{"id":16365,"date":"2023-08-22T16:18:50","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T20:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16365"},"modified":"2023-08-24T23:07:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T03:07:45","slug":"baby-boy-collins-iii-tripp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2023\/08\/22\/baby-boy-collins-iii-tripp\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Collins: III\/Tripp?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I love your blog and have been a reader for years! Our first child (a boy) is due in 4 short weeks and we thought we had the name figured out but now are second guessing. My husband is a junior but goes by a nickname (and never his legal first name). If we were to continue the naming tradition and name him as a third we would only call him Tripp and never his legal first name. We started to doubt if Tripp is a name that would be setting him up for success one day? Is Tripp a successful doctor, lawyer, insert professional job here? We also worry if he will feel like he has his own identity if he\u2019s a third. Perhaps we are just getting cold feet as the date gets closer or maybe these are valid concerns? I\u2019d love your thoughts.<\/p>\n

Other names we like but aren\u2019t sold on are Reid (husband feeling luke warm on this one), Charlie (husband loves more than I do – I feel like it\u2019s too common), and Emmett. Other names we like but don\u2019t feel like the one\/one of us likes but the other doesn\u2019t as much are Lane, Grey, Walker, Lee, Harrison, Cooper. If you have any other suggestions I\u2019d love to hear them!<\/p>\n

Thank you!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think Tripp would work fine for a doctor, lawyer, etc.; it’s a nickname that smacks of patriarchal naming traditions, which in our society can further smack of wealth, higher education, and success. It sounds like prep school, and summers spent wearing all white on a boat or a tennis court; it also sounds friendly and approachable: the smiling boy with good eye contact and very white straight teeth and a good haircut and an even tan. Tripp, Skip, Chip—they’re absolutely DESTINED to be lawyers and politicians. And if he does grow up and feel like it’s not the name for him, he has the ability to change it: he can choose to go by his given name, or by his middle name, or by another nickname.<\/p>\n

But here’s the question I have started asking myself about Sr.\/Jr.\/III\/etc. naming traditions, and the question is only getting stronger and louder over the years: Why?<\/p>\n

That can’t help but sound rhetorical and combative, but I also mean it literally and actually: What is the reason any of us WISH TO DO IT? Where does the positive warm feeling come from, when we choose a name the child won’t use, and we decide to choose it over all other possible names? What is the part we like about naming a child for his father, when it’s a name his father doesn’t use either?<\/p>\n

What is the POINT of this tradition? No, no: don’t hear the rhetorical and combative version of the question, hear the ACTUAL question: What is the POINT. Of this tradition. What is the WHY of this tradition? What do any of us WANT FROM this tradition? What is the BENEFIT, what is the GOOD, what is the APPEAL, what is the part we LIKE? IS there a benefit? IS there something good? IS there an appeal? DO we like it?<\/p>\n

We have had women get huffy over this question in the comments section: “Well, I LOVE my husband and WANT to honor him!!” Good, good! Is your daughter also named after you, and are you also named after your mother, including birth surname, and is your husband (who has taken your surname, because tradition is so important and he doesn’t want to have a different surname than his children) getting huffy on someone else’s name blog saying “Well, I LOVE my wife and WANT to honor her!!” Or is giving up naming rights to the husband’s family something we ask almost exclusively of women, framing it as an unreciprocated way for them to show love and honor to men?<\/p>\n

And yes, we HAVE heard of some families that DO have matriarchal naming traditions! Those are so fun to hear about BECAUSE THEY ARE SO EXTREMELY RARE! I have never met a woman who was a Sr. or a Jr. or a III, but I have met many, many, MANY, MANY, MANY, MANY men who were Sr.\/Jr.\/III and even IV\/V\/etc. May this equalize in the future, one way or another. If you were to tell me that you planned to have more children, and that of course the two of you also planned to name your first daughter entirely after yourself and make her a Jr., including giving her your birth surname which you had also retained, I would feel VERY DIFFERENTLY about this plan to name your first son entirely after your husband and his father.<\/p>\n

This little rant isn’t against honor names in general: I am VERY KEEN on honor names. But I am opposed to what happens when an unequal tradition gets so absorbed into society that we don’t question it or notice how unequal it is anymore. It IS WEIRD to have something that’s considered very normal to do with father’s\/men’s names, but not with mother’s\/women’s names. It IS WEIRD to allow one parent’s side of the family to have naming rights that interfere with one or both parents’ preferences. It IS WORTH EVALUATING what benefit we are getting when we give a child a name they won’t be using, and whether that benefit is actually worth something to us or whether we’re so steeped in the tradition that we just feel it somehow SHOULD be worth something to us. It is WORTH EVALUATING whether we are giving our child something we think they will WANT, or if we are just passing down another generation’s worth of burden and obligation.<\/p>\n

Do you WANT to give him this name? Do you both love it, and do you both actively want to use it? Or are you feeling pressured to use it so that you won’t break the tradition? If you are feeling pressured, I encourage you to reflect on the exponential increase of that pressure with each generation; I encourage you to spare the future generations while the pressure is still relatively low. If future generations are not pleased to be spared, they are 100% free to start it up again: they can even legitimately use the suffix III! But I think it is worth noticing how few people DO restart a broken tradition. My guess is that the feeling is nearly always INTENSE RELIEF that the tradition was broken before it was their turn to make the decision to keep it or break it.<\/p>\n

If you wish to break the tradition more gently, give your son one of your husband’s names as a middle name, and\/or an honor name from your side of the family if your son will already have your husband’s surname. Perhaps the same initials as your husband’s name, but with different honor names from your side of the family; or perhaps variants of your husband’s names in swapped order (Michael David becomes Davis Micah, for example). This communicates that you DO want to honor family, but perhaps not to honor the same person over and over and over again, generation after generation without ceasing.<\/p>\n

…Where were we? Yes, if you decide to name your child after your husband and your husband’s father, I think Tripp or Trice or Trey will make a perfectly acceptable nickname, and that the child will not find it gets in the way of his success.<\/p>\n

We can’t answer the question of whether he will feel as if he has his own identity; it depends on how much of his identity comes from his name. Presumably he will feel as if he has his own identity, but not as if he has his own name. Perhaps like some of the other men I have known, he will get extremely focused on his little suffix, and will get clutchy and possessive about it because it will be the part of his name that will feel like HIS.<\/p>\n

I love Emmett and Reid from your list. We had Charlie on our finalist list for Henry. I wonder if you’d like Reeve or Rhys.<\/p>\n

Reid and Charlie makes me think of Rory and Riley.<\/p>\n

Emmett makes me think of Everett and Elliot. Grey and Reid make me think of Grant. Lee reminds me of Leo which makes me think of Milo which makes me think of Miles which makes me think of Nolan which makes me think of Simon.<\/p>\n

Harrison makes me think of Harris and Davis, which along with Lee make me think of Louis, which makes me think of Wesley, which along with Walker and Cooper makes me think of Wilson and Warren.<\/p>\n

I’m reluctant to think of any more options, because now I am eager to get my hands on your family tree and go hunting for candidates. Perhaps your own family surname, if that has been supplanted by your husband’s family surname? Perhaps a family surname from an earlier generation? Perhaps one of your father’s names, so that there is one name from each grandfather, which makes a bit of a point about how difficult it is to argue that the child should instead have been named for only one grandfather?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! I love your blog and have been a reader for years! Our first child (a boy) is due in 4 short weeks and we thought we had the name figured out but now are second guessing. My husband is a junior but goes by a nickname (and never his legal first name). If […]<\/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-16365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4fX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365","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=16365"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16384,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16365\/revisions\/16384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}