A. writes:
I have a question about proper etiquette for middle names (if in fact there is any)
My daughter just had her first born son and he is the first grandchild to both grandparents. Very early on they decided to name him after his father’s grandfather which made everyone very happy on both sides. The problem now arrises when we were at the hospital shortly after the birth, they were asked by hospital staff (for birth certificate reasons) his full name. My daughter responded with first name as mentioned the grandfather of the father and then the second name was the fathers father and then last but feeling least was my daughter’s father. I can’t explain how much hearing this has sent an emotional wave of total hurt … so much so that I had to leave the room. I would totally understand the reasoning if the first name was in no way family associated, but it was.
I have not said a word to my daughter and I won’t…having a baby is such a beautiful event but also emotional. I will not spoil it for her.
Am I being silly about this? Really need an unbiased opinion.
Thank you
P.S.
My daughters father says it doesn’t bother him and will not admit to it bothering him but I know him very well and I believe it does.
You are asking me what the proper etiquette is in this situation, and I will tell you: Stopping this whole thing right now. While our culture does not have consistent rules for middle name etiquette, it is definitely inappropriate behavior to leave the room of your newborn grandson because your daughter’s father’s name was included in what you consider to be a place of lower honor. (The correct response was gasps of joy and/or tears of happy surprise at the unexpected honor.) The only hope is that everyone else may have interpreted the behavior as something completely acceptable, such as needing to use the bathroom, making room for other visitors, giving the new family of three a little peace, or needing a moment to yourself in your overwhelming joy and relief at your daughter’s successful and safe delivery and the resulting thrill of a first grandchild.
The issue here seems to be that you are perceiving name-order as communicating rank/love/respect, as well as the lack of those things. With that interpretation, the child’s first name would indicate that the new parents feel the greatest love and respect for the baby’s paternal great-grandfather; second for the baby’s paternal grandfather; and third for the baby’s maternal grandfather. It seems to you that by using her father’s name third, your daughter is communicating that she ranks him lower than the other two men.
This, however, is not how children are named. If you have been here before, you’ve seen hundreds of letters where the parents say things such as, “We really want to use my mom’s name as the first name, but we can’t because it’s bad with the surname” or “…because we feel like we have to use another family name first” or “…because if we used it, we’d feel like we’d also have to use my mother-in-law’s name, which we don’t want to do” or “…because we think it would be confusing” or “…because my sister has dibs” or “…because we don’t want to use that initial” or “…because the name just isn’t our style” or “…because we hate the nickname” or “…because the rhythm is terrible with the chosen middle name” or “…because it’s also the name of my husband’s step-mother, who is awful and we don’t want her to feel honored.” There can be all manner of complicating issues.
Issues of rhythm and sound and style come into decisions about name order more often than issues of ranking. And patriarchal issues can be surprisingly dominant: names from the father’s side of the family can still seem like more appropriate choices for honor names, especially for a boy. Furthermore, parents often save other family names for future babies, and take that into account when naming others: if for example your daughter and her partner were planning to name a future daughter after you or another important female family member from your daughter’s side of the family, they would likely want to balance things by making sure their first son had more names from the father’s side of the family.
Parents may also be weighing things such as “Well, my side of the family is likely to have far more grandchildren, so let’s make sure to use the honor names from yours” and “I’m an only child, so this is the only chance to carry on these names” and “I think my brother has more of a right to use the men’s names from our side of the family” and “Well, we moved to live near your side of the family, so let’s make sure to use names from my side of the family to balance that out a bit.”
And many other parents don’t give it anywhere NEAR this amount of thought, and end up giving names without taking balance into account at all. Parents may love and respect both sides of the family equally, and nevertheless use names mostly from one side, or from more distant (and even less-liked) family members, because those names happen to be in their style anyway. It is not time to score the tally sheet, is what I’m saying, even if we are assuming that honor names are done on a fair point system and need to be balanced, which they are not and need not. Names are connected to the people we’re honoring, but they also stay separate.
Your daughter’s father was honored here; that is the point to keep in mind. You don’t like it that his name was put third, but it is important to remember that the decision about order could have been made with no symbolic intent at all: the new parents could be thinking, “Good, we honored Grampa as we intended to, and we ALSO found a way to honor both of the baby’s grandfathers by using their names as middle names! What a happy surprise for them both!” The choice of order was most likely based on the rhythm or sound of the names, or on some similar issue.
