DH wants to use a family name for our child, I don't - AIBU

[Todayistuesday]

DH's middle name is an unusual one and his father and grandfather also have it. It's a family name. He'd like our baby to have it too if it's a boy. I really don't like it. I'd maybe consider it as an additional middle name. He wants it as a first name and doesn't want the child to have two middle names. With my other child we both chose their names. AIBU?

Mil insisted ds1 be given a particular middle name due to tradition. I pointed out to dh the name was awful, and if it was such an important tradition then how come neither he nor his brother had it.

Ds doesn't have the name.

I ended up with what was really the final say and that's because I carried the baby and gave birth!

Good for you. I hope you appreciate him when he does some babysitting for you

I agree with other posters it should be a compromise where it can be used as a middle name. I do think it's all about compromise though. I don't for a second think that the mother's opinion is more important than the father's. The in-laws, yes, but start as you mean to go on and equal parents.

Yanbu, if you have to name someone after someone else you have to be sure that person is someone you love and respect. Imo.

It's hardly a tradition if it's just the DH and his father that have the name.

We broke with tradition that went back five generations and didn't use a family name DH had been lumbered with. Luckily DH hated it too.
Whose surname will the baby get. Maybe your compromise could lie there? One of each?

If your DH (not IL's, this is between you and DH) feels very strongly, then give the name as a second middle name. Otherwise is there another family name that could go in as a middle name, like FIL's first name?

I would not cause an irretrievable row / rift over this when for all anyone knows you could be having a girl.

As for 'last baby' well, DH probably feels this too: his last chance to use a name.

But I would not under any circumstances use Lyndsey or Hillary as a first name for a boy. I would do first name, middle name, this middle name, surname. As that is the position family names tend to be if they are surnames being incorporated, so it could get passed off as a surname being passed down, iyswim.

Kids are cruel. Poor little sods going to get the shit kicked out of him if you give him a feminine name like that.

We dropped the traditional second name for the second-born son. My dh has it as a third name (so may be his parents didn't much like it either though they never said) and hates it. Many generations came from the same village and it was a link to that heritage. People commented on it at the time, but it's long-forgotten now. Is there any way your dh is making more of it than others would?

Middle name Hilary or Lindsay would be okay, I think especially if you manage to dilute it with another name

Either of them as a first name would lead to your son having the piss ripped out of him at school on a daily basis, unless you are very posh & he goes to a school full of boys with even more ridiculous names like Tarquil & Crispin.

I would only agree for it to be a middle name. He is insisting on it being a first name with no other middle names, my compromise would be to agree to it as a middle name, possibly with another middle name too.

I would go for it as a second middle name. That's a good compromise. You can't call your child a first name that you dislike or irritates you, whatever the tradition.

I'm breaking tradition in my own family - its family tradition (going back 4 generations) that the first daughter of the first daughter is called by the same first name. My mum expected me to follow suit - but I'm not going to. I want my child to have their own name and own identity. While I respect tradition, it was strange for me to have he exact same name as my mother. I will use the name as a middle name though, especially as I do like it!

However, my brother, knowing that I'm breaking with the tradition, says that he will call a daughter (if he has one) by the name as a first name. Which means there may still be another child with my exact same name. Which I would obv rather not be the case, but his choice!

Pallisers there really is no need to feel sad at my posts, I love my DSs name, when when he was born I was selfish, I fully accept that, and with hindsight would change it, and one of my other DSs could have his name, no big deal

Beverley? Evelyn?

In the end your baby your choice. If it matters to your DH and it you can compromise on it being a middle name then why forbid it? His baby too.

As an aside in today's multi-cultural schools the range of names is not what it was in 1965. In those days if you were not called Simon or David or Susan or Jane - update to Charlotte and Isabelle and Thomas and Oliver - then you were unusual.

Now the classes are full of unusual names and no-one gives a shit.

Angel (boy) and Nana (after the footballer) and Cammi ( as in Cameron - not knickers) and Whakar and Axel and Hussein and Thor and Mohammed and names after Game of Thrones or Harry Potter and names from different cultures that are unpronounceable to the average Anglophone so get shortened or adapted. No-one "rips the piss" out of anyone about names any more.

( I had a boring top ten name and was teased about my ears and my speech. My siblings were both teased about their noses. And both of them were given nicknames that have stuck and had more to do with their sports prowess than anything else)

Being called Hillary or Lindsey will be like that Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue. Hell.

Middle name only, if you must. Like me, he'll still dread the moment when someone in school reads the register, but at least he'll come to terms with having an awful middle name one day. I did. It only took me until I was about 30...

No-one "rips the piss" out of anyone about names any more. bullshit

Stand your ground. It's a family tradition that you didn't use with DC1 so why just because you're having a boy are you expected to use it. Say no means no. End of.

Agree Middleclass - just because a teacher doesn't hear it - doesn't mean it's not happening -

I have had the same situation recently. Compromised on having it as a second middle name, which makes it a bit long winded but I figured that people so rarely use their middle name let alone their second middle name that it doesn't really matter, particularly if it means offending in laws. But IMO it is entirely up to you and what you are happy with.

Your H is BU, and you shouldn't use the name at all.

no one rips the piss out of names anymore

That's exactly the bull shit my sister teacher would say too. She doesn't have kids.

If its unusual give it to him as a singular middle name. It is a link to family tradition, once its gone its gone.

Oh and Genealogists a hundred years from now will bless you for the link.

Gosh I don't know where you guys all live where children are tormented and "have the shit kicked out of them" because of their middle names but I'm glad I don't live there, sounds bloody awful.

We gave ds1 a very unusual name that many people assured us would see him likewise hounded and pilloried and (11 years on ) and this has never happened. I think kids area lot less conservative or just plain nicer than many adults who appear to believe that bullying is due to anyone who doesn't conform.

I wouldn't use it if didn't like it-not even as a second middle name.

If it's Lindsey then I might have used it as a middle name for a daughter.

Hilary I don't like at all.

For years I used to think that Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks were the other way round iyswim!