When cultures Clash..I refuse to give my father-in-laws name to my son.

[orangebee1]

Ladies, last week i delivered twins, one boy and one girl. My husband is Greek and tradition here dictates that the grandson must be named after the grandfather.
I am English and it's unthinkable to me that i can't choose my son's name. I am happy to have the grandfather's name (Yiorgos) as a middle name, but certainly not the first one and am insisting that my huband and i find a name we BOTH want.

I delivered by c-section and after two days (when i was still in the hospital recovering!) what should have been a joyous occasion turned into tears and arguments over the name choices - i wrote the names my husband and i had agreed on on facebook and his family saw and all hell broke lose.

My husband was so taken upset by his family's reaction, he was crying and distressed and finally changed his mind about the names.

As yet the babies are unamed and referred to as "the boy" and "the girl".
His sister says to me "you have three children now, what is it to name one of them after the grandfather - he has only one life and waited all of it until this day for his name to be passed on".

Am i being unreasonable??? Would you name your child a name you really do not like at all to keep the peace???

orange massive hugs x
I'm guessing he always knew he would do this, and you were fortunate in a way dd1 was Dd. I'm disgusted at his behaviour on your behalf. I don't know how you'll ever respect or trust him again, and it sounds like he gives no whether you do or not.

oh, cross post. I just hope he isn't just saying that to shut you up too

Seeing the marriage counsellor is a positive step at least, and a good sign that he's open to the idea. He must know how serious things are.

That's good he is acknowledging a need to talk. Hopefully he doesn't mean that you have to agree to his proposed "compromise" first.

Do you have any friends? Could you afford to fly someone out from the UK?

I would not be referring to my babies as 'the boy' and 'the girl'. You said that you and your husband agreed names so I would be sticking with those names. He is the one who is reneged on that agreement. I would not allow him to force his change of mind on me.

Sorry. Unhelpful I know but I am so angry on your behalf.

Like I said earlier, when my DH can go through everything entailed in giving birth then he can have the final say in choosing names.

((orangebee1))

Culture clash - you said it! This is an ALMIGHTY culture clash

I didn't realise I even had a culture until I married into another culture. I take it your first child is a girl? Did they pierce your daughter's ears the second she came out of the womb? I had my PFB girl strapped to my side for a year so my ILs wouldn't whip her off and get her ears done. I gave in, eventually, when she was 4. I just couldn't take the bloody pressure - on and on and ON.

I don't know what you're going to do here. It's all very well posters saying 'no way would I do that!' but they clearly haven't married across cultures. It's very different when you're in it. This stuff runs deep , as you have seen. One culture isn't better than the other - but, sadly, shocking bullying does come up if a cultural practise is threatened.

Your husband obviously doesn't realise how deep his culture goes in him. he has behaved very badly - but he is being crushed by shame, obligation, guilt. he probably doesn[t realise what he's doing, he's like a headless chicken. THAT'S NOT TO EXCUSE HIM, just that he's crushed between two cultures, two sets of obligations.

You should come first, yes - but in his culture it doesn't go like that and he will be having a really hard time reconciling the two. Terrible time for this to come up - particularly as you have had such a rough time having your lovely two babies. I'm so sorry you're facing this now.

I would have said (as I said repeatedly to my ILs!) that it is not in my culture to do blah-de-blah. I was speaking to the (willfully) deaf the majority of the time, but I still said it. Over and over again. I was also living in my own culture at the time, so I at least had a bit of leverage. I'm not sure you're going to be able to pull off ignoring their deeply-held tradition here - probably because you live in their country? Your husband is getting first-hand the almighty fallout from this - if he were in blighty he wouldn't be getting it as full-on, would be largely removed from it iyswim; relatively free to follow what you have both agreed together.

In our culturally-blended family, we have interchangeable names across the board (except me!) and no-one particularly notices. yy many people have the same name - but, somehow, we all know to whom we are referring - I don't know how that works, but it does.

I think this will be less of an issue as time goes on. I can't help thinking that, with this HUGE fallout, you're going to have to go with the tradition of the country you are living in. You can maybe sort out the difficulties as time goes on...

In the meantime, try to enjoy your lovely, healthy twins. You'll have tale to tell in the future! I do so hope you can get past this together somehow. Try not to let this awful thing eclipse the wonderful blessing of your healthy babies.

(btw my husband was devastated that our PFB was a girl . He of the public school educated more-british-than-me . Or so I thought...)