It is also possible that there IS symbolism in it: let’s go to the worst case scenario and assume that they chose this order deliberately in order to communicate their feelings. Let’s say they genuinely DID mean to show your daughter’s father that he was third in their joint affections. In that case, I would say several things:
1. Third is pretty great.
2. There is still only honor in the act of using the name, not insult or hurt.
3. You are right that nothing can be said or done about this (including communicative behavior such as walking out of a room, or withholding a positive comment on the use of the name).
I realize it is hard to do much about feelings: if you feel hurt, you feel hurt; if your daughter’s father feels hurt, he feels hurt. But I strongly advise you to make the effort, to whatever extent is possible: these hurt feelings may be real but they are nevertheless inappropriate, and indulging them will bring you nowhere good. Give yourself a brisk talking-to; reason with yourself; think things through until you have chipped away at the false foundation of those feelings. Give yourself some time, if you need it: as you say, the birth of a baby is a beautiful but emotional event. But by all means, don’t NURSE the feelings and grow them bigger and stronger; don’t try to plant them in your daughter’s father if he doesn’t already have them.
Concentrate on the honor, rather than on what you perceive to be the relative honor. Concentrate on your lovely new grandson, and how wonderful it is that he has so many good family names—not from “our side” or “their side” of the family: the other side of the family is your family too, the two sides permanently linked by the birth of this new baby.
I wonder if we could be of additional assistance by giving examples of honor names we used that did not accurately represent our exact ranking of family members? For example, Paul and I love our grandmothers as much as we love our grandfathers, but we used only two grandfather names—neglecting the other two grandfathers and all four grandmothers. We could have used a grandmother name for my daughter’s middle name, but we tried them out and didn’t like the combinations; also, we had another priority for her middle name (using another candidate that was almost her first name); also, one of my grandmothers had a name with a bad association for me. We could have honored the other two grandfathers with the names of our other two sons, but instead we used other names; in one case, it was because the name was too similar to a first name we were using, but overall it was because we felt we’d “done” grandfathers and were ready to honor some of the many, many other possible candidates. We used my dad’s name as the first name of one of our sons, but didn’t even use my mom’s name as a middle name; this doesn’t reflect a difference in how we feel about my dad and mom, but instead reflects the way my mom’s name sounds odd as a middle name and wrong-generation for a first name, and seemed weird to use once we’d used my dad’s name for another child; it also reflects that we had four boys and only one girl. And my dad is more important to me than my grandfather, but I honored my grandfather first because my grandfather likely had less time, and because my dad’s name didn’t work as a middle name with my first son’s name and I hadn’t yet considered using it as a first name. I gave all the children my maiden name as their second middle name, not because it matters to me less (it was crucial to me to use it) but because it reflected the order of my own name.
There are so many reasons why names are chosen or not chosen, or why they’re used where/when they’re used.
Wow – really nailed it! Great response.
Terrific response!
Dear new grandmother, your daughter bucked a pretty big trend and gave her son TWO MIDDLE NAMES so that she could honor her father. You should be proud beyond belief.
I think it is sad and totally inappropriate to be upset that your daughter is honoring her father, but not in the order of your choice. My husband and I chose to also give our son two middle names, after our fathers- which we didn’t have to do, just like your daughter didn’t have to do. I could see being hurt if he was left out, but he wasn’t. The order of names was likely the rhythm and sound of the names together, like how we decided. It doesn’t sound like your daughter is the type to “rank” parents and put them in order. She just had a baby and her and her husband wanted to honor their fathers. I would rethink your mindset and be proud and happy that he was included.
I think you need to let this one go. I personally feel it’s so sad that you are more upset about the order of names and perceived slight than you are ecstatic, touched and grateful that they chose to honour your family in the first place.
This letter is why I’m slightly terrified of naming future children. We’ve already heard ‘you should use a family name’ rumblings from BOTH sides. Ugh.
Thanks for the amazing response, Swistle.
We looked up the meaning of the names we chose and used that as our reason of choice. Even though we had the first two grandchildren on my side and the first grandchild on my hubby’s side, there was no argument against it. In fact, when I liked a certain name that a distant aunt on my husband’s side has, his mom said we should ask her permission. I liked the name before I even knew of her existence. We decided on something with more meaning instead. I regret giving my first child my middle name though. It was the hardest middle name to choose.
