Why do people think they have any say, or even the right to give uninvited input of any kind, as to what their children’s children’s names will be?
Yes, this is a barely concealed gripe. My mom just called up out of no where to inform us we’re not allowed to name our upcoming kids Steve or Norman. Not kidding with us or anything–she was being perfectly serious and straightforward. These are two names we must not give our kids, because she doesn’t like those names. That, basically, was the purpose of her call.
Before this phone call, were you considering Steve or Norman? Both are odd names for babies nowadays.
I think that if you cannot trust your mother to say “Dorcas?, Really, I don’t think that’s a good idea” who can you trust. But out of the blue to take names off the list IS odd.
(Disclaimer, I love the name Dorcas. Have since I was a little girl And did NOT name my daughter that because, well, I have common sense.)
This is another case when it’d be handy to have yellow cards and red cards like soccer refs. “Yellow card, mom! Disrespecting boundaries!” And if she persists, red card and she’s out of the game – the subject is not to be brought up again or she’ll face sanctions by the league.
(My wife corrects me, however: We called her, she didn’t call us. But we called for a completely unrelated purpose, and she turned the conversation to baby name topics, then forbid us to make them Steven or Norman. This is because she hates her own mother, whose name was Norma, and hates several men from her past named Steven.
I mean, we’re happy not to make our kids remind her of someone she doesn’t like. (Norman would already have been eliminated for that very reason had it even occured to us as a name.) But her attitude was as though she has a right to make demands about our kids names.
She earlier as much as demanded (through a facebook post playing at nonchalance but worded pointedly) that we name the kid after her dad. Strange thing: Her other grandson (through my brother) is already named after her fathre, albeit as a middle name rather than a first name.
Similar demands have been made from people on my wife’s side as well, btw. Great grandmother really wants a kid named after her, and she’s been telling everyone but us about it, and everyone but her has been telling us about it, relaying the information as though it has moral force.
They’re our kids. We pick the names. No one else has anything to do with it. If we name our kid Quiggly, their job is not to say “Ew, Quiggly?!” but rather simply to welcome Quiggly into the world.
Yeah, she’d just weep openly and accuse us of not loving her if we did something like that. Not an exaggeration. She can’t handle frankness, not even a little bit.
My own name
My grandfathers name
My fathers name
My family name
My son, had I ever had one would have:
His own name
My fathers name
My name
The family name
This goes back to, as near as we can tell, the beginning of recorded history. So names get handed down on first born boys. Since I had no sons (all of my kids are girls) then my next oldest brother, who is still too young to have children (and is only older than the next by 12 minutes), inherits the task.
I don’t find it irritating. I find it sort of comforting, in a way.
I think it’d be normal to request that your kids not name their offspring names that you have bad associations with, like that. It’s a little over the top to make it absolute, ie “you WILL not name them this”, but I think it is a reasonable request for a parent to make. It would be, IMO, unreasonable to choose names for your children’s children, ie, “you are going to name your son after my husband of course”.
The only established tradition we have is giving the firstborn son the dad’s first name as a middle name. We happily followed that one–though we would have done it for our firstborn daughter had our firstborn been a daughter, as well, which would be both keeping and breaking the tradition.
Other than that, there are no established traditions.
We were going to give my mom’s dad’s name to one of our kids as a middle name, but someone else beat us to it. We were happy to do it. But now that it’s “taken” we’re not particularly interested in using that name anymore.
Actually, it being in character makes it just that much easier to ignore. ‘Oh, that mother of mine!’ you say to your wife, both of you rolling your eyes. If she never acted like this, it would give her … request … somewhat more force (not that that should influence your name choice at the end of the day). As it is, go ahead and do what you were going to do anyway, with a bit of a rueful chuckle in her direction.
Yeah, I was like “What?” Naming a baby just “Steve” would be a little weird, but Steven/Stephen seems pretty standard. Norman is very 1920, though.
My family gives surnames from the mom’s side as middle names. I don’t plan on doing that, but I’m going to be really curious to see what my cousin names her daughter (due in June). Fortunately, we have absolutely no weird names in our family that I know of. They’re all of the standard John/Elizabeth/Katherine variety.
“Thanks Mom for your input, but we haven’t decided anything yet.”
“How’s your pick doing?”
Grandmothers don’t get veto rights on kid’s name. They can, if they wish, make up cute nicknames if they don’t like the name in question, but they can’t dictate or bitch about the decision.
I don’t know. It’s kind of a mother’s privilege to tell her son what to do. And the son’s privilege to ignore her. I think people are pretty lucky when they have a rational mother who wouldn’t presume such things.
You and your kids are going to outlive every older person who now has an opinion. Pick what you like.
While married to my first husband, the in-laws assumed he would be _____the 4th. Not happening. They loved the boy to death anyway.
Second husband, second son. It was pronounced from on high (their family was a patriarchal one) that our choice for middle names was either Erastus or Lee. I went with Lee. Now I wish I’d called him Sue, just because.
It’s fairly uncommon among children born this decade. Steven was the 118th most popular boys name in the US in 2010, putting it between Caden and Kaleb.
Your mother is out of line. Mine has actually been worse than yours. My nephew, Felix, was born in 2010. My mother still hasn’t reconciled herself to the name. She’s told my brother and sister in law to their faces that she hates it, that it is without exception the worst possible name for a human child, that she dreads telling people his name, for a month after his birth she claimed to have dreams where they “came to their senses” and changed it, and at one point she even ordered my brother not to name his son Felix. I’ve seen her say to people over photos of him “That’s my grandson… Felix. Isn’t that awful! Felix! Ugh! I hate it!”.
I feel sorry for my sister in law, who has endured this for the last 16 months, and I keep saying to my mum “You realise you’re THAT mother in law now, don’t you?”. She’s defiant about it. SIL’s father registered a momentary dislike of the name on the day Felix was born in front of my mum and she’s seized on that as permission to be as hateful as she likes (even though SIL’s father has since said he actually likes the name and he was just taken by surprise) .
I demonstrated to my mother on a name site that feedback from their users showed more people like Felix than like the name she chose for my brother but she’s unmoved. His name is so terrible it will ruin his life and that’s that.
Just don’t name them after me. I’m not a big fan of namesakes in direct line, though it’s OK if it skips multiple generations or is altered in some way.
