{"id":11718,"date":"2015-11-18T11:37:47","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T15:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11718"},"modified":"2015-11-18T16:06:19","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T20:06:19","slug":"baby-naming-issue-does-the-first-son-have-dibs-on-the-dads-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/11\/18\/baby-naming-issue-does-the-first-son-have-dibs-on-the-dads-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Does the First Son Have Dibs on the Dad’s Name?"},"content":{"rendered":"

My two sons lost their father when they were 5 and 12 respectively. The older one bears his father\u2019s name, Richard. Both boys are now having their first child. My older son is having a girl and my younger son is having a boy. My younger son wants to name his son, Richard, after his father, which is also his brother\u2019s name. My older son is angry with him because he feels he will have a second child and if he has a boy he would want it to be called Richard. Is there a wrong or right?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The reason this is such a tricky situation, I think, is that there is no wrong and no right per se, but there are nevertheless a lot of strong feelings about it. Familiar practices (such as a name being passed down through firstborn sons) may be misinterpreted as having rights or ownership or control, for example. A family may even choose to voluntarily defer to the current name-holder, strengthening the feeling that it must be done that way. And many people feel that names should not be duplicated among cousins, even though it used to be extremely common to do so.<\/p>\n

I wish we could start with this understanding: that both sons may name children after their father, however they see fit, and that it is WONDERFUL that they both want to, and that it would be an almost heartbreakingly beautiful tribute if both of them named sons Richard. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.<\/p>\n

As things stand, instead of a beautiful tribute, we have the makings of a very ugly situation. Your first son would like to reserve his father’s name for a son he very well may never have—which would be fine, except that he also wants to prevent his brother from using the name. I suspect he is viewing the name as a possession, a single item that can only be handed down to one person as if it were a gold watch. The way he may be seeing it, his father gave the watch to him, and now he wants to give it to his own son; meanwhile his brother is trying to steal the watch to give it to HIS son. Your first son is angry at this perceived attempt at theft. He protests that he is very likely to have another child, which may very well be a boy, and so it is too early to grab the watch away from him and his descendants.<\/p>\n

But that is not the way names work. Your first son keeps his name even if he gives it to his son, just as your sons’ father kept his name even after giving it to his son; and the name can also be given to both boys of the next generation. No one takes or steals the name away from anyone else; the name is duplicated, and shared, and is another set of bonds to hold a family together. It is sheer pleasure to look through a family tree and see a name winding its way through the generations and branches. This is the sort of imagery I wish families could use, rather than seeing honor names as grabbing precious possessions away from each other.<\/p>\n

If your first son can’t be talked around to a different point of view, I don’t know how your second son can get around it. If your first son continues to see the name as a birthright that gives him possession and control, then even if your second son disagrees completely, it may not be worth the family fall-out. I think this would be a crying shame, especially if your first son never does have a son, and so their father is never honored. Your sons’ father shared his name with your first son; but he, and the memory of him, and the privilege of honoring him, belongs equally to both of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My two sons lost their father when they were 5 and 12 respectively. The older one bears his father\u2019s name, Richard. Both boys are now having their first child. My older son is having a girl and my younger son is having a boy. My younger son wants to name his son, Richard, after his […]<\/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-11718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-330","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718","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=11718"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11731,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11718\/revisions\/11731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}