I’m thinking of giving our next baby 3 middle names to spell out NMI as a joke. That’ll be our only child with 4 given names. I’m also liking the idea of rhyming my next baby’s name with my second child (child 2 is Savannah…I wish I thought of Hannah for her middle name….now I want Hannah to be our next daughter.)
Swistle drops the mic and walks offstage. NAILED IT.
******Ditto******
I would like to start the slow clap that leads to your standing ovation. Nailed it!
Preach it, sister!
Preach it, sister!
What a great reply! I am just wondering if there’s any chance the writer meant that the daughter’s father was not represented at all. As in… there was only one first name and only one middle name, and neither were named after the maternal family. Re-reading her wording, it’s hard to be sure, but in this sentence, “and then the second name was the fathers father and then last but feeling least was my daughter’s father, ” it’s possible that “last but feeling least” doesn’t mean that he got the 2nd middle name spot as much of a representation of how he felt.
Either way, I think your reply is still super, and still spot-on. I hope no one would ever interpret my children’s names as who was the most honored/ loved because they would be way off.
Swistle, amazing as always.
When we were debating middle names and thought of using two, one from each side of the family, it was simply a matter of initial preference which one we were going to put first (RM versus MR because I didn’t like MR [mister] being in the middle of the name) and it in NO WAY signified who was receiving a higher honor. We thought they were BOTH honoring.
I would also point out that by putting the maternal grandfather’s immediately following the last name, it avoids having the paternal grandfather’s name being IN the name entirely, assuming the mother is using a married name and not her maiden name.
We did RM over MR too! The rhythm was better. No one is suggesting that hubs loved his nana more than I loved my gran. He didn’t care about order and left it up to me. It sounded better. End of story.
My gran was tickled pink that her name was used – precisely the correct response!
I just can’t with this.
Great response swistle.
Bravo, Swistle, Bravo!
In our case it is about balance…since we have a son who is an IV, the rest of our kids are/will probably have more honor names from my side to balance it out.
Swistle was much kinder than I would have been. The only middle name etiquette is that the parents choose it.
I agree with Swistle, but just wanted to say I can see why the original poster would feel this way. Because I could see myself feeling similarly (at least initially). It’s the reason my husband and I chose not to name our children after any family or friends. Before we were even thinking about having children, my brother-in-law and his wife had a baby girl and did give an honour middle name (which I thought was lovely). I took the opportunity then to express to my mother-in-law both how nice a tribute it was and how my husband and I wouldn’t be naming our kids after family because I wouldn’t be able to decide and I was worried about hurt feelings (even though it’s possible no one would be upset).
I like your response. Having a new baby in the family (particularly a first grandchild!) is a very emotional event for everybody, and there’s no reason for everybody to pile on with criticism in the comments. This proud grandma seems to recognize that her response is not the best one to have, and she should be applauded for not saying anything about it to her daughter. (After all, airing thoughts like this is what strangers on the internet are for, isn’t it?!) It’s also probably helpful for her to hear some alternative explanations (of which there are many!) about why the order almost definitely has nothing to do with importance or closeness. Hopefully venting and getting constructive (!!) feedback will help her move past this and enjoy her time with her new grandson.
Swistle,
You. Are. Awesome.
Our first three kids have honor names from my husband’s side, and my last two kids have honor names from my side. We just liked certain first names that went well with his side’s honor names as middles, and then for the last two kids we liked names that went with my side’s honor names. My husband’s side also has names that better fit our style.
I did worry about the reaction, but there was no need for concern. If anyone was sad/upset, they said nothing.
I guess there’s a benefit to having lots of kids – lots of opportunity to “cover” names!
And I will say that we gave my firstborn son a name that was completely from my husband’s side: first name, middle name, and then my husband’s last name. The first name and middle name was the full name of my husband’s grandmother’s brother, who died in WWII. She was thrilled, we were thrilled, everyone was thrilled. I’m glad we went for it (she passed away the next year) instead of worrying about family “balance.”
We also did the double middle for our third son to fit in an extra honor name (for my grandfather.) Again, he was tickled pink. We certainly didn’t mean to do him “less” honor by putting his name third. The rhythm of my son’s name was better when we put it third.