Bear with me here: I'm even wondering if you could bully/emotionally blackmail back, fight fire with fire. yy, horrifying for someone from our culture to even think of doing that (let alone know how to do it!) but perhaps it's time to speak the same language, as it were.

(I know I'm chopping around on this - it isn't an exact science )

I'm glad he's agreed to talk to a counsellor. I hope that means he's willing to consider giving your relationship priority over his family's wishes.

You said earlier in the thread that he was willing to go with the names he'd agreed previously but that he'd lose some respect for you. Is he still willing to do this or is he insisting on Yiorgos now?

I don't think him losing respect for you is an issue. I think the problem you will now face is how to rebuild your respect for him if that is at all possible.

How long is the talk and then the counselling going to take to happen? Is the christening being arranged in the meantime? If you get railroaded into the ceremony and the name Yiorgos is used will you ever be able to rebuild your relationship with your DH?

Do you need to make sure everyone knows that everything stays on hold until you've resolved this with your DH?

I think it's wrong to say that the Op's husband was plotting this, I suspect the exact opposite, that when it was just the two of them together, they felt invincible and her request to name her own child doable, but it was in the face of family outrage that the OP's husband started to waver- he was upset and crying which doesn't sound to me like someone who was plotting this all along. He then made a very wrong choice not to back the mother of his children but this doesn't mean it was calculating, or that he is some type of monster. I don't think continuing to go on about how terrible the family is helps either.

Op, every single person I know that is in a mixed culture marriage has gone along with some things they don't agree with (circumcision, choosing of names, christening/religious ceremonies, marriage ceremonies which aren't what they would choose). I absolutely think if this particular thing is not what you want, this passing down of the name, you should stick it out. But I think your husband was very naive and quite silly to think that if you just insulated yourself in the bubble of your own family, then issues about religion and naming wouldn't arise, or people would be happy for you to do what you like.

My husband very much wanted to marry in a church, I didn't, I put my foot down on that one. But he did want the children christened and given his patronym and that was what happened in those cases. I think some of the posters on this thread don't appreciate what happens when you enter into a very strong and not necessarily very flexible culture and try and live in it. You can't just insist on your own way without fall-out. You are not wrong to put your foot down on this one, this for you is sooooo important, and I agree you should not name a baby a name you dislike, but I think you have found out the hard way that in other cultures, things like 'mum is always right' or 'happy mummy, happy baby' and the idea you do what you choose is not usual and there is a weight of tradition and family behind that.

I am not sure where this leaves you, I think your husband has let you down but this doesn't mean it isn't salvageable. I would try to take the heat out of the situation, and go with a compromise which you can live with yourself. You will be angry at your husband- try to get him alone and say what you feel because it will fester otherwise. Then go to counselling if it will help you. I have been in your shoes and it is difficult and my husband's family are liberal and we still have very different ideas about upbringing and religion, I have friends who have married into a different religion as well and it is a very tricky situation. More hugs.

Sorry. I just realised that my previous post reads like an inquisition!

Please don't feel pressure to answer!

I would at least call them a nickname that you like - 'little sunshine' or 'kitten' or something, just a name.

I think someone said that babies are just called 'baby' at first in Greece, but here we have names! Somewhere has a tradition of not calling pre-christened/naming ceremony babies by their 'real' names in case a spirits call them away (china?). Maybe that's where this comes from rather that 'our name or that kid will have Baby on his wedding certificate'.

Speak to hubby. He agreed to something that in retrospect, he should have known would cause a massive stink. Would an anglicised version be ok? Or would the child be bullied by having a foreign name and foreign mum (the news reports from greece indicates that they aren't the most tolerant lot at the moment). Is the girl's name also in contention?

Maybe Catherine will have a boy and you can say 'tradition to name your baby after the future baby king'.

Oh, orange, please please continue to talk to dh, he has not yet quite realised how bad this is for you. Please tell him what you wrote here, that with all the problems YOU had to go through to actually have a son, it is cruelly unfair to backtrack on his promises and blame you for being unreasonable. Tell him your marriage is in danger.

He does not sound such a bad person, but badly bullied by his family and not able to see a way around it. It was up to him to tell them beforehand that a potential son would not be called after fil. I assume the family know about your problems getting pregnant. If this had been talked about earlier, they would very likely have been just overjoyed about the twins and accepted your name.

Please arrange counselling asap, before anything with the names is decided, even if it means paying for it.

I hope you will come out of this ok.

Goldmandra, i'm not sure what's going on because no one talks about it, but for sure nothing at all with a christening - not for a long time. Backpaw, yes they do refer to babies as "baby" here, i know an 18 month old who STILL has no name and is simply "the baby" - it just doesn't sit right with me and i certainly don't want to be in that position.

