Hello!
I really love your site and name advice! We are in the USA, about to have our second boy child. Our last name rhymes with “Gates” but has a different first letter (not hard to guess haha).
Our first son is named Walter Allen “Gates.” Walter was taken from two great grandfathers and Allen is my husband’s middle name.
We’re preparing for baby boy #2 in January of next year. We love family names and honoring family name traditions. We do hope to have more children in the future.
My side of the family began a tradition of giving the second-born son the middle name “Bennett” (my dad’s middle name). We like Bennett and want to continue the tradition. Some options we like include:
Ezra Bennett [G]ates
Alden Bennett [G]ates
James Bennett [G]ates
OR Jim Bennett (I’ll explain this more)My husband and I both feel strongly about using a first name that honors my husband’s side too, particularly his grandpa. Now I’ll explain the dilemma. Grandpa’s name is Jimmy, goes by Jim. His name isn’t short for James or anything else—it’s literally just Jimmy/Jim!
Problem. I don’t like Jimmy as a stand alone. At all. Jimmy is out (as nickname it’s fine). We don’t like grandpa’s middle name either.
James isn’t my favorite of all names, but we appreciate it as a timeless classic. But it’s NOT grandpa’s name.
Jim is okay—I like its sound, its manliness—and it’s what grandpa goes by—and grandpa is an amazing man, worth naming after. But Jim isn’t a real full name, is it?
The options are, name our son James Bennett and nickname him Jim in honor.
OR, go all in and name him Jim Bennett [G]ates.Is it weird to just give him the name “Jim?” Is it insufficient as a given first name? I do like the ring of saying “Jim Bennett.”
On the other hand, is James Bennett the safer option? Would our son rather have James to fall back on one day? BUT, is James really even honoring grandpa, since his name isn’t James?? Only the nickname would be after him.
Or should we just forget it and do one of the other names we like paired with Bennett? I’m torn. Need some advice! Thank you!!
It sounds to me as if this is just one of those impossible situations: you would love to honor someone whose name unfortunately does not work for you as an honor name. The choices are: (1) Use the name anyway (i.e., go with Jimmy or Jim) or (2) Don’t use the name (i.e., go with another option from your list). The brain attempts to find a third option, but there is no third option. The two options can then be weighed on a scale: Which do you want more? Which is more important to you?
It is unfortunate that sometimes the people we would MOST love to honor with an honor name are the people who don’t have names we can use. Maybe it’s a name shared by another, problematic family member, or by an ex; maybe it’s a name that’s impossibly terrible with the surname; maybe it’s a name we hate; maybe we run out of children to name before we run out of names we feel a strong need to use; maybe the honor name only works on a girl/boy and we never have a girl/boy. Whatever the reason, this is a familiar situation to many of us: sometimes an honor name just doesn’t work out. Unless it is crucially, crucially important to honor this particular relative over all others, my opinion is that you should let this idea go. There are other ways to honor the people we love.
But if you were saying you LOVED the name Jim, and your only question was could you possibly use it as a given name, I would say sure! It’s not my own style or preference, and I personally wouldn’t want the hassle of a nickname name (“No, actually, it’s just Jen, it’s not short for Jennifer”), but people do it all the time; in fact, there are many parents who deliberately give children nickname names, saying they believe in naming the child what they’ll be called. So that’s what goes on the birth certificate: Charlie or Sam or Addie. And in your case it’s a family name, which makes it considerably easier: some people WILL assume it’s short for James, and then you’ll say “Oh, actually, it’s just Jim: it’s a family name!”
On the other hand, how new is your family’s Bennett tradition? Is there still room to reinterpret it? You could name him Bennett Jimmy or Bennett Jim. And since it sounds as if you’re using your husband’s family surname, this gives a better balance to the name; it’s still heavily weighted to your husband’s side, but it’s better than a first name from a first name on the father’s side, a middle name from a middle name on the mother’s side, and then a surname from the father’s side. But Bennett might be a little much with the surname.
Another option, since you’re planning to have more children, is to save the Jim/Jimmy decision for a future child, when you will not also be trying to use Bennett. If you have freedom of middle name, that gives you room to find a combination that transforms Jim/Jimmy into a completely desirable choice: e.g., maybe when you hear “Jim Ezra” you think “Wait, YES!!! Or maybe there’s another family name that would sound wonderful with Jimmy: you’ll be going through the family tree and you’ll think, “Jimmy _____!! YES!!”
But my own first choice would be to say, “Welp, we really, really wanted to name a child after Grandpa, and it would have been GREAT if we could have—but unfortunately we cannot make Grandpa’s name work for us,” and use another name instead.
Name update:
Swistle,
Thank you (and to all the commenters) for the great name advice! It definitely helped me to re-examine how I felt about our name options! You’ll probably laugh at where I landed after being so conflicted.
Our sweet Jimmy Bennett (G)ates has arrived!
I remembered some advice you gave to others about not restricting yourself so much when it came to names. I let go of whether a name was considered “real” or not. I wasn’t too concerned with balancing my husband’s side with mine—mainly because I have adopted his grandpa completely as my own, and therefore it wasn’t a matter of which side of the family he is on in this case. Grandpa Jim is as precious to me as if he had always been my own. (It’s also just unspoken between my husband and me that I have the last word in name choice. I had to truly be satisfied before the choice was made! Somehow, my opinion of Jimmy slowly changed, and it grew into love hahaha).
Grandpa Jim was so thrilled by the honor name that he was in tears—he was totally surprised. Sharing the news with him is now a dear memory.
We’re loving the name and confident that our little Jim will be happy with his name (and it’s many nn options) as he grows. Older brother Walter also approves. So far baby has been called Jim, Jimmy, Jimbo, Jim Bennett, etc., and it fits him perfectly!
Happy new year from Jim!