Families and names and perceptions can bring out the worst in people. I am sure your daughter thinks she is doing the best thing for both sides of the family. What if she and her husband are a “one and done” couple and this is their only child? They decided to honor as many men on both sides as possible!!! And yes, they bucked the trend of one first name and one middle name with two. Who knows? Maybe your husband’s name will be the chosen middle name for forms, or they will let the grandson decide when he is older! Big deal!! It is their family, their wonderful baby, and their choice. They had to choose SOME order, would you feel boastful if your husband’s name was the second name? My thought was that either the names sound better in that order, OR they thought “let’s follow genealogy and have great grandpa and then grandpa from that side (dad and son) and then add the other grandpa.” Maybe they wanted to be absolutely sure to include all of these men, if they have 2 children and the next is a girl… Did your daughter take her husband’s last name when she married him? Did that make you feel slighted? She has left your family name behind.
My other impression is: good gravy, be stinkin’ happy that the 2 sides of the family are so wonderful to include so many wonderful men!! Your grandson will grow up knowing that he holds so much history from both sides. My first child is a boy, and between my husband and my dysfunctional families, we could not find one man to honor, so he has my husband’s name as his middle. Our fathers were both selfish, non-involved dads, divorce; mine was abusive, alcoholic and is a chain smoker. Among our grandfathers we had abuse, no real positive memories, another sibling already used their name, names were not our style to use, etc. we were at a loss.
I remember with our second, a daughter, when I was pregnant. My mother in law told us she was going to write down the names she ThOUGHT we would choose. We were so insulted by this. We did not share our name ideas with anyone. We did not want to know her guesses out of sheer terror she would expect us to honor her, or her attempts to read our minds. Be thankful your daughter told you in advance that the baby would honor great grandpa. It should have been a thrill to know that they also honored the grandpas. And I hope both grandpas are still alive, so baby can have a fruitful relationship with both of them. Said mother in law live 2.5 hours away and only visits 3x a year. Moving forward, it is time to smile and embrace a wonderful new baby! You had your chance to name your kids, now it is their turn. Spoil that kid – kiss his little toes, teach him patty cake. Be a gramma that he will have great memories with, and try to genuinely tell your daughter how proud you are of her and how special of a name they chose. And DO NOT badger your husband into feeling like you do. Embrace your wonderful family and new addition!!
Just be glad your daughter is healthy and your grandbaby is happy. Pregnancy is dangerous, and so many things can go wrong for the mom or baby, or both.
Healthy * but I hope he is happy too
Swistle rocks!
Stuff like this is why I often suggest to people that they not use any family honor names. Ugh.
My oldest son’s first name is an honor name from both sides. His middle name is after my grandfather. My mother in law was upset when she found out his first name was also a family name on my side. Somehow her side was less honored just because both families happen to have a tradition of passing on a very common name? Whatever. At that point I decided to just let her think his middle name was because we liked it.
My youngest son’s first name was chosen because we liked it, as was his middle name. And my mother in law wasn’t happy with that either She “hates” his first name, begged us to change it and stated she would never use it (she called him “the baby” until he was nearly a year old). You just can’t win with some people.
Great response! There are a lot of great men in my family. I’d love to honor them all. However, I also want my children to have stylish names that I feel represent my husband and I’s style. I love my father, he is the best man I know. I can’t imagine using his first name for my child (I will consider his middle name though). My paternal grandfather is brilliant but both his first and middle name are bad (like really bad!). My maternal grandfather’s first name is really not my favorite but his middle name makes my heart sing! How wonderful that I can honor a great man in my family tree AND use a name I love. My point is that choosing to use an honor name isn’t 100% about bestowing an honor, there are other considerations that are being made as Swistle pointed out. Additionally, we are currently expecting our first. If baby is a boy, his middle name will be my husband’s fathers middle name. I feel absolutely NO guilt that we aren’t also using my father’s name for this kid. If we have other children, we will attempt to honor my side. If that doesn’t work out, my family still knows i love them! Honoring a family member isn’t relative. If your daughter has a second son and decided to use her father’s name for that child instead does it mean the honor is less because it was used for the second child? I think not. The fact that she used both father’s names in the middle makes me think she did it just to honor both men so no one would feel left out and yet, you are upset about the placement of his name? I agree with Swistle, you can’t help how you feel but I think you should attempt to alter your perspective and certainly never let her know, you expected a GREATER honor than he was given.
