We have a family name that alternates between first and middle name for the oldest son of the oldest son in every generation. It’s Philip (or Phillip). I’m not sure how far back it goes. The first instance I know of is my great-grandfather, who had it as a first name. My grandfather had it as a middle name. It’s my dad’s first name, but he wound up with 3 daughters, so his younger brother gave it to his son as a middle name. Now it’s up to my cousin to decide whether or not he wants to name his first son Philip.
It’s not a terrible tradition, although it’s not my favorite name. I’m hoping my cousin doesn’t have too much pressure to use it though.
I am a male and I say naming someone after a long deceased relation just to preserve a tradition is silly. My own middle name is my maternal grandfather’s name, and he passed away before I was born. Even though I bear his name, I feel no connection to him and do not feel that my middle name honors him in any way. My middle name makes my mother happy, and while there is certainly great merit in that, passing on my middle name as a tradition is an empty pointless gesture to no one as far as I am concerned.
Regardless, I think it’s a silly rationale, especially since this practice only started two generations back. I think you two should name your kid whatever you want, and let your descendants down the line decide if it’s a tradition they care to follow, or not.
As **The Scrivener ** said, two generations doesn’t make for a very long family tradition. I would also balk, even though I think Edward is a perfectly nice name. You’ll feel duped if you go along with it and then your son refuses to give his son the middle name Edward. Then what will have been the point? It smacks of paternalism, of boys being the only really important members of the family, etc. etc. What did the original Edward do to make him so special? Sounds like an average schmo trying to pass off his lineage as royalty.
On the other hand, nobody ever uses his middle name, anyway. Or you could call him Teddy.
How positively Russian! Although, I believe in Russian families, *all * the children get dad’s name as a middle name (+vich, for boys, +evna for girls).
I had a girlfriend who had 5 sisters – and all 6 had the same initials. I thought that was kinda cute.
My grandmother, mother, and sister all have the same first name…then my sister broke the chain with her daughter. :smack:
I think you can hardly call this a tradition. It’s simply your husband’s grandfather giving all his sons the middle name Edward. It’s like a couple naming all their children with the same first letter. Is that a tradition? I don’t think so. I tradition must be passed on from generation to generation, and so far it’s only been one generation.
If you and your husband do give your son Edward as a middle name, then it becomes the start of a tradition, but just barely so. And because of that, there’s no real compelling reason to start this tradition unless it’s something you both want.
Yeah. Yeah!
That was actually my original argument–I told him that it takes three generations of multiple Edwards to make it a “tradition” and if he could prove to me that it went back any further than his father’s father, I’d be fine with it. But since 1) it doesn’t, 2) he never even met his grandfather and knows next to nothing about him, and 3) the only other male member of his family carrying the name hasn’t exactly been what you’d call… kind to me, then I have zero personally compelling reasons to want to continue the stupid thing, outside of the fact that Mr. Armadillo has (as he says) “had it in my mind my whole life that that’s what I’d do when I had sons”.
I was going to say that I had no personal experience with such a thing, but it seems harmless enough … then I remembered that MY middle name is family tradition that all the girls share. Huh.
If you don’t like how it smacks of patriarchy, maybe you could start your own tradition and have any daughters share your middle name.
On the flip side of all of that, I don’t want to discount the fact that this is really important to Mr. Armadillo, and he has just as much right to name the kids as I do.
My family has a naming tradition that bypasses this. One of the children always gets the middle name “Gene” (for the boys) or “Jean” (for the girls). This has been going on for four generations now, so if I ever were to have kids, I would probably carry out the tradition.
Negotiate. Offer to give up say in the child’s middle name if you get veto power over first name choices. If he likes a potential first name and you don’t then that’s it, end of story, pick a different first name. No nagging at you to get you to change your mind about his favorite, he’s already been the sole determining factor in the middle name. Work with him about the first name, but set your own bar higher. This means he has to compromise more than you do on the choice of first name and you get no say in the middle name. This seems reasonably fair because first names are more important than middle names.
Yes, and that’s the tradition in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics as well. Having married into a Ukrainian family I had no problem doing an Americanized version of that with our children, especially since there is an ordinary and easily recognized feminine version of my husband’s first name to use for our daughters. I’ve been told that this is more than a tradition in those cultures – it’s as automatic as giving children their father’s last name. If you didn’t name the son of Ivan Whatchever as Gregor Ivanovich Whatchever, people would wonder who the actual father was.
I would have not problem with following such a custom unless the resulting name resulted in unfortunate connotations or initials. Francis Alberta Tsavonovich, for example, can never wear a monogrammed sweater. And I felt so sorry for the person I met whose actual name was Ineeda Gnapp. The ‘G’ was silent. “What’s your name?” “I need a nap.”
I like the idea. My mom’s grandfather, father, brother and nephew are/were all Joseph, so she expected my Dad to want to name my brother after him as well. Nothing doing, said my dad, too confusing, too narcissistic. They decided to give my brother my dad’s name as his middle name instead, which I think is a sweet to make the name connection between father and son.
FTR, Dad is Edward and little bro is Vincent Edward
I didn’t grow up with my father; I didn’t go to live with him until I was 15. Learning more about my father’s people, I discovered the names “Leo” and “Thomas” crop quite a bit in my family among the first born males. But I was named Askia in defiance of the tradition and in deference to my father’s (and mother’s) afrocentric political awakening in the late 60s.
I was weirded out about that. On the one hand, I absolutely love the uniqueness of Askia, wouldn’t change it for the world, and would like to give my children the same ethnic bond to their African heritage. On the other hand… I like the continuity of Leo and Thomas.
I have since resolved that I would probably name my first born son Leone, after the West African nation of Sierra Leone. We can call him “Leo” for short. (And if we have a girl, Sierra, for a matched set.)
yep, it is a russian/slavic thing to have father’s first name (with appr. gender ending) last name. mother’s usually have control of the first name of the kidlet.
here in the states it has washed out a bit, some times just the boys, some times all the kids with just first name no gender endings; boys get first name, eg: joseph, girls get josephine; just eldest boy, many variations.
you will get called by first name patronym even if your parent’s didn’t officially give you the pat… that’s just the way it is.
