{"id":16128,"date":"2023-01-13T10:42:28","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T14:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16128"},"modified":"2023-01-13T17:37:51","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T21:37:51","slug":"baby-naming-issue-carrying-on-a-traditional-male-family-name-no-sons-but-nephew-on-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2023\/01\/13\/baby-naming-issue-carrying-on-a-traditional-male-family-name-no-sons-but-nephew-on-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Carrying on a Traditional Male Family Name–No Sons, but Nephew on the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

My husband carries the family name. He is the fourth generation. However, we have only had girls. My sister-in-law is expecting a boy in a few months. Should my nephew carry on this name?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have so many questions.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Is your sister-in-law your husband’s sister, or is she married to one of your husband’s siblings?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n

    Does your sister-in-law WANT to use this family name?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  3. \n

    Do you and your husband want her to use it?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  4. \n

    Is it important that a family name be kept going? Which of the people in this situation would say yes?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  5. \n

    Are you and your husband done having children?<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    There are so many interesting possibilities here. For example: your sister-in-law could be your husband’s sister, so the name and the tradition could both be important to her, and it could even be kind of fun to think of her being the one to carry it on when her brother couldn’t. Or, it could be that she’s married to, say, one of your husband’s brothers, and didn’t originally have any reason to believe this naming issue would apply to her. (If the latter is the case, I encourage everyone involved to drop the idea, unless the sister-in-law is the one actively campaigning for it.)<\/p>\n

    More interesting possibilities: It could be that you and your husband think it is important to carry on this tradition, and you wish your sister-in-law to understand that you believe it’s her responsibility to do so. Or it could be that your sister-in-law is the one who wants to use the name, and you and your husband think she should not. Or it could be that all of you are having a wonderful time thinking together about all of the interesting options.<\/p>\n

    Well. My own opinion is that this is the PERFECT moment to let an exponentially-increasing-in-pressure-with-each-generation naming tradition be broken naturally and gracefully, without anyone having to break it by refusing to use it. Paul’s parents broke a similar naming tradition when Paul was born, and it caused a gigantic family feud, including Paul’s grandfather refusing to acknowledge his birth, which is really Quite a Stance: “If this baby is not named after me, then this baby does not EXIST for me, because this tradition is more important to me than the baby itself!” Imagine!<\/p>\n

    Even in families where the tradition is theoretically cherished, it is important to acknowledge that the child has a second parent who is NOT FROM that family. I am a little amazed every time I hear of a co-parent agreeing to the Tradition of your-baby’s-name-is-chosen-for-you-by-my-family without extracting a privilege of similar heft and significance. My high school boyfriend was a III, and he went on to marry a woman who agreed to make their son a IV; but in exchange she got to choose the unrelated name the son would go by on a daily basis, and she got partial full naming rights (i.e., the children still had their father’s surname, but she got full choice of first\/middle) for all subsequent children. WORK that deal.<\/p>\n

    Where was I? Oh yes: my opinion is that this is the perfect moment to let the tradition come to an end, as all such traditions eventually must; and this is absolutely the nicest and tidiest and least-fraught way it could possibly end, so I say SEIZE THAT OPPORTUNITY. If, however, your sister-in-law is your husband’s sister and is PINING to use the name because the tradition is very important to her, then I see no reason she shouldn’t: once we get past Sr.\/Jr., a baby gets the next number in line whether they’re an immediate descendant or not, so your nephew can certainly be Important Male Descendant V. (And if your sister-in-law is co-parenting, the co-parent should extract full naming rights for the next child, at minimum.)<\/p>\n

    Another option is that one of your daughters could carry it on: the numbering system doesn’t care if a generation is skipped. And I am a little curious to know if “We will need to use my surname, and the first and middle names are already decided, because my first child needs to be named in full after my father; it’s a family tradition” will work as easily for her as it has for four generations of men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My husband carries the family name. He is the fourth generation. However, we have only had girls. My sister-in-law is expecting a boy in a few months. Should my nephew carry on this name?   I have so many questions. Is your sister-in-law your husband’s sister, or is she married to one of your husband’s […]<\/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-16128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4c8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16128","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=16128"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16144,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16128\/revisions\/16144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}