Hi to A!
Agree with Swistle about focusing on the positive: your daughter’s father was included in a lovely gesture! A lot of folks (perhaps most) go through life without a namesake. Secondly, don’t forget that this time makes everybody’s emotions strong, including yours! Your daughter and grandson made it through safe and sound–joy and relief. The name wasn’t what you expected–disappointment, curiosity, frustration? That’s okay too. But just because the feeling is strong doesn’t mean the attending thoughts aren’t distorted. Don’t they love us as much as them? Are we being slighted? No way.
Also, these feelings and thoughts will pass, especially if you acknowledge them and let them float by. Soon you will chuckle at yourself.
Good luck moving on!
I have my hands in the air, and I’m yelling, “Go, Swistle, go!” Well done, my friend. Kind and empathetic but intolerant of joy-stealing. I love it!
Agreed!!!
We gave both our kiddos two middle names, one after each side of the family and here’s what I can tell you:
1. It isn’t that common and some people have actually questioned why we would burden our kids with two middles names. So, props to your daughter and her husband/partner in wanting to honour both sides. Imagine how you both would have felt if they hadn’t used your husbands name? So does being “third” name really matter? I would be happy and proud that they wanted to use it!
2) when we were deciding the order, we didn’t really have a good way or reason as to why we put one before the other. So how we decided?? We decided to keep his family’s names in second middle name place to keep it with his last name (does that make sense?
so we did: firstname myfamily hisfamily ourlastname
We honestly never once thought that his family would think that by putting his parents second that meant they were second in te family. It was the only thing that made sense to us at the time.
3) we also wanted to consider the look/feel of the name. For my mom, we used my moms name, Gail, for te middle name to honour but and we changed the spelling to Gael. Strictly because it was pronounced the same but We are French heritage so we went with the French spelling (as are the rest of her other three names). Never once did we think or consider that we were doing a disservice to my mom. We liked the look of Gael better.
I hope that helps. Just to help you guys understand that when naming your kid sometimes things are so stressful or else you are blinded because you’ve been discussing names for 9 months that you think you are doing what seems best and matches your preferences and desires and not realize at all that there could be a different way of looking at it. I bet in your daughters eyes, your husband is her number one. I think that’s all that matters. I don’t think yor grandsons relationship with your husband will be any different then if his name was 2 not 3.
:) congrats! Have a good upset/cry about it and move on and snuggle that little cutie!
Sorry for all the typos. Wrote this on my phone and was having some difficulty. I also hope it made sense.
Wow. My MIL is a drama queen, always being passive aggressive about perceived slights, etc., so I am reacting to this letter really negatively and won’t write what I really think. I hope for the sake of the family that this was a one-off, and the letter writer was just tired, or something.
Well, Swistle really said everything that needed to be said, but I’m going to answer the call to arms and give an example of using honor names that don’t accurately reflect preference, etc. The name we have chosen for a boy is a great-grandfather name, a man I never met but who was by all accounts a great person. Plus it’s a stylish name. Plus it sort of honors my mother by proxy (this was my thinking anyway, really I just love the name!) My decision to use it was not incredibly well thought out. It just seemed like a good choice for a future son. In fact, the middle name we are using with it is a far more “personally” meaningful name. Putting it in the middle was by no means a slight! I guarantee you that your daughter was merely trying to include a good balance of names she liked and names of men she wanted to honor.
Walking out of the room sends a clear and very strong message. In fact, a member of my family did it to me when I was discussing name choices. It so affected me that it made me change my naming decision, and I have always regretted it.
When you can, if you can, I think you should tell your daughter that your grandson has a beautiful name. It will put her at ease after your initial reaction.
This is why my daughter was named after no one. I wouldn’t dare use one grandmother’s name and not the other. Both names were difficult anyway and would have lead to tears and resentment.
Bravo Swistle!
