{"id":10729,"date":"2014-12-12T11:47:04","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T15:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10729"},"modified":"2014-12-12T19:55:05","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T23:55:05","slug":"baby-naming-issue-ownership-of-a-family-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/12\/12\/baby-naming-issue-ownership-of-a-family-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Ownership of a Family Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

You seem very level headed and intelligent. I want to run by a situation for you.<\/p>\n

I have an etiquette-naming question that is causing family controversy and heartache! My name is Karolina Amelia. I’m named after my great Aunt and great grandmother. We’re a French America family. You’ll find I strongly identify with my name.<\/p>\n

I sign my name Karolina Amelia. My husband and dad call me the French version of Amelia. You’ll find my first and middle name included on all my social media accounts – you get it! ;-) I’ve planned on naming my daughter Amelia since I could fathom having children! To be honest, I was annoyed when the name became popular again.<\/p>\n

My cousin informed me that she wants to name her daughter Amelia and claims her husband likes the name. Her husband doesn’t have a sense of tradition in his family, so I’m not sure he understands. The conversation exploded this past week. She’s is an older cousin by 9 months, so my aunt could have easily given her the name (she has no family names in her name). I feel like Amelia was passed down to me, and because of that it is not equal game in this respect because it is on my birth certificate. I’m going to be honest and disclose that she is extremely trendy, so the validity in her usage doesn’t help the situation. We\u2019re a small family and I truly believe there cannot be two girls of the same name in our family. She doesn\u2019t seem to understand the underlining etiquette about this. If I liked her father\u2019s name for a boy, I would never assume that I could use it because she clearly has more emotional ties to the name. I\u2019m hurt she doesn\u2019t understand this isn\u2019t a want of mine, this is common sense. We do have plenty of other family names. But this one here, this is my namesake – an identity.<\/p>\n

Your help is appreciated in this qualm.<\/p>\n

All the best,<\/p>\n

Karolina Amelia<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am afraid my opinion is that you may be well and truly stuck. At this point the situation is:<\/p>\n

1. Your cousin says she wants to use the name.
\n2. In which case, you absolutely will not.<\/p>\n

The only way to fix things is for one of those two situations to change. You have attempted to change the first situation, with no success so far. Your cousin might change this one on her own, but at this point we can’t count on that.<\/p>\n

And so my advice is to see if the second situation can be changed. You have set up a “two girls can’t have the same name” requirement that from my point of view appears unnecessary: a name is not a piece of heirloom jewelry that can only be handed down to one person, and only by the person who previously inherited it. If you’re not able to change your mind on that, or if doing so would create an enormous family feud, or if you absolutely don’t want to use the name if there’s any chance your cousin will use it, then your only option is to abandon the name: even if you were to have a daughter first, your cousin might very well still use it down the line (unless she has said she will not use it if you use it first).<\/p>\n

But does that feel reasonable to you? Does it seem like a worthwhile price to pay? I’ve found this a very useful series of questions to ask myself: “What do I want? Can I have it? If not, what CAN I have?” What you want is for your cousin to see things the same way you do, and for her to conclude that the name Amelia is therefore off-limits to her. But you can’t have that: she does not agree with you. So what do you want INSTEAD? What is your SECOND choice? Is your second choice to use the name yourself anyway, even though it means accepting that two girls in the family might have the same name? Or is it your second choice to give up your whole plan and choose another name? I don’t know what your second choice is, and you might not know yet either: it sounds as if you’ve been focusing entirely on getting your first choice.<\/p>\n

As you’ve already found, you don’t have a choice about what your cousin does: she and her husband get to choose what they name their children, and they disagree with what you consider common sense. What is interesting here is that by setting up a situation so that it is impossible for you to use the name if your cousin does, you are letting your cousin choose what you do. Abandoning your plan for your daughter’s first name will hurt only yourself, and what will you gain from it? But two little Amelias might be sweet, and the various usages of your name shows us that your family is good with nicknames. The two girls would probably be Amelia-_____ and Amelia-______ (or each go by her middle name, as you sometimes do), and it might give them a closer relationship: forming “The Amelia Club,” making jokes about how the couch is for Amelias only, signing letters to each other “The Other Amelia,” etc. They might let you join as an honorary Amelia, even though it’s your middle name.<\/p>\n

To get back to the beginning of my answer, another issue here is that your cousin might not in fact use the name. So far she has said she would like to, and that her husband likes the name. There are so many steps between that and having a daughter named Amelia. She may have only boys, or she or her husband may think of a name they like better for a girl, or you might have a daughter first and name her Amelia and that might make them decide they no longer want to use the name (even if they previously stated they absolutely would use the name even if you did), or perhaps they will have a boy first and by the time they have a girl the name Amelia will be off their list, or perhaps she will decide she doesn’t want to use the name because it upsets you so much. And of course it is possible that you will only have boys yourself. It would be unfortunate to create enduring hard feelings over something that may never even be an issue.<\/p>\n

Another option available to you is to give the name to your daughter as a middle name: make THAT the tradition you share, since it’s your middle name too. If your cousin does have a daughter and does use the name, her daughter and your daughter will not share a first name. This would also make it easier for you to continue to be called by your middle name.<\/p>\n

There is one more thing you could do, and that is to talk to your cousin again. I suggest steering far, far away from the etiquette or common sense of the situation: those are not useful here, since both are highly subjective and you’ve already established that you and your cousin don’t see things the same way. We ARE talking about wants here: there is no reason she can’t use the name, or that two children can’t have the same name, except that you don’t want it that way. And that is a perfectly legitimate argument, and so that is the way I would approach it with her: don’t try to tell her she’s going against etiquette or common sense, because she isn’t; instead ask her earnestly to consider choosing a different name because it’s what you WANT. Explain how YOU feel, rather than telling her how SHE should feel. Acknowledge her perfect right to use names from her own family tree, but explain that this is one you plan to use for your daughter, and that you feel it wouldn’t work for second cousins to have the same name. See what she says. She may have gotten completely caught up in the entirely separate argument about whether or not she has the RIGHT to use the name, and may be very different in a discussion about whether or not she’d CHOOSE to.<\/p>\n

But again, it is also possible that this is an impossible situation: if she DOES use the name, and if you decide you WILL NOT use it if she does, then it may be time to come up with a new plan. Could you name your daughter Karolina instead? You would still be naming her after yourself (in fact, even more so than if you used your middle name), still passing on something important to your identity, but she would not share a name with her second cousin. Another advantage is that the name is not as common. Another is that your husband could call his wife and daughter by different names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, You seem very level headed and intelligent. I want to run by a situation for you. I have an etiquette-naming question that is causing family controversy and heartache! My name is Karolina Amelia. I’m named after my great Aunt and great grandmother. We’re a French America family. You’ll find I strongly identify with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2N3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10729"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10741,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10729\/revisions\/10741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}