to not want to name new baby after dh's grandad who has just died?

[Egypt]

i feel cruel, but i just can't do it. dh has just lost his grandad, whom he was very close to. he desperately wants to use his name as a middle name if this baby - due end of march, turns out to be a boy. i feel emotionally blackmailed and that its not fair to impose a name on someone for the rest of their lives for the sake of the memory of someone else, if the name isn't.....nice. its not like we are going to ever forget him. i want my only son to have a name i am actually proud of and wont be totally embarrassed of forever. i'd feel i'd have to tell everyone who asked his name WHY we'd called him that. ok, so its a middle name, but ....am i being unreasonable?

...the name is .... Maurice

I'm with you Egypt. Please don't feel pressured into giving your ds a name you're not comfortable with. What sort of fella was Maurice anyway? Would he be happy up in the stars knowing his grandson's mum didn't really like his new name?

The day before my ds was born was my uncle's funeral. I couldn't go as it was abroad. My dad did the eulergy (?sp). In it he said that as one life was taken, another was about to come into the world. And if it was a boy my dad bet that I would name my son after his beloved brother who had just died. My brother tactfully told me about this shortly after my ds was born. And that all my family are now expecting to hear that my ds will be named after my uncle. I'm afraid I had to disappoint them all. I loved my uncle a lot, but didn't like his names. Besides which my cute little ds didn't look like a Desmond.

Don't be pressured to do something you don't want to do.

In our family we give middle names based on the first name of the parent (either mum or dad), so dd has her own first name and my first name as her second name.

My brother and I also have our parents first names as middle names. Mine is horrid, but I don't actually use it all that often.

I agree that you should not choose a name just to keep people happy. It should be something that you both agree on. My DD has a name that my mum shuddered at when I mentioned it, but I chose it for my baby and I still love it to this day. (That, and I haven't heard many children with the same name recently)

thanks kinki

maurice was, i feel awful, but a 'ladies' man' as far as i can gather from relatives. dh doted on him (an only grandson and last surviving grandparent). he has always been great to dh and me since we got married. he doted on dd. and one of the last conversations we had was him telling us that i was going to have a boy, as dh was like him. (grandad had a girl, then a boy, and dh was born on the same day as him too). so it kind of cemented in dh's brain. but it wasnt like we saw him more than a couple of times a year, and dh prob only spoke to him a couple more times than that. it was only this last 6 months that he's been in hospital that dh visited very regularly.

omg, and do you know, i can recall grandad saying a few months back - when he knew he was ill, 'dont call the baby maurice. call it stephen'!!!!! just remembered. omg. must tell dh!

Was Maurice a paternal or maternal grandad? I mean, did he have the same surname as dh? If not, you could always use his surname as a middle name. If yes, then you could argue ds already has dh's and Maurice's surname (assuming he does), first names are down to you!

I let dh get away with choosing both grandads' names as middles for ds. Dh's dad died a couple of years before we had ds, so seemed a nice gesture. Tbh, I don't really like his dad's name (Donald) but it's no. 3 in dh's list of names so decided not to argue. Only when we told MIL, she said 'Oh, your father never liked his name'... so bit of a wasted effort, really!

Egypt, am sure Maurice would be giggling over this, esp if you are being a bit economical with the truth over the recollection!

he has the same surname as us. serious about the recollection btw. just re read it and i sound like a lying little schoolgirl! no matter, it wouldnt make much difference, but i will remind dh. he had mentioned it himself after he said it, but dismissed it cos he didn't like stephen as a name. stephen is also dh's dad's name. seems silly not to use it.

sorry, dh's dad's middle name is stephen.

I don't know what Maurice means, but could you find out, then choose another name with the same meaning which you and dh could compromise on ? I do realise, however, that it's probably the particular resonance of "Maurice" which will matter to your dh...

....or will it ? Babe isn't even here yet !

Why don't you have (the name of your choice) George Maurice (or Maurice George)

I agree with others that middle names don't get used really. My middle name is Grace which I actually hated as a child, but I now really love the name and if I'd had a girl I would have given her it as her middle name. Grace wasn't the lovely name it is now, 30 odd years ago!

DS2 has both his grandads names as his middle name (in hindsight I should have kept one for DS3, but hey I wasn't to know ) I wouldn't choose either one for a first name, but he loves having his grandads names especially as sadly FIL passed away 18 months ago.

Honestly, it will only be family who will take any notice of what your baby's middle name is.

Just returning to the thread - I was thinking about it, and if I was your dh, it would be really important to me, because, something that really upset me was that my gran never got to meet my children, although I haven't used her name at all (would be complicated as is my mum's name as well, although I might consider it for any future children) - it's something that takes some getting used to, I would have LOVED my gran to have met my children, and dh's dad as well.

I would go for the 3 name option, then his 'being called' name can be John Peter or whatever with Maurice on the birth certificate.

I think it's a bit unreasonable if he only wants it as a middle name. Could you perhaps give him 2 middle names? I had to give my first DS his grandfathers names as a middle name as he died a few months before - it was a name I hated (Roye) but no-one ever needs to know it under normal circs.

I wouldn't have it. I named my babies names that I and dh liked, in that order. As it happens we did use family names as middle names, but only because we liked them. I wouldn't have dreamed of giving a child a name I disliked just to commemorate a dead relative. That's what headstones are for IMO, not children.

How about using the short version of Rhys?

My Dad is a Stephen and we gave dd his name as a middle name (Stephanie). Would have been middle name Stephen if a boy. I can't say its a name either DH or I particularly like but it meant so much to my Dad and its not like a first name that you use every day. Actually DD is quite proud to have this connection with her Grandad.

I think if your DH feels really strongly about it give it as a middle name - DH and MIL came up with a string of really foul old fogey/head boy/girl type names when I was expecting - luckily they decided the names we chose "suited" DS more when he arrived.

If it had been a major issue I would just have given DS two middle names one I thought HE may like in future (if he didnt like the first name I chose) and one of the horrible ones.

Sobernow aren't "horrible 1930s names" terribly trendy now?

It always makes me laugh to watch 1970s TV programmes and see what names were SO trendy then.

And how can you tell whether your child isn't going to like the family name better than the first name that you agonised over for ages before choosing? It's the childs name in the end and he/she is just as likely to dislike your choice as you did your great-grandfather's and mothers. My DS likes his grandfather's name - it's unusual and it gives him a connection to the man that DH talks about and that he never met.

I have a friend whose husbands family has a tradition for naming the fist born son she didn't like the idea as it mean the first middle name had to be the fathers name and the second middle was a bit old fashioned but she still did it for dh's sake.
We named ds after my Father & middle name of dh's late father as we felt it was a nice thing to do.
Having Maurice as a middle name isn't that bad I can think of worse!

I don't think it's morbid to give family names, but I wouldn't have given either DS a name I didn't like.

DS1 has my grandfather's middle name as his middle name - then my sister chose to use it for my nephew too (although we had both decided ages ago and quite separately to use it anyway!) and I love that they are all connected by the same name.

DS2's middle name is my brother's name, and his first name appears several times in our extended family. Again, I love both names.

If DH had been insistent we'd called them Bogey and Widget, I'd have said no though.

Actually I think Widget is rather sweet

i have had this argument over both my lo's names with my mil she seems to think that all my children should be named after a member of her family

as if....