To tell my MIL if she wants a son to name she can go have one and not be engrossed on what I choose to name my son.

[TwinklyPoster]

Hi all, this is more of a rant than anything because I’m honestly just frustrated.
I gave birth to my son at the beginning of August, and my husband and I have chosen his name together.

We’ve named him after my father with his middle name being my grandfather’s name. We’ve also given him a double-barrelled surname/name incorporating both mine and his dad’s names.

My family are absolutely thrilled. My dad in particular is over the moon and feels incredibly honoured that his grandson has been named after him.

I am born in 89, my name was old even then and I’ve grown into it I love it, I always get compliments on it or just people curious about it. DH has somewhat of an old name too. I was never going to name my child whether boy or girl something old fashion. If we had a daughter she would have been name Agatha.

The name itself is quite old-fashioned. Think along the lines of Hugo/Herbert, although it isn’t either of those. Personally I love it and think it’s the sort of name that will grow with him. It might sound very “old man” on a newborn, but I can picture it perfectly on him as a little boy, teenager and adult.

The thing is, my husband and I discussed the names at length and he has always been completely on board. We also deliberately decided not to tell anyone the name or even the sex before the birth. This is our first baby and we wanted to keep it completely to ourselves and just enjoy finding out when he arrived.

DH’s parents, however, are furious about the name. His mother mainly.

Apparently it’s “unfair” that we’ve used family names from my side and that they weren’t consulted.

MIL came round last night to check on us and, inevitably, the subject came up again.
I’ll admit I was probably snappier than I should have been, but after hearing yet again how unfair it all was, I told her: “he is my son I name him not you if you want a child to name to have on yourself” She was obviously offended and the atmosphere went very awkward. My husband did his best to calm things down.

Now I’m wondering whether I was completely out of order in how I said it.
I absolutely stand by the fact that DH and I are the only people who get to decide our son’s name. But perhaps I could have handled MIL’s feelings better, especially as I’m freshly postpartum and emotions are obviously running high.

I genuinely wish British culture was more straight to the point. We’d certainly have a lot less posts on Mumsnet 😅

She doesn't get a say. Even if she's disappointed. Even if you used 8 names from your family and none from your husband's. To keep going on about it is ridiculous.

And turning up every day to see you is ridiculous.

But what is more ridiculous is that your husband can't put boundaries in place to protect your time together, and to get his mum to stfu about the name.

Sometimes I feel like mothers of boys are l supposed to fuck off into a cave and just send money.. it’s almost like they literally are suppose to give no fucks whatsoever about not mattering at all in anything whilst mothers of daughters have great great grandads honoured and … sorry .. I mean I don’t care about this stuff.. but how can you not see how shit it is

I am quite surprised the MIL knew the provenance of both the baby's names. I suppose the first name was obvious as she must know what the OP's father is called. If he's called something like James Michael, though, I'd have been inclined to just say those are names you like rather than explaining that James is after Grandpa Jim and Michael is after Great-Grandpa Mick. I suppose if he's Archibald Eustace that's a bit harder to get away with.

Why does she care and why should she care. Our son is happy and healthy that’s all that should matter to her.

She's the ridiculous one. My in laws has issues over our choice of surname and we ended up changing it because of their tantrums and I've never forgotten it!

Contaminate? Sorry what?

MIL is being unreasonable because it’s ultimately not her business BUT I do think giving your child exclusively names from one side of the family is tactless - you could at least have put a non-family name in there to dilute the extent to which baby is your side!

My eldest has a (deceased) grandmother from dad’s side and a great-grandmother from my side; the second has the (living) grandmother from my side and the auntie from dad’s side. Everybody’s happy.

Also why is mil mad and not fil?

It’s a son not a daughter so it was never going to have a name from mil or her mother.

She’s what offended on her husband behalf? Or her dad’s behalf.

It would make a bit more sense if op had a girl and named her ops mum, ops granny, ops surname, husband’s surname.

