Keith?

[WillowTree2]

My dad is a Keith, urgh! We are due a DS, who we are naming William. It's tradition to give grandparents' names in the middle, so he'll be William Michael Keith... Is the Keith just awful??

Yes, bloody terrible! Don't do it!

God no! Don't do it!

If you have to use it then only do so as a middle name.

It is terrible, but it will only be middle.

I came on to see if Keith was having a revival (30 years early) and you thought it was a lovely name I'm relieved that's not the case. Don't do it!

No one notices middle names so I don't think it matters if you don't like the name.

It's fine for a middle name and has a lovely reason for being included

Oh dear

I just think from The Office or Keith Lemon or Keith Cheguin!

I had the same dilemma as you, WillowTree.

I decided I couldn't inflict it on my boys

Nobody even looks at middle names but it's a touching nod to family so I'd go for it.

It's awful but it wouldn't be so bad as a middle name. I'd say "William Michael Keith, after his grandparents" if anyone asked

Tradition? Maybe in some parts but it isn't the law .

Nobody even looks at middle names until you go to secondary school and have competitions to see who had the worst!

The winners at my school were...
Richard Neville
Roy Sinclair
Harry Morrison Kevin

Poor kids

It is absolutely fine as a middle name! It could just as easily be a surname type thing, like Penelope Keith. Would be horrible to leave your dad out.

My 12yo son has a friend called Keith, so I don't associate it as an old mans name iykwim.
As a middle name it's grand. Sure, no one really uses them anyway

How about two middle names so Keith is the third name?

Could you just take the K and use a different name? So use, for example, Kai/Kian/Kieran and tell your dad that you don't like using family names that much but you wanted to honour him so the K is for him? I don't know if that is going to work! We are doing that for our son. Our first son is called Jack, his brother is due in two months and he is so excited so we are using James for his brother middle name (we had a list of other J names but that seems to go better with the first name we picked) as a little nod to him - with the 'J'. Just an idea!

When my third son was born, l briefly considered giving him my dad's name as a middle name,but decided it was much too old-fashioned. Now, years later, it is much more in fashion than the one I picked, and my son always says he would have loved that reminder of his grandad, who died when he was two. Also , my dad would have been so pleased. It's one of my big regrets.

I went for pretty but meaningless middle names for my two and a couple of years later I regretted it and changed them to family names.

Well it's not an attractive name, and has a distinctly older middle-aged feel, but hidden away as second middle it'll be fine. I suppose the actual sound of the word is not too bad. Lovely to honour your dad, you can't leave him out if you're doing it for the other GF!

My late father was called Keith and it's my sons middle name , I actually don't mind it at all but that's because I associate with my lovely dad - it's certainly nowhere near as bad as some of the other names that get bandied about on here .

Awful! My dad is an Alan and DHs is Barry - no way on gods earth any son of ours is having either name!

Does your dad have a middle name that's a bit better than Keith?

Keith is up there with Neil as bad boy names go