My mother and I have a healthy relationship most of the time. When she breaches a subject I’d rather not discuss, I tell her so, and she backs off. I am open and honest with her, she treats me like an adult, and I enjoy her company when she comes to visit. But lately, a problem has developed.
My mother has developed an obsession with getting a particular family name passed on to her grandchildren. Each of the previous five generations in her family had one male with this name as a first or second name. She was an only child, so it skipped her generation. I was the first born male, and I got the traditional middle name from my father’s family, so she had to wait until my brother was born to give him this name as a middle name.
So now she’s borderline obsessed with getting at least one of us three children to use the name as a middle name for one of our children. My sister finished her childbearing years ago, and both of her sons got traditional family names from their father’s side of the family. My brother’s wife recently had a son, and they named him without regard to traditional family names on either side of the family.
So now my mother has decided to focus on me as her “last chance” to pass the name on. I am getting married soon (probably in August) and Mom has asked me several times if I am going to give a son this name. At first, I told her that that is something I will have to discuss with my fiancee. What I meant was, “At some indefinite time in the future, when Mrs. Six gets pregnant, and after we know what sex the child will be, we’ll discuss between the two of us what to name the child.” She apparently interpreted this as meaning, “I’ll bring the subject up the next time I talk to her, we’ll decide then, and I’ll report back to you with the results.” It’s almost as if I’d been given a homework assignment.
So after three or four times of telling her, “No, mom, I haven’t talked to her about it. It just didn’t come up.” I finally brought up the subject, and Mrs. Six and I had a nice discussion during which we decided on names we’d like to give a boy and a girl. It is a Filipino custom (Mrs. Six is Filipino) for the first born child (boy or girl) to be given the mother’s maiden name as a middle name, and in some cases every child. We decided to do this with our first born.
We also discovered that the traditional middle name from my father’s side is also a traditional family name in her family. So we decided that if we are going to give a second-born son a traditional family middle name, it would be the one shared by her family and my father’s family. But after further discussion, the name we finally liked the best didn’t contain any traditional family names–just as with my brothers son.
So I report back to Mom and tell her that we won’t be using her family’s name for one of our sons, assuming that we don’t end up with all girls. She is taking it as if it were done to personally offend her, when it has nothing to do with her at all; it is a decision made by me and my future wife about what is best for our family and children.
She has dropped the subject for now, but it is bound to come up when Mrs. Six gets pregnant.
I’m not exactly asking for advice, I just don’t really understand why she is so insistent on getting this name attached to one of her grandchildren.
Has anyone else had problems with what to name the kids, especially having to do with conflicts over traditional family names? Or do you have any interesting stories to share regarding traditional names, or just naming children at all?
