Parents (Mothers) Naming Babies After Themselves

In My Humble Opinion
1

Maybe you know a few Juniors with the same name as their father? I only know one, although I know a couple of people who are the third generation with the same name. It’s traditional in some families - possibly a Southern trope? Maybe it is a bit narcissistic.

This trend, if it is that, of mothers giving daughters their name and a Junior is fair play. But still seems like a self-centred sort of thing; gender equality notwithstanding.

Do you know many “Juniors” or “Emerson Winchester the Thirds”?

Are any if them female?

What do you think about all this?

Source: The Atlantic

2

My mother did it in January of 1950. I always hated it, avoided using it. Went to court as soon as I was able to sever her parental rights and be adopted by non-abusive parents. Changed my birth certificate name via the adoption.

3

I know two women, sisters, Eldest and youngest of a set of three sisters. Eldest is named for Mom and is in fact refered to as Junior to differentiate her from Mom. Youngest sister is named after Dad, but with a feminized version of his name, so no Jr. needed. Middle sister is named after some (i think) long dead great aunt thrice removed or some such. I don’t know the reasoning behind the naming decisions.

As far as it being a trend, I dunno, these sisters bracket me in age so it’s been a thing for at least 50 or 60 years now

4

My son is named after me (wife’s suggestion), but that’s bc he was the 5th out of five boys. We just ran out of names. Lol

He goes by his middle name while I go by my first.

5

My father is a Paul Jr. But he has had a nickname since his childhood and everybody calls him that, even his parents did, so there was never any confusion. I’ve never known mothers/daughters with the same name.

6

I agree it’s far more common for a son to be given his father’s name than a daughter to be given her mother’s name. But custom aside, I don’t see how one is any more self-centered than the other.

7

Neither do I. My mother’s elder sister (born in 1921 I think?) was given the first name of her mother (born in 1898 I think).

It used to be far more common than it is now for mothers to pass down their names to daughters, and it was represented in fiction as well without anybody batting an eye. Look at Margaret (March) and John Brooke in Little Women naming their twin children Margaret (nickname Daisy) and John (nickname Demijohn = Demi).

8

I agree it is the same for both genders. And sometimes it is traditional for the names to continue. This might complicate names in Iceland or Ixtapa. But Bjorn Bjornson Junior or Edson Arantes do Nascimento Junior may disagree (or not).

9

I used to input data from UK census forms. There were many cases of daughters having the same name as their mother (e.g., Elizabeth and Elizabeth). I figure they kept them separate by nicknames (e.g., Elizabeth for the mother and Lizzie for the daughter).

They did not have “Jr.” or any other suffix to differentiate.

10

Cecil’s column from 2014

11

I know a family with (almost) exactly that circumstance, mother and daughter both named Elizabeth. No “junior” involved; in fact, I don’t know if their middle names are the same.

The mother is always called Betsy, the daughter is called Liza. There’s no confusion, and those two diminutives are different enough that many people don’t even notice that they have the same name.

In answer to the OP, it doesn’t strike me as particularly self-centered.

12

This. That article is awful. Naming girls after their mother used to be much more common. I see it all the time in historical records. Hell, my grandmother, Jeanette, named her oldest Anna Jean and her 8th daughter Janet, two forms of her name.

Furthermore, there’s a long standing tradition of giving boys and girls their mother’s maiden name as a first name. Tons of first names have their origin in this practice. That is also naming a kid after their mother.

13

The only female “junior” I know is from my extended family: my maternal grandmother was named Katherine; she named one of her daughters (my aunt) Katherine, as well. My aunt never went by “Junior,” or appended a “Jr.” to her name; they kept it straight in the family by referring to my grandmother as “Kate” and my aunt as “Kay.”

As far as males go, one of my female cousins (on my dad’s side) married a guy who is a “III” – he has an unusual name to start with, and it became a thing in his family to pass the name along. So, my cousin now has a son who is a “IV.”

14

My daughter’s MIL is called Marge and Marge’s daughter is called Meg. I assume they are both Margaret.

15

My cousin, Michael and his wife Kathy named their kids, Michael and Katelin.

I think it’s very narcissistic.

16

I confess I don’t really understand the “narcissism” take on this behavior. To some people, a particular given name is a marker of family belonging, not merely a personal identifier.

When Margaret Smith or William Doe follows a family tradition of passing on their first name to their child, they’re generally not thinking “wow I am the awesome Margaret or William, and I shall name this sprog Margaret or William as a testament to my awesomeness!” They’re thinking about all the previous Margaret Smiths or William Does who passed the name down to them, and wanting their child to be part of that heritage.

I suppose if the parents don’t have such a family naming tradition and really are naming kids after themselves just as a self-testimonial, that would be rather narcissistic. But I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered such a case in real life.

I mean, giving your kid your own name is not really comparable to the admittedly egotistical practice of sticking your name on other objects and entities specifically to commemorate yourself, as in “The Margaret Smith Auditorium”, “The William Doe Oncology Center”, or even arguably “Stark Enterprises” or “Trump Tower”, “Trump University”, etc.

Those acts of naming are centered on you, the individual person. But when you give your name to your child, you are sharing that name with an entirely different individual person. To me that seems fundamentally different.

So when I meet, say, a William Doe IV* I don’t think to myself “Gee, what a narcissist ol’ William Doe III must have been to give his son that name”, I think “Huh, looks like this branch of the Does has a strong family tradition of patronymy”.

*(asterisk) And yes, I concur with Miss Manners in preferring the “reset” generational numbering system where your number or title (as in “Jr.” or “Sr.”) depends not on your chronological place in the overall sucession but on your chronological place among the current holders of the name. So the eldest living William Doe is just “William Doe”, while his son is “William Doe Jr.” and his grandson is “William Doe III”, etc. But if I meet a William Doe IV whose family prefers to use the “permanent” type of generational numbering, where William IV will be William IV forevermore even when he’s the eldest living William Doe in the family, I don’t try to argue him out of it.

17

My ex and I kind of did this–his father is a Ukrainian immigrant and continued the usual Russian naming convention of giving children the father’s first name as a middle name, usually with the suffix -ovitch (son of) for boys and -ovna (daughter of) for girls. Being Americans though, we elected to give our daughter my first name as her middle and our son his first name as a middle so everything’s equal.

18

My cousin’s father is named Ted. So, no family tradition.

19

But were your cousins maybe trying to start such a tradition, and/or commemorate bearers of their names farther back in the family lines, or was it really just a “self-testimonial”?

20

I know a family where the mother’s first name is a feminized spelling of a male name (but same pronunciation). Their firstborn, a son, was given her name, but with the male spelling. Their second born was named after no one, even though the father’s name has a pretty standard and nice female version.