Name traditions

@Spindrifting haha that made me 😂 Yes Sean - Irish spelling.

[quote Elisemum]@SeanChailleach I do love your name though!:) (not sure if it’s your real name). My son due any minute now will have your name :)[/quote]
As @SeanChailleach’s username means ‘Old Witch’ or ‘Old Hag’, I think it’s both highly unlikely it’s her real name or that you’re calling your baby it. (I assume you mean Seán is what you’re calling your baby — the síne fada makes a big difference…)

DH has a name that goes back five generations. It's awful. We had two sons and put a stop to it.
No one said anything.

It used to be a tradition to give the first child the mother's maiden name as a middle name. Sometimes all the children. Useful for genealogy research I suppose.
Both my parents got their mother's maiden name but my Dad's was changed slightly to make it an ordinary christian name eg Davis to David.

The tradition wasn't passed down to us and I think children need their own names. We went with names we liked with ours without an expectation that it had a connection to anyone.
A colleague who had a baby at the same time as me used the names of both grandmothers. It wasn't a good choice, poor kid.

My dd got his dads name as a middle name. (Eldest boy)
My mum got her mums name as a middle name. (Eldest girl)
My sister got mums first name as middle name (eldest girl)
Dd has my name as middle name.
Dh hates his name so DS got 2 new names

@SeanChailleach I do love your name though!:) (not sure if it’s your real name). My son due any minute now will have your name :)

Here in Ireland quite a few people I know have done this. It's almost always with male children, who get the same name as their father but use a different diminutive. I know a few girls who've been given a grandmother's name as their first name, but never their mother's.

It's not a tradition that I like and DH and I didn't do it with our boys. I'm not Irish so it wasn't expected of me, even though it's a thing in DH's family to use a different version of a father's name for a son.

Using family names as middle names is very common. Again, I didn't as I only use names I actually like. I certainly wasn't going to inflict FIL's name on any of my children for any reason!

It’s hardly a choice between widespread ‘name regret” and just calling every male child in the family John or James for fifteen yawnfilled generations.

oh this was SO common in Ireland. I think people only stopped following the rules (rigidly) in about 1950.

My Dad has a sister called Margaret and a cousin called margaret because they were both named after the same grandmother.

I prefer the ''rule'' now that you at least try to give your child its own name (where possible). I know that some names are so popular that repetitions occur but I prefer the way now parents rule OUT a name if there's a cousin with that name.

eldest son named after father, second after paternal grandfather etc

Am I being stupid? Wouldn’t this just result in the first two sons having the same first name?

Not sure what you mean by “system in naming children”. The only one system you should have is: you pick a name you love and you give it to your baby

It is the single stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of. It is you baby! And you name it as you please. The only person that has to be happy about it is you and your partner (as long as of course it’s not some obnoxious name:). An idea of naming a baby after someone else in family is so pointless and silly makes me cringe.