Bit of a weird one! Our favourite name is a similar name to that of a (non-blood) relative of mine, who was a bit of an unsavoury character. He was an abusive long-term partner to a family member, and was an alcoholic who was in and out of prison for violent crime - very much not the norm in my family! Both him and his partner (my relative) passed away quite a while ago, but her children are still alive and I am close with them. I myself don't have very strong memories of either of them which is probably why I don't have particularly negative associations with the name, but I did meet him a few times as a s small child and grew up around lots of stories of the bad things he did. In our family he's sort of like the legendary villain character if you will.
The name we really want to call our son is a diminutive form of his name. For example if the man's name was just Bill on its own, we want to call our son William nn Billy. We're not telling most people the names we're considering until after the birth, but I mentioned the name to my mum and she said she thinks it's a nice name but it does make her think of 'Bill' a lot and she isn't sure what the family will make of it. She did say that if we like it we should go for it, and they'll get used to it soon enough and forget the association with 'Bill'.
I really want to just go ahead with it as she said, but I keep thinking about the moment we tell people from my family our son's name and I see the look in their eyes... opinions?