I am STILL getting crap from my DH's family about what we named DS.
DH didn't want to name our son Thomas or even use it as a middle name. He didn't like his father (who he got the Thomas from) and didn't want to carry it to his own son.
I think it's too bad that YOU are getting junk when it was your husband's initial feeling that he didn't want to name a kid after his dad.
Has anyone flat out SAID that to anyone? Sounds like everyone has now glossed over how he treated people...that's happening with my FIL too. Everyone wants to speak well of the dead, but the flat out truth is that he was an awful father and a rotten husband. Good grandpa, though.
Then again, I haven't been 100% honest with MIL about it. She came to us MONTHS after DS arrived to complain that we hadn't named him Russell, which was FIL's name. I kinda went "huh? when was THAT something we were supposed to do?" except not in those words.
Turns out we were expected to name DS Russell, because it is "tradition" that the boy be named after his grandfather. Um, OK. Not really. But SHE thinks it's tradition b/c FIL's father was Robert, and FIL told MIL that his boy would be named Robert. What SHE doesn't know is that FIL named DH after his best friend Robert, who was a drinking buddy of FIL and MIL disapproved of him. So the story was that DH was named after his grandfather, and so the apparent "tradition" was started.
None of this mattered, though, because NO ONE told us ahead of time what we were supposed to name DS! If ya have an opinion, let us know BEFORE babies are named....
Do you know what bugs me is hyphenating last names because the Wife won't take the Husband's last name. What happens 4 generations down when you have a problem something like this....
"Aaron Miller-Williams-Johnson-Nelson-Anderson-Taylor-Davis-Jones; put that candy back right now."
Except that won't happen, because most people will do something else with the next generation. And it won't be their parents' business.
I'm a B name, hubby's a W. I got over the "take hubby's name" stuff when I was a teen, and so we each kept our own names. And after much much thought, we chose B-W for DS.
We give very very little thought to what he might do with his children. If he chooses one of the names to name a child, that's great. If he changes his own last name to his spouse's, that's great. If he gives his children just ONE name like Cher, that's great. Not my business!
And nothing for anyone to EVER worry about.
I
I don't see carrying on a name as being egotistical but as paying tribute to those who came before us.
It pays tribute if you CHOOSE to do it. So if we have another baby and it's a girl, I want to use my maternal grandma's name. My cousin had a girl and used the same grandma's middle name, though not exactly...grandma's middle was Alice, and cousin named daughter Alyson, which also pays tribute to a different family name that is sort of Alyson.
But if family is FORCING this, then it's family ego.
My friend married into a family where it's "tradition" to use K names. There just aren't THAT many natural K names. And this has only been a tradition since her husband's mother named her kids. They do it b/c their mom was killed and they want to honor her. But as more kid are born, all the normal K names are taken and it's getting into weird spellings and flat out made up names. So my friend chose a K name for her DD's first name, a name (and I almost spelled that "Kname", just now) I don't even remember, and from the very very very beginning have called her by her middle name, an A name. She got around it!
She knew about the K name thing from the moment she got serious with her husband...I'm not sure I could have even done what she did...*having* to name someone in a certain way just bugs me.
