My husband carries the family name. He is the fourth generation. However, we have only had girls. My sister-in-law is expecting a boy in a few months. Should my nephew carry on this name?
I have so many questions.
- Is your sister-in-law your husband’s sister, or is she married to one of your husband’s siblings?
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Does your sister-in-law WANT to use this family name?
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Do you and your husband want her to use it?
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Is it important that a family name be kept going? Which of the people in this situation would say yes?
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Are you and your husband done having children?
There are so many interesting possibilities here. For example: your sister-in-law could be your husband’s sister, so the name and the tradition could both be important to her, and it could even be kind of fun to think of her being the one to carry it on when her brother couldn’t. Or, it could be that she’s married to, say, one of your husband’s brothers, and didn’t originally have any reason to believe this naming issue would apply to her. (If the latter is the case, I encourage everyone involved to drop the idea, unless the sister-in-law is the one actively campaigning for it.)
More interesting possibilities: It could be that you and your husband think it is important to carry on this tradition, and you wish your sister-in-law to understand that you believe it’s her responsibility to do so. Or it could be that your sister-in-law is the one who wants to use the name, and you and your husband think she should not. Or it could be that all of you are having a wonderful time thinking together about all of the interesting options.
Well. My own opinion is that this is the PERFECT moment to let an exponentially-increasing-in-pressure-with-each-generation naming tradition be broken naturally and gracefully, without anyone having to break it by refusing to use it. Paul’s parents broke a similar naming tradition when Paul was born, and it caused a gigantic family feud, including Paul’s grandfather refusing to acknowledge his birth, which is really Quite a Stance: “If this baby is not named after me, then this baby does not EXIST for me, because this tradition is more important to me than the baby itself!” Imagine!
Even in families where the tradition is theoretically cherished, it is important to acknowledge that the child has a second parent who is NOT FROM that family. I am a little amazed every time I hear of a co-parent agreeing to the Tradition of your-baby’s-name-is-chosen-for-you-by-my-family without extracting a privilege of similar heft and significance. My high school boyfriend was a III, and he went on to marry a woman who agreed to make their son a IV; but in exchange she got to choose the unrelated name the son would go by on a daily basis, and she got partial full naming rights (i.e., the children still had their father’s surname, but she got full choice of first/middle) for all subsequent children. WORK that deal.
Where was I? Oh yes: my opinion is that this is the perfect moment to let the tradition come to an end, as all such traditions eventually must; and this is absolutely the nicest and tidiest and least-fraught way it could possibly end, so I say SEIZE THAT OPPORTUNITY. If, however, your sister-in-law is your husband’s sister and is PINING to use the name because the tradition is very important to her, then I see no reason she shouldn’t: once we get past Sr./Jr., a baby gets the next number in line whether they’re an immediate descendant or not, so your nephew can certainly be Important Male Descendant V. (And if your sister-in-law is co-parenting, the co-parent should extract full naming rights for the next child, at minimum.)
Another option is that one of your daughters could carry it on: the numbering system doesn’t care if a generation is skipped. And I am a little curious to know if “We will need to use my surname, and the first and middle names are already decided, because my first child needs to be named in full after my father; it’s a family tradition” will work as easily for her as it has for four generations of men.
I’m the 8th generation of Marie/Maria and it’s skipped around from mother to daughter, aunt to niece, been a first name sometimes and a middle name other times, and multiple women in the same generation have used it. It’s worked out well for our family to be flexible.
I love this!!!
Don’t think there’s any should about it! If they want it they could do it certainly. My cousin and his wife broke with the family naming tradition (male virtue first name followed by name than starts with a particular initial i.e. Name, Name beginning with P, last name ) for their children but my spouse and I took it up again.
I like your family’s unique naming tradition! Are you allowed to repeat names? It seems like you would run out of male virtue names pretty quickly.
Oh gosh, it’s a specific male virtue name for the first name! I was trying to be ~vague~. The middle name changes but always begins with the same letter!
I want a lot of follow up info from the OP
My first inclination was that yes, sis-in-law should use the family name. Then I read Swistle’s explanation of what happened with Paul’s grandfather and realized that there are people that you definitely don’t want your kid named after. If the first three generations of the holder of the name were upstanding people, making the energy of the name an unmitigated positive, and your husband, as the current bearer of the name, is happy to have his nephew named after him, then, yes, it would be nice to continue the name. If, however, there has been angst or pressure associated with it, I’d say let the name go for this generation.
I love this whole analysis. Let the tradition die a natural death, unless the parents of the baby think it’s fun to continue it.
If I was the guy with the family name I’d tell the expectant parents that they could use the family name with my blessing but there was no pressure to do so.
If your sibs-in-law want to carry on the tradition, then they totally should! It wouldn’t be a first time for a name to bounce around the various branches and doubtless not the last. If they’re only considering it due to pressure from others, however, then they totally shouldn’t.
If I was the expected holder of the family name and wasn’t going to use it for whatever reason I think I would make that known to others. Not to say they *should* use it but just in case they were gazing wistfully at the name wishing they could use or worse feeling resentful that I was keeping it to myself. Just tell them ‘looks like I’m not going to have any boys, if you wanted to use Bertram please go ahead!’ and then never mention it again.
We used family names for our kids (mostly middles) and I have no regrets, however I didn’t use any names I didn’t like.
The last paragraph. Full stop. I love Swistle.
A friend of mine comes from a family with a similar situation. Her dad is something like Stephen James Lastname III, and he had three daughters. The youngest daughter has a feminine version of part of them name (think Stephanie) and then they got a dog and named him Stephen James Lastname IV.
Let the tradition fade away unless everyone is cheerfully on board.
I LOVE THIS
my husband is the third (III). His father, Jr, was an abusive ass. we did not carry on the tradition. Our oldest has the same initials but different names.
OMG the anecdote about Paul’s family. Why do people get so tied up in knots about this? My theory: something like Stockholm syndrome. Hard agree with Swistle that this is a natural opportunity to let the tradition go for now, IF that is what makes people happy.
We had a similar situation in my family, hubby is the fourth (not IV) of his name. We had two girls and done, then he and his brother decided that brother’s son would have hubby’s name. BIL is the third of his name, so I was surprised he didn’t want to pass it on. I was also a little worried that if we did have a third and it was a boy, hubby would want me to consider using BIL’s name to make it “fair”. No sir.
I like family names, when freely given. That is, where “should” is defined as “may” not as “is obligated to.” My nephews, brother, dad, grandfather and so on all have Francis as a first or middle name. The original, though, was a Frances, whose brother named a son Francis after her! I love that all of these men’s names exist because a great-etc grandfather wanted to honor his sister.
Now that is a wonderful story – thank you for telling us, and LET IT BE AN INSPIRATION.
Fully agree. Family traditions are amazing, unless it is not joyful. I would _adore_ continuing on and having an IV or more- I once met a man who was the seventh of his name! That’s great!
But it all stops if it makes someone unhappy.