Naming baby after one grandmother -- what do you think?

[NY Disney fan]

Two weeks ago my friend gave birth and named her daughter after her paternal grandmother. Both of her grandmothers are in her life. She is free to name her baby whatever she likes but do you think it is hurtful to name a baby after one grandmother when both grandmothers are involved in your life?

ETA: the name is the first name (not the middle name).

 

[scootch]

Our oldest dd has the middle name of Dh's mom. Dh's mom had 5 sisters, and all 6 of them had the middle name Marie. So we named our oldest after Dh's moms side of the family. At the time my mom was alive(his was not). My mom didn't mind at all. Thankfully we were blessed with another daughter and we gave her my mom's middle name, Elaine.

 

[crz4mm2]

My DD has my MIL's middle name.

DS has my Dad's (and my DH's) middle name.

 

[bballmom56]

It probably depends on the family dynamics, the relationships, and the personalities of the people involved.

 

[SaraJayne]

DD is named after her paternal great-grandmother (same first name), a woman that died when DH was a teenager.

No, I don't think it is hurtful at all.

 

[Breezy_Carol]

do you think it is hurtful to name a baby after one grandmother when both grandmothers are involved in your life?

No.

A child can only have so many names. The father has grandparents also. And with divorce, there are multitudes of people that could end up with hurt feelings.

My DD has my grandmother's name because DH and I both liked the name and it happened to be my grandmother's. DS has a name that runs through DH's side of the family. It all works out in the end.

 

[sweetdana]

Not at all, I picked 1 sil name for my 1st DDs mid name, and 2nd dds is no ones. I have 2 sis and 3 sil. I never thought about if offended anyone.

 

[My2Qtz0205]

It might also depend on what the names of the grandmothers are. I loved both of my grandmothers dearly, but when it came to choosing a middle name for my daughter, my choices were Gertrude and Mary. Guess which one I chose? Other thoughts that came into play: I am Mary's only granddaughter, and the only grandchild that will be providing her with great-grandchildren, so this was basically her only chance to have a namesake. As it turned out, my daughter was born the day before my grandmother's birthday. I wish they had had more time to get to know each other before my grandmother got sick.

(also, one of my cousins had named one of her daughters after my other grandmother's middle name, a much more timeless Elizabeth )

 

[Maggie Lizer]

Hurtful? No. Why is it hurtful? Keeping the child from seeing the grandparents, or using the name as a way to purposefully insult the one grandma may be hurtful, but absent any other factors, I really don't see the big deal.

 

[luvmy3]

No I don't think it is hurtful at all. If my last child was a girl I wanted to name her after my Grandmother. My other Grandmother and both dh's Grandmothers were still alive at the time.

 

[mjkacmom]

I see nothing wrong with that - I love family names, but some are nicer than others. #1's middle name is my mom's, and both of my grandmothers, #2's first name is DH's dad's, and my dad's name is the middle, #3's first name is my aunt's, and her middle is DH's mom's, #4 is my grandmother's, and #5's first is my grandfather's, and his middle is my other grandfather's.

 

[diznygirl]

My son has my grandfather's name and my daughter has a middle name that is a great-grandmother on the other side. Completely coincidental!

We chose names we liked. That someone else had the name just happened.

I would just roll my eyes at anyone feeling hurt over our children's names.

 

[kerriemiller]

My DD4 is named after my husbands pateranl grandmother and my mothers paternal grandmother (niether are living but were a part of his life as a child) and my DD2 is named after my husbands maternal grandmother and my mother (niether are living) it was a tough decision there were so many beautiful names in our family tree that it was hard to pick.

It might be differant because our relatives are deceased but nobody was upset

 

[ols386]

It probably depends on the family dynamics, the relationships, and the personalities of the people involved.

This.

 

[kelleigh1]

Maybe they just really liked her name and aren't crazy about the other GM's name.

My father's aunts were all upset when my sisters and I were born because my parents didn't name us after them. They didn't name us after anyone else in the family either. I like having a unique name. It's my identity and I'm very glad that I wasn't named after someone else.

 

[clutter]

I'm not really sure what the other option is. Use both grandmother's names? Then is the one with the middle name offended? There are 7 grandchildren in our family. Most (I can't remember if it's all or not) have a name that is associated with one side or the other. Never both sides.

My dd is named after my mother's mother. My dad wasn't hurt at all, I don't even think he thought twice about it. My poor mom had one of those awful names, so that the six prior grandkids had pieces of my dad's name and her middle name as middle names, but not her first. She understood. So I think she was happy that my dd's first name is the same as her moms (different spelling due to different languages, though).

 

[VAN]

Yes, you do risk hurting one grandmother over the other ... don't kid yourself about that.

Just some thoughts, by naming the baby "after the grandmother" do you get more money in the will? Are you doing this to "honor" this grandmother. .... Or do you just LIKE THE NAME?

If you choose to use the same name as one grandmother, then I would be low-key about it and just say that you "like the name".

The other option is to have more children and tell the other grandmother that the NEXT kid gets her name!!!

You can do what you want, but don't be fooled into thinking the other grandmother won't be hurt if you make a big deal about naming them "after" the other woman.

Just MHO.

 

[Becky2005]

It wouldn't even occur to me to think about it offending anyone. I have a hard enough time with names to even consider that.

On the other hand, I guess I got lucky as my mother told me to not even remotely consider her name (she doesn't care for it all that much) but she would have thought I was insane and tried to knock some sense into me if I had done that.

As it is, I used one of my aunt's middle names as my DD's middle name but it really had nothing to do with it. Her middle name is Marie -- so basically a typical middle name that is used for a billion people. When she was born once we got the first name, Marie literally just popped into my head for the middle name -- I had no clue who else had the middle name in my family (turns out a lot do).

 

[SaraJayne]

Yes, you do risk hurting one grandmother over the other ... don't kid yourself about that.

Just some thoughts, by naming the baby "after the grandmother" do you get more money in the will? Are you doing this to "honor" this grandmother. .... Or do you just LIKE THE NAME?

If you choose to use the same name as one grandmother, then I would be low-key about it and just say that you "like the name".

The other option is to have more children and tell the other grandmother that the NEXT kid gets her name!!!

You can do what you want, but don't be fooled into thinking the other grandmother won't be hurt if you make a big deal about naming them "after" the other woman.

Just MHO.

I'm not kidding myself at all about hurting other people in the family. My maternal grandmother (the only other girls name I would have considered) told me she'd haunt me until the day I died if I named my daughter after her. She hated her name (funnily enough, a very trendy "in" name now (Ella) and thought it was hideous).

So no, I wasn't worried about hurting her feelings. She made her feelings abundantly clear.

 

[4forMe]

I am guessing this may be a cultural issue. In my DH's culture, the 1st child is automatically named after the paternal grandparent. If another child is born later of the same sex, then that child is named after the maternal grandparent.

This doesn't cause problems in my DH's family for those that marry within the culture since they tend to follow the tradition.

Since DH and I are from different cultural/ethnic/religious backgrounds, we chose not to follow this tradition.