{"id":14407,"date":"2019-11-05T17:02:08","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T21:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14407"},"modified":"2019-11-05T17:04:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T21:04:16","slug":"baby-naming-issue-the-babys-dad-is-l-g-ii-after-his-grandfather-who-was-l-g-jr-what-should-the-new-babys-suffix-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2019\/11\/05\/baby-naming-issue-the-babys-dad-is-l-g-ii-after-his-grandfather-who-was-l-g-jr-what-should-the-new-babys-suffix-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: The Baby’s Dad is L.G. II After His Grandfather Who Was L.G. Jr.; What Should the New Baby’s Suffix Be?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi. Quick question sorry itS probably an old one but I cannot wrap my head around it! So I\u2019m Luigi Giuseppe II, dad is Peter, great grandfather was Sr. And his son, my grandfather, was Jr. As I understand it my parents originally named me III then back peddled at my grandmothers\u2019 insistence, and pulled one \u201cstick\u201d back and named me Luigi Giuseppe II, because a generation had been skipped. Now both Sr. And Jr. have passed, I\u2019m now having a son (after having 3 amazing daughters!!) and I want to get the name right! At first I thought he would be Luigi Giuseppe III but that doesn\u2019t seem right since he would actually be the IV with the name (my great grandfather, grandfather, myself, and himself) Was I named wrong? If so I\u2019ll go through the necessary changes to be III and name my son IV??? Any and all help appreciated!! Baby due In May, very excited but want to be definitive about name before we tell friends and family! Thanks!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Numerical suffixes are a botched and botchy system, and people have been botching them for so long that at this point it’s tempting to throw up one’s hands and say “DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, WHO CARES.” Except I do NOT throw up my hands, because I do in fact care.<\/p>\n

Your parents were in a tricky situation with your name. It’s true that “II” is used when the baby is named the exact same complete name as anyone NOT its parent. (It has nothing to do with skipping a generation: the distinction is parent vs. non-parent.) But in this case, the person whose exact same complete name they gave you was someone who was already a Jr.! And that’s a little tricky! Because after the very specific Sr.\/Jr. situation, in which we use those terms ONLY in a parent\/child relationship, everything is all numbers EITHER WAY: no more parent\/child requirement! So let’s say you had been named for your uncle who was not a Jr., and you were correctly suffixed as II; and then your brother named his baby after you: your nephew could correctly be suffixed III. Because once we get into the numbers, no one cares the way they do about Sr.\/Jr. <\/p>\n

So. On one hand, we could say that your parents “should have” named you Luigi Giuseppe III, because you were named for a Jr., and so you were the third member of your family line with that name. They certainly would have been correct to do so, and your grandmother was incorrect that skipping a generation made a difference. (She was probably thinking of the rule that you can’t skip a generation between a Sr. and a Jr.) And then your son would have been Luigi Giuseppe IV.<\/p>\n

However. Your parents did not name you Luigi Giuseppe III. They named you Luigi Giuseppe II. Correct or less-correct (using II in your case was not incorrect, just less typical), that is the name you have lived with your entire life, including through the birth of three daughters. I suppose you could change your name at this point in order to change your son’s suffix, but is that something important\/valuable to do? My understanding is that most people with numerical suffixes feel very possessive about them, especially if I mention that Miss Manners says that anyone who is not a pope or a king should be shifting their suffixes as earlier holders of the name die off (that is, you would now be Sr., and your son would be a Jr.); or if I mention that in the United States, the Social Security Administration does not consider suffixes part of the legal name<\/a>. Every time I do a post about suffixes, I have to delete a steady trickle of comments (continuing to come in even YEARS AND YEARS later) from men ranting at me about how important their suffixes are, and how proud they are of them, and how absolutely vital to their identities the suffixes are. Sometimes the same man will comment again and again, flailing wildly like a bird against a window in his desperation to explain to me that he IS his suffix. So it surprises me a little to hear you being willing to change yours at this stage of life, in order to make your son’s suffix bigger.<\/p>\n

You are allowed to change your name if you want to, and you are allowed to call your son Luigi Giuseppe IV without having to prove to anyone that the suffix is correct. But it feels wrong to me. Changing your name just because you’re now having a son feels Off in a way I’m having trouble putting a finger on. My own opinion is that the best solution is to keep the name you’ve had all your life, and name your son Luigi Giuseppe III. (Assuming the child’s other parent is completely and enthusiastically on board with the idea of continuing this tradition from your side of the family.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi. Quick question sorry itS probably an old one but I cannot wrap my head around it! So I\u2019m Luigi Giuseppe II, dad is Peter, great grandfather was Sr. And his son, my grandfather, was Jr. As I understand it my parents originally named me III then back peddled at my grandmothers\u2019 insistence, and pulled […]<\/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-14407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Kn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14407","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=14407"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14419,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14407\/revisions\/14419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}