{"id":14394,"date":"2019-10-23T09:13:30","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T13:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14394"},"modified":"2019-10-23T09:13:30","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T13:13:30","slug":"baby-naming-issue-brother-is-unexpectedly-using-the-name-theyd-planned-to-use-for-a-junior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2019\/10\/23\/baby-naming-issue-brother-is-unexpectedly-using-the-name-theyd-planned-to-use-for-a-junior\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Brother Is Unexpectedly Using the Name They’d Planned To Use for a Junior"},"content":{"rendered":"

My husband\u2019s name is Benjamin. My name is Rachel. Our last name is Gannon. We have 1 daughter, Chloe Hazel. She is 3. I am currently expecting our second.<\/p>\n

We did not find out the sex with Chloe Hazel and were happily surprised when she was born. With baby #2, we originally planned to also wait – but accidentally found out a few weeks ago that we\u2019re having another girl (tech at our ultrasound made a mistake!) We haven\u2019t shared this news yet with family or friends but we are 99% settled on naming this baby Abigail Elizabeth (both family names).<\/p>\n

If it had been a boy, my husband is enamored with the idea of a namesake and would love to have a junior: Benjamin Clark Gannon Jr. I\u2019m relatively neutral on the namesake topic but want to be respectful of my husband\u2019s strong feelings on it. So, I\u2019d say Benjamin Jr. would be our male name contender, if we weren\u2019t having Abigail.<\/p>\n

I am writing to you because we (Knock on wood!) would love to have 4 kids eventually. I came from a larger family and loved growing up in a full house.<\/p>\n

My husband has one older brother. BIL and his wife are also pregnant, with their first baby, a boy. That found out that they were expecting a few weeks before we realized that Abigail was on the way. They just announced to our entire family (and all of Facebook!??) that they plan to name their son Ben Clark Gannon.<\/p>\n

They never mentioned this name would be an honor name for my husband in any way. They chose the first name to it honor my SIL\u2019s uncle, apparently. And used Clark because it\u2019s a family middle name – no issue there! (About 90% of all males on my husband\u2019s family\u2019s side share it). And my husband and his brother share the same last name obviously \u2014 Gannon.<\/p>\n

BIL didn\u2019t discuss this with my husband and has actually avoided the topic entirely since making it known through the family grapevine and Facebook.<\/p>\n

My husband is upset.<\/p>\n

No one else in his family thinks it\u2019s a big deal. They don\u2019t understand why he\u2019s upset. Mostly because BIL is planning to name the baby Ben, not Benjamin. (FYI…My husband goes by both names \u2014 Benjamin\/Ben \u2014 within all circles of his life – professionally, in the family, with friends.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, every friend that we\u2019ve told is shocked and thinks it\u2019s really strange. However – it\u2019s so hard to tell if that\u2019s a result of us essentially asking our echo chamber for feedback. I understand that we could be being petty and we may be in the wrong. (Who knows!?!)<\/p>\n

For the record, my husband *did* tell BIL that this name choice bothers him, after the news circulated to us, specifically because he\u2019d like to use it for a son of his own. (If we have a son one day. I know it\u2019s a big if!) No change occurred after this heart to heart. I\u2019d say BIL and my husband are relatively close. No deep animosity besides normal sibling stuff – this situation is the most trying thing I\u2019ve witnessed them navigate in our 7 years together. So it\u2019s not like his long lost or estranged brother surfaced on Facebook to announce he was expecting\/naming the kid my Husband\u2019s name. (If that matters!)<\/p>\n

We also still haven\u2019t announced our child\u2019s sex – and conceivably could linger, waiting to share it upon birth. But that feels *really* crazy and manipulative. We\u2019re obviously not having a boy. BIL has confirmed the sex of their baby boy. Drawing this out won\u2019t help. And I am not down for any type of asshole move to keep the name to ourselves…just cant tell if waiting to share the sex would cause fewer problems or more problems with this situation…or be totally unrelated.<\/p>\n

Only thing I do know is that there\u2019s no predicting what could happen in the future with regards to us having more children \u2014 yet we still feel slightly shafted! And we can\u2019t tell if we have the right to feel that \u2014 and if so \u2014 what the hell to do about it!? Meanwhile, my husband is starting a campaign to convince me to name our daughter Benjamin… ha.<\/p>\n

Help!!!!<\/p>\n

Thanks,
\nRachel<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

We can fill the comments section with outrage over this, and talk extensively about what should or should not be happening; and, if it helps at all, I do think this is an extremely odd thing for your brother-in-law and sister-in-law to do. But after reading the letter through twice, and seeing that you have already done all the things that can be done here, I think I can pare the post itself down to the bare minimum: They’re going to name their child Ben, so now what will you do if you have a boy?<\/p>\n

And since you are having a girl, I say skip it all for now. Just…skip it. You’re pregnant and you don’t need this stress, and you can’t do anything else about it now anyway. Later on, in a future pregnancy, after you have found out you are having a boy, then you can revisit the entire thing and see how you feel THEN. There are no decisions left at all that need to be made NOW; everything that needs to be done (husband telling brother how he feels, husband telling brother he intends to use the name for a junior) has already been done. This entire thing can be postponed until later, and may never even be applicable, so it is a prime opportunity for that expression I can’t quite remember about not borrowing trouble from tomorrow when today has so much trouble of its own. This FEELS like today’s trouble, but it’s actually tomorrow’s—and maybe never’s.<\/p>\n

If you were planning to share the news of the sex of your baby before the birth, then go ahead; if you would have preferred to keep it a surprise until the birth as originally planned, then continue to keep it a surprise; but I am strongly in support of your inclination to avoid tying that decision into this current name drama. By the same measure, I don’t think you need to feel obligated to share the sex of the baby before the birth just because of this situation; it sounds like you’ve known the sex for several weeks and hadn’t shared yet even before all this other stuff happened, so don’t feel FORCED to share it just to relieve the squirm aspect. You could let your brother-in-law and sister-in-law know privately, if you thought they were squirming and wanted to be particularly generous to them—but I don’t think that’s necessary if you’d been planning to wait until the birth, especially since I’m not hearing any evidence that they ARE squirming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My husband\u2019s name is Benjamin. My name is Rachel. Our last name is Gannon. We have 1 daughter, Chloe Hazel. She is 3. I am currently expecting our second. We did not find out the sex with Chloe Hazel and were happily surprised when she was born. With baby #2, we originally planned to also […]<\/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-14394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Ka","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14394","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=14394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14396,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14394\/revisions\/14396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}