Our story: my middle name is my mom’s maiden (and current) name, hers is her mom’s, grandmom’s middle is great-grandmom’s maiden and so on. I wanted to cotinue this tradition, but my maiden (and current surname) clashed with husbands/children’s surname. Think Bailey and Stabalee. So John Bailey Stabalee. My spouse was very unhappy with that idea (and he’s probably right; I’m just emotionally attached) so we used my middle (mom’s maiden) instead. It sometimes makes me sad that my last name isn’t part of my kids’ names, or that I can’t use it as a first name, but that’s the breaks. And my mom and dad are long divorced and I’d be devastated if Dad thought the honor names reflected on my love for him or for mom. That name is to honor me.
Would it have been better if he’d been named only from paternal side, as is common in patriarchal societies?
Swistle, I’ve always loved you, but this has put you in a whole new realm of appreciation for me.
As for the original poster, I was in your daughter’s situation. Our family was very unimpressed with our name choices. Years later I still replay the scene where my husband’s grandmother literally turned her back on me and didn’t talk to me again after we told her the baby’s name. She never said anything, but it wasn’t what she said that hurt. She has since passed away, and the hurt is still there and stings as if it happened yesterday.
You have repair work to do, you need to gush and show your happiness over the name. Because it kills me that I have disappointed family with my name choices. But it doesn’t change the fact that it was MY baby to name. Nobody else gets that choice, and there is no wrong name. Just beautiful names for beautiful babies.
Wow. My mom disliked my choice for our son’s first name. But thankfully she knew early on (before we even knew the sex) that we had no other boy name choices, and she was well over it by the time we had him. We used my father’s name as his middle name, mostly because (for me) there wasn’t anyone that I wanted to honor on my husband’s side and the one person who was possibly honorable had already been honored by my SIL and nephew.
Mostly this makes me glad that no one was around when I filled out the birth certificate information. I can be a pretty tough cookie though, so had someone reacted to his name like you did to your daughter, I hope I would have let it roll off my back. If I were you, I would probably call up my daughter and say how beautiful your grandson’s name is.
I have 4 children who all have honor middle names. When it came to number 4, we had already honored my family twice and his only once so it was “his turn”. We found out we were having a girl and although we wanted to used his grandfather’s name as a middle, the first name we fell in love with was unisex. My husband and I agreed that she needed a more feminine middle to balance the first and decided to honor another of my relatives. It had nothing to do with the raking of honorees as we would have loved to honor his grandfather…it just didn’t work out this time.
My paternal grandmother died tragically around the time my parents found out they were expecting me. They gave me her name as my middle. I never knew her but, based on what my parents have told me about her, she would have easily traded a naming honour for the chance to know me. Namesake or no namesake, both you and your husband get to have a relationship with this child. Be grateful.
I usually agree with what Swistle says but I have to say that I think the response to this Grandma shouldn’t have been so harsh! Whether her feelings are inappropriate or not, they are HER feelings. A baby being born is emotional for every one and because the Grandma was a little blindsided in the naming pushed the emotions over the edge. I think it was great for Swistle to point out that there could have been a number of reasons why her daughter named the baby the way she did but I’m sure the Grandma will get over being hurt. This is the major reason that my husband and I did not name our child after anyone in our family is so that we would never hurt unintentionally hurt anyone. I don’t like how everyone is bashing this Grandma, different personalities are more sensitive than others and respond to hurt differently. There have to be some underlying issues than can’t be seen just with this letter. Here’s to hoping that they are all able to enjoy this joyous blessing!
I feel the same way… The advice is good and totally spot on but the reply seemed a bit harsh as have been the comments…
I know my grandmother would have felt the same way which is why my parents didn’t use honor names for my sister and I. Which is one solution, but I really like honor names so luckily for me I married a Jewish guy and his tradition is to name after the deceased (the intention idea being that their valued personality traits – kindness, generosity, etc – will be “passed onto” the child) so my grandmother got her honor name after all even though the actual name isn’t modern/loved by everyone!
You are being very kind, and that is a great virtue. I think the responses seem a bit harsher than normal because the feelings expressed in the letter appear to be quite selfish (i.e., *my* feelings were hurt because the naming of my grandchild wasn’t what *I* wanted to see and so *I* reacted by rejecting the name when it was presented and walking out of the room. Not only that, but I am trying to get my spouse to admit to being offended, even though he says he doesn’t mind, etc.).
Though it is appropriate to acknowledge that these are the letter writer’s feelings and that there’s not much that can be done about how she feels (beside gaining perspective), there is no need to validate these feelings, in my opinion.