I should say here, in defence of my husband, that he has always had a good relationship with his father, when we are the hospital he told me it was the first time in his life, the first time in 43 years, that his father refused to talk to him - that must hurt a lot, and the first time in his life his mother hung the phone up on him. It's still no real defence to the events, but there is something mitigating there.

In my panic and hormone addled brain i called his mother afterwards and said "the boy will be called yiorgos" and told her to please call my husband so everything would be OK, but they didn't, and i find that disgusting.

Use vthe names you like and agreed with your DH - just use them!

You need to make your DH see he can't keep everyone happy with this, either his Dad or his wife will be upset over the boy's name.

springydaffs I have had the exact same experience about ear-piercing, my MIL tried to take my dd1 out on her own to do this when I wasn't looking but was rumbled!

Orangebee I can relate to this so much. Most posters saying 'just tell them you are the mum and you are doing XYZ' don't understand that in some Mediterranean cultures and families, the parents/elders continually comment/criticize/direct their offspring's lives and this is considered normal in a way that would be completely unacceptable here (and probably is in the more liberal parts of their own culture). I have also noticed that this can sneak up on you if the family seem initially quite liberal- for friends who married into much more restricting cultures, this is obvious from the start (i.e. unless you are prepared to alter the way you dress/act/name children there's no point in marrying)- whereas it seems like up til now this has bee less visible and you really didn't see this one coming (and your husband who sounds devastated too although I do think he should back you).

I actually agree with Springy with you that fighting fire with fire may be the way to go, and a bit of the mother tiger at this point will help- just state (as I did pointing to my dd's ears) 'in my culture, we do not do this, no, NO' because the family can be like a bulldozer and if you don't want to get mown down, you have to very actively stand up for yourself. However, as I have said before, make sure that you and your husband come to some agreement between you before you put your foot down and also make sure that this is really the issue you want to make a stand over (and that you can't live with Yiorgos!) I think you are all exhausted, you must feel hormonal, stressed and so on and it's hard to have good sensible marriage-enhancing conversations in this situation, best of luck.

Talking face to face is positive but you are already so vulnerable from having been so badly let down and bullied, plus I would imagine simply exhausted in the normal way after a week of having two new babies in the house! I wonder if you could make it a condition of having the chat that your H first reads your points which you could give him in writing, and acknowledges that you are starting from a position of deep hurt, and that he needs to redeem himself? I just worry that he could start talking over you or giving you the old "you don't understand how important it is because you're not from here" if you just sit down to hash it out from the current positions. You can word things as strongly as you like in writing and then only agree to talk when he has read it?

Forgot to say before congratulations on your lovely babies! Please, please start using their names at home, at least when on your own...

After your last post orange, I'm not sure why either of you would want your son to have FILs name at all.

I don't get how anyone could be so nasty to their own (adult) child.

Times change, traditions move on.

Perhaps a Greek priest could labour the point with his parents/family that the religion they follow is clear on leaving and cleaving -

?Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh? (Genesis 2:24 KJV)

Which means that the Christian God they worship (eg christenings) lays it on the line that when a couple get married, that union comes FIRST before any other, or previous, unions.

your husband has married a woman from another culture. he has to honour you before he honours his parents.

(easy to say..)

No I wouldn't my friend has this exact same problem when her son was born and went thro hell. The only thing I don't understand is why the couple knowing these traditions don't anticipate these problems and have it all sorted out before the children are born so they can enjoy the first precious days with their kids.

I agree with diddl - after that they don't deserve to have kids named after them. especially as you tried to back down and that wasn't good enough.

your h has mishandled everything badly. he should have told them before and he shouldn't have taken his hurt from them out on you. but tbh, I wouldn't be pandering to them at all. and if that's how they behave, they deserve to have the piss taken out of them. if they acted like reasonable people then maybe if have an ounce of sympathy.

BTW, my grandfather voiced his disapproval that his favourite daughter didn't name her kid after him. yes, his favourite. one of many daughters he had, and not anywhere near the first grandchild he had. he was told where to go.

In my panic and hormone addled brain i called his mother afterwards and said "the boy will be called yiorgos" and told her to please call my husband so everything would be OK, but they didn't, and i find that disgusting.

So you have actually backed down to please them and they are still sulking? In that case I think you have no obligation to honour that agreement. Just go for the names you want and sod their childish sulks.

Oh my dear, I do feel for you. Do what you need to do to get through this. I think little pet names for the babies is a good idea, even if only you use them.