Then yeah I get her nose being a bit put out but still she should keep it to her self or at most maybe one sob to her son I guess. But the child’s a boy given boy names.

So your child has your father and grandfathers name, what about your husbands side of the family? She probably shouldn’t have said anything, but it’s sad you haven’t honoured both sides of the family

There was never even a slight chance that our son would be named after anyone in my husband's family. He and I both agree that they had abysmal taste in names for the most part. We would have been choosing from Horace, Ronald, Dennis, Anthony, Sidney and Albert (the only one I would even have considered). As it was, both my PIL had died before we had children, he's an only child and not close to anyone else in the family, so that was that. It could be argued that both our children have names from my side of the family but as we chose classic names in both cases so do hundreds of thousands of others in the UK.

The obsession isn’t normal. She has a grandson that was born this year she has seen him about 10 times. Yet my son born start of August she has seen almost everyday. She lives closer to the other grandson.

I wonder why you started this thread, really. You don’t like her, she’s a pain in the backside who the rest of the family seem to dislike, too. Why are you pretending to worry about whether you’ve offended her or not? Don’t you have better things to do with a newborn needing your attention?

It sounds like you were both rude. But you have more of an excuse due to being a new mum. I was similarly rude to my MIL when she kept pressurising us to have our baby baptised. I eventually just snapped back, after a pretty constant barrage. I do understand a little bit why she’s miffed. She’s feeling emotional - and territorial - about her new grandson and probably thinks you should have been more even handed in choosing the forenames (not saying I agree - my youngest is named after my late dad!) But she should have kept her trap shut. People can feel anything they like, with or without good cause, but saying it out loud and, worse still, harassing you about it, is absolutely not acceptable. The phrase ‘keep your counsel’ springs to mind.

This

Clearly not based on your analysis. Baby isn’t even 3 weeks old he’s very chill and he’s happy.

Honestly, yes, she's in the wrong here but your attitude absolutely stinks

Wait until he’s all grown up and his partner thinks she’s got the MIL from hell, it’ll come sooner than you think.

Contaminate is such a strange choice of word.

I can understand you feeling a bit claustrophobic, I wouldn’t want my MIL visiting every single day either.

But “contaminating the baby” is a really weird thought process.

I don't think the OP is pretending to worry.
I get the feeling she quite enjoys being unpleasant to her MIL.

The better tactic would have been to calmly say that this is the name you and your husband picked out together. Your MIL is blaming you for the baby not having a name from their side of the family, but that was a mutual decision, and that needs to be pointed out.

Telling a presumably post-menopausal woman that if she wants to have a baby, she can have one herself, was nasty. Saying that she had a chance to name her children, and this is your chance to name yours, would have gotten that point across without sounding like you were taunting her for being an older woman.

My husband and I didn’t give our children the names of any relatives so we wouldn’t have this kind of situation, but my MIL was still unhappy. We had girls, but our prospective boy name was – let’s say it was “Jonathan George.” She wanted to know if “Jonathan” was in honor of the priest who baptized my husband, which neither of us had thought of, and that disappointed her. My dad, and my husband’s late uncle/godfather, are both named “Henry,” and she wanted to know why we weren’t considering “Jonathan Henry.”

You are contradicting yourself there a bit. You say she doesn't like you but wants yo have a close girly relationship with you... I think its just that you don't like her so just admit it and move on.

One of my children has three Christian names - all of them are from my side of the family. Nobody cared about it. We both liked the names better.

You can say no, OP.

My PIL saw DS1 when. he was two days old and not again until he was five weeks old. Ok, we live eighty miles apart, but if we lived one mile apart I would not have had them round daily.

People are so precious and weird, as fucks, with their children's names. I remember asking my dm why this name was chosen for me, like who was I named after. She said 'no idea, could not care less, I was so grateful to God you came out alive, I came out alive out of this, I did not care'. She does not even remember who went to the registry office to get the certificate, she was so ill for a while, my dad, my grandparents or some other relative, so that person must have come up with the name for me.