{"id":11941,"date":"2016-03-11T16:18:51","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T20:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11941"},"modified":"2016-03-12T13:12:56","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T17:12:56","slug":"baby-naming-issue-can-you-name-a-child-john-doe-smith-iii-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/03\/11\/baby-naming-issue-can-you-name-a-child-john-doe-smith-iii-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Can You Name a Child John Doe Smith III Jr.?"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Note to readers<\/strong>: Typically I stick to letters that are from one of the parents of the baby in question. However, in this case the father of the baby left his question as a comment on another post. Then shortly afterward, the letter from the grandmother appeared. Since the letter was in letter form, and because it did a better job of laying out the issue, and because I’m not sure it would be okay to take a comment on a post and turn it into another post, I used the letter.]<\/p>\n

Swistle,<\/p>\n

I have a problem in my family at this moment. The issue is that my son wants to name his first born, being a son, after himself. Example is this, lets say my husbands name is John Doe Smith II and my son is John Doe Smith III. My son wants to name his son John Doe Smith III Jr.
\nMy son and Daughter-in -Law have checked this out legally and found out that you can have two suffixes in your name.
\nMy husband believes that naming the baby with the two suffixes would end the family name.
\nWhat are your thoughts on this?<\/p>\n

Thank you for your opinion on this matter,
\nHappy Gam Gam<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

WHY do they want to do this? Are they serious, or are they trying to be clever\/funny, or do they not understand how this works?<\/p>\n

An example of being serious: If your son feels his grandfather was a deplorable man, and absolutely does not want to name a child after him, but DOES still want to name a child after himself. I could see how your son naming a child John Doe Smith IV is naming the child, in essence, after his grandfather; naming a child John Doe Smith III Jr. says specifically “This child is NOT named after my grandfather and is NOT named after my father, but is ONLY named after me.”<\/p>\n

An example of trying to be clever\/funny (courtesy of Paul, who came up with this parallel): “It’s the 4th anniversary of my 39th birthday!” There is already a way to count the 4th anniversary of a 39th birthday, and it is to say “43th birthday.” But you COULD say 4th anniversary of 39th birthday, just as you can say III Jr. instead of IV. I wouldn’t do it on any legal paperwork, but it makes a good joke to post on Facebook.<\/p>\n

An example of truly not understanding how this works: Perhaps your son and daughter-in-law don’t understand the suffix system, and don’t know what Sr.\/Jr.\/III\/IV\/V\/etc. mean or how they’re used. The suffix “IV” (the Roman numeral for “4”) is the way we abbreviate\/symbolize the concept “the Jr. of someone who is a III”—i.e., the fourth bearer of the name. If it is indeed legal to have two suffixes, your son could be named John Doe Smith Jr. Jr. instead of John Doe Smith III—but he isn’t, because that is not the way the system works: instead of “Jr. Jr.” we say “III”. And instead of “Jr. Jr. Jr.” we say “IV”. It isn’t a matter of the legal number of suffixes, it’s a matter of How the Suffix System Works.<\/p>\n

Whatever the motivation, if he chooses to use III Jr. for his son, that does not necessarily end the family name. Your grandson, upon reaching adulthood and having a son of his own, could name his son John Doe Smith V, or John Doe Smith III Jr. Jr., or even Howard Joseph Smith Jr., and there would be no Name Police to leap out from the shrubbery and tell him he couldn’t. My guess is that anyone named John Doe Smith III Jr. would grow up so sick of the confusion and explanations that he would gladly ditch the tradition, but there’s no reason he has to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Note to readers: Typically I stick to letters that are from one of the parents of the baby in question. However, in this case the father of the baby left his question as a comment on another post. Then shortly afterward, the letter from the grandmother appeared. Since the letter was in letter form, and […]<\/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-11941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-36B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11941","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=11941"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11953,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11941\/revisions\/11953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}