Vanessa,
Sometimes people just need validation for them to move on. I can 100% say that I have been selfish at times and one would be lying if they say they are never selfish. We live in a selfish world. Perhaps this is one time the Grandma was selfish. She will surely realize that her emotions got the best of her and she will put this behind her.
I also think the original writer has been a little demonised here. My husband & I have been on the end of my daughter’s, in-laws stunts & insults. Personal insults on her wedding day, removal of property from my daughter and her husbands house as his parents have a key, being ignored and damn right rude to at family events, made out be a liar, only for the truth to come out and we were vindicated, just to name a few. You can image our shock and total devastation when they announced they were calling our 1st grandson after my daughter’s husband’s father. He’s not dead, he lives next door to them.(that’s another story) My husband just couldn’t understand why she would agree to this. He had a very close relationship with our daughter, she was the apple of his eye. I don’t think they have really had a cross word, well not serious, in her 26 year life. On the day she came home from hospital, we were summoned to their house. I say summoned as we refused twice to go round as she was very tired after a difficult birth and a sleepless baby. We were actively encouraged to go, upon arrival we were greeted with I must ring the registrar to morrow to register him. which I thought what’s the rush, you have 6 weeks, which I said to her, thinking it was just a daft thing to be thinking about, 3 hours after coming home from hospital. We were there approximately half an hour and it was announced, ” we hope you won’t be offended but were calling him (middle name) after his dad” We were a bit shocked to say the least. We didn’t comment at the time as we were so stunned. We had laughed and joked throughout the pregnancy about names and middle names and what different initials would spell, nothing was ever mentioned, traditions, likes, wants, nothing. My husband was and is so hurt by it, especially as our daughter’s father-in-law has treat her so badly in the last few years. Why?
It was over the next few days that it started to unravel what had been going on, we had a massive family argument and to cut a long story short, we no longer see our daughter or our grandson. She says we abandoned her when she needed us most, we say, you have been cruel and thoughtless, especially as in the middle of this, her own grandfather died(husbands father) and she still went and registered the child with the father-in-laws name.
Having never been considered how we would feel or the reasons why we thought it wasn’t appropriate, we had to accept it’s their son, they can name him what they like.
She has to accept, we don’t want anything to do with people that can be so nasty. Toxic adult children, they suck the life out of you, make you feel guilty for what they think is any parental decision you have ever made, fleece you of cash, time and energy and then expect us to still be there when they treat you like dirt. Sorry, they are adults, don’t expect people to keep taking a kick in the teeth, as my youngest son put it, and keep going back for more. As our daughter quite rightly said ” what sort of a position would she be in when they (the in-laws) want to throw his 1st birthday party” We know what’s coming in the future so as the terms and conditions were quite clearly laid out in front of us, we declined them. Toxic adult children, don’t forget, they may be our children, but they are adults too and as such must take responsibility for their actions. Don’t feel guilty for feeling the way you do, embrace it, and tell them to get stuffed, as parents we’re not here to be black mailed by grand children. All my daughter had to say to her husband was, “we’ll pick a different middle name, or no middle name, how do you think it will make my father feel, naming after your father only? ”
So do I feel guilty about not seeing my daughter or grandson, nope, not one bit. Do I feel we don’t count in our daughters life? Yep, sure do. Instead of ringing our hands, we removed ourselves from the situation, we don’t need people like that in our lives and I’m fed up of everyone bleating on about how forgiving, how appreciative the grand parents should be. Why exactly? They are adults, if they make decisions that are divisive, then live with consequences. They are adults, stop being blackmailed by your children and grand children, get back your self esteem, self respect and be proud, you gave your children the best start in life you could, no conditions, no strings but don’t think you can blatantly insult us and expect us still to come crawling round, just because you have our grandchildren.
Anne, I wholeheartedly agree with you an applaud your resolve. I consider my mom to be the toxic parent and believe she considers me the toxic child. We stopped talking for about two years because I accidentally forgot to wish her mother (my maternal grandmother whom I love very much and have great affection for) by phone or on Facebook a happy birthday (again because I always forget birthdays and it was in the middle of military training week). She accused me of things that aren’t true (they’re related to my thoughts and feelings) and didn’t acknowledge the things or excused the things I accused her of that I know to be true (I have witnesses and even one legal proceeding – she actually did them, has nothing to do with her thoughts or feelings). We started up again when my grandmother’s health went down and even got to play our flutes together (she was better at it when I was a kid, no longer good but I enjoyed it anyway) around the time of her funeral. She even texted me once while I was deployed and I tried talking to her again while on deployment. No response. I’ve been back since April. She went through a hip surgery that I found out through my MIL who found put on Facebook. Yeah….I still ignore FB. No need to share my life story there and get sucked into all the crap I see there. No regrets and my child has her number. The youngest doesn’t have a phone number yet.
