Naming after a beloved friend.

[Mogz]

We have recently lost a very dear friend and I would really like to honour his memory by using his name as a middle name if our baby, due December, is a boy.
This loss was not out of the blue and using his name is something I've been thinking about for a while, however I had planned to actually ask permission whilst he was still alive as we were expecting to be able to see him moved out of isolation into a hospice, but unfortunately it did not transpire that way and we were not able to see him before we died.
So now I have the situation of needing to ask his widow and find myself so bloody tongue tied! It's not going to be something we bring up for a couple of weeks, as the loss really is very recent and we've not even had the funeral yet. I'm not sure if I should ask before baby gets here or wait until baby is here and we know for sure if we would be using the name.
Any thoughts welcome please MNers!

Could you write her a letter, saying you want to honour her husband, but are worried about upsetting her?

I'm wondering if this would be more usefully put in bereavement.

This isn't really a naming issue, it's an issue of grief and how to express your own while respecting somebody else's.

I think what you are thinking of doing is a lovely idea.

How his widow will respond is another thing entirely, and very difficult for someone who has never been in that situation to say.

I think it's a lovely idea.

I appreciate it won't be an easy conversation but if I were you, I'd ask his widow at around 36 weeks. Maybe even say something like:
"I'm not sure how to broach this but we'd really like to use X's name as a middle name for our baby. Would you be ok with that?"

It's a lovely idea : I now I would be honoured and am sure ahe will be. My middle name is in honour on one of my mums friends.

Thanks for the replies, and good point about the bereavement forum, I'd totally forgotten we had one! I shall have more of a think and the maybe ask the nice people over there for their thoughts.

We are very close to his widow, I've known her since I was 6 and she's like a surrogate Aunty to me. I am pretty sure she will be more than happy with this but I'm just so worried about making her upset when asking. We've seen her cry so much this past week I think that perhaps that is making me much more nervous than I otherwise would be.

Wait until the birth