of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, can claim that his paternal grandfather, Spiridon Ivanovich Putin . . . was the personal chef to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin himself,” he trumpets.
Nicholas said the petition started out as a lark — but that the debate is legitimate for the couple, who have been married for about a year and a half.
“The argument is serious — it’s not a joke,” Kseniya confirmed.
Added Nicholas, “There are nights we’re bickering about it back and forth and we won’t talk to each other.”
Still, the marathon marital squabble may all be for naught — the couple doesn’t even know if their firstborn will be a boy.
“But my husband is convinced,” Kseniya said. “He thinks he’s a psychic . . . he thinks he can see through the belly.”