I would just try and move past this issue and focus on being an amazing, loving grandmother. You have no control over the situation and nothing you can do can change the name. Brining up your discomfort would only offend the new parents and it’s 100% unlikely that they would change their son’s name at this point. The name order doesn’t sound like it was intended as a malicious move so I would try to avoid interpreting it as one. In the long run, the loving relationship you build with this child will matter a lot more than a middle name.
If you’re looking for an anecdote- both my cousin and I have double middle names honouring both sides of our families. I asked both of our parents how they chose to order our middle names. Both sets of parents said it was simply a a case of what sounded good to them. There were no other motives.
My first son is named after his maternal great grandpa. The reason being? He is the only living great grandparent. We wanted to honor him while he was still alive and use deceased great grandparents names later.
Second son has two middle names. Both after his grandpas. Maternal grandpa first, Charles. Paternal grandpa third, Scott. My husband is an only boy so his boys are carrying on his name. Charles Scott sounded much better than Scott Charles. We did NOT rank our dads based on name order. We went with what sounded best. Both grandpas were highly honored.
My husband is named after his father, so when we were pregnant with our first son there was A LOT of pressure to have Vincent III. I was dead against this not because I had ill feelings towards my FIL but because I wanted my son to have his own identity (my MIL refers to FIL as “my” Vincent and my hubby as “your” Vincent when she speaks to me which I hate because it makes me feel like I stole her son.) So the family name went to the middle slot.
I love my Dad dearly so when we had our second son I felt a moral obligation to use his name in the middle slot to balance the equation. But his name is very old fashioned even for his generation and frankly I didn’t want to burden my son with it. We toyed with using his initials RB but couldn’t find an R name we both loved to use as the first name. The anxiety over potentially offending him made me sick and I couldn’t really talk to him and explain my reasoning (love you, hate your name). We agonised over it right through the pregnancy and a week before he was born decided to give son #2 the same middle name as hubby – which stressed the honour figure for both boys as their daddy rather than one grandfather being honoured and the other missing out. Again not because I have anything but love for both grandfathers, but because doing what was “right” just didn’t feel right to me.
I’m sure your daughter went through similar struggles and would love your reassurance that you appreciate her including her fathers name.
Well, with our daughters, we didn’t really plan on using honor names, we just focused on finding names we loved and thought sounded good together. It ended up that our second daughter’s middle name is my older sister’s name AND the middle name of my husband’s sister. We love the name and it was a bonus for us that it managed to honor both sides of our family.
Now I’m pregnant with our third child. When discussing possible girl names, my husband brought up using another of my sister’s names for a middle. I immediately said no. I have three sisters, and if we honor-named two of them and not the other, that would feel wrong to me. We’re pretty sure this will be our last baby, so there would be no more opportunities to honor another sister. So that’s where we are with that.
If you’re reading this, LW, I agree with Swistle’s answer. It’s an honor for your husband to be included no matter what place his name was in. And if, as another commenter suggested, what you meant was that your husband was left out entirely, I’m sure that your daughter didn’t mean it to hurt you. It’s entirely possible that they plan to honor your husband or you with their next child. I hope you can get past this with time.
Totally agree. We gave our daughter two middle names, one for each grandmother, paternal grandmother first. It had nothing to do with ranking, just that M. S. sounded better than S. M. If we have a biy, we will use the same order for the same reasons.
Poster is reading too much into things.
My husband is insistent on using his father’s name as the first name, and if that was the case I would feel that by using my father’s name as the second name it would hurt my father’s feelings in some way – so that is why I choose not to use either!
I completely understand that poster’s feelings. However your daughter did not intentionally set out to hurt them and this should never be brought up. Like one reply said, if possible you should compliment the name. You probably learned it at that moment because it was supposed to be a surprise and your daughter is waiting for you to say something positive about it!