{"id":8651,"date":"2014-02-26T10:39:14","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T14:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=8651"},"modified":"2014-02-26T11:56:24","modified_gmt":"2014-02-26T15:56:24","slug":"baby-naming-issue-when-do-a-persons-flaws-rule-out-using-an-honor-name-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/02\/26\/baby-naming-issue-when-do-a-persons-flaws-rule-out-using-an-honor-name-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: When Do a Person’s Flaws Rule Out Using an Honor Name? #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lauren writes:<\/p>\n

Absolutely love your site! Currently trying for baby number one, and in discussing names with DH, I got to wondering if you had ever addressed the issue of honor names for deceased family members who might not have been the greatest of people. Let me elaborate. If we have a daughter, I want her middle name to honor my beloved paternal grandmother, Virginia. She was an amazing grandmother and an amazing woman all around. If we have a boy, we’ve discussed using my paternal great-grandfather’s name. He raised my grandmother Virginia by himself. So our first child will be an honor name on my father’s side.<\/p>\n

For our second child, I highly suspect my mother will hold a grudge if we don’t give the baby an honor name recognizing her side of the family. Unfortunately, the issue is that my mother was raised in a fairly abusive household. My grandmother had a serious anger issue, and my grandfather was a philandering alcoholic who occasionally hit my grandmother. But the thing is, by the time I was born, these issues had mellowed out with old age and they were absolutely amazing grandparents to me. I loved them both very much, and have been able to compartmentalize my relationship with them and see them for the wonderful grandparents they were to me and my brother. However, my mother has suffered crippling, lifelong depression as a result of her tumultuous childhood, so it’s hard to deny the toll their abuse took.<\/p>\n

So what do you think? Could I name my child after my maternal grandmother\/grandfather knowing their abusive past? Obviously I can picture myself explaining to my child that his\/her name recognizes someone I loved immensely, but I can’t see myself keeping my mother’s dark childhood a secret from my child into adulthood, as it’s the illuminating reason behind her stunted adult life. And I’m not sure that’s a burden I want my child to bear.<\/p>\n

Would love your thoughts. Thanks so much!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

We’ve done one post that might be helpful: Baby Naming Issue: When Do a Person’s Flaws Rule Out Using an Honor Name?<\/a> In that situation, though, the grandfather had “maybe” been verbally abusive (unconfirmed), and his flaws mostly seemed to involve drinking and dancing, both of which are highly subjective activities in a discussion of inherent wrongness; also, a telling detail is that the people related to the honoree didn’t see any problem with using the name.<\/p>\n

In your situation, we have a case of established physical abuse as well as known cheating. We also have people from that household who were severely affected by the abuse, to the extent that they are still suffering those effects even to this day.<\/p>\n

So no, I don’t think the honor name is appropriate in this case—not so much because you can’t still appreciate your good relationship with your grandparents (and how nice that they DID triumph over their issues with age), but because the use of their names would appall and hurt other people you have a relationship with, such as your mother. It’s one thing to understand that ALL human beings are flawed and that there is no such thing as an honoree who is absolutely perfect in every way; it’s another thing entirely to have an honoree whose behavior gave someone a dark childhood and a permanently stunted adult life. In imagining this situation down the road, I would not want to be the child finding out the family’s dark secret and then thinking of that in connection to my own name.<\/p>\n

Your reason for looking for a name from your mother’s side is that you think she’ll hold a grudge if you don’t; if your plan is to accommodate those feelings, it may be necessary to ask her if using one of her parents’ names is what she’d have in mind. Your grandparents are only two people from that side of the family; are there other people you could honor? Your mother? Your mother’s siblings? You could consult with your mother about other honor names; perhaps she had good grandparents or a good aunt or uncle, or perhaps there’s a family surname that would work well. Or perhaps that discussion will demonstrate to her that using an honor name from her side of the family is not something she wants.<\/p>\n

I also think it’s important to realize that there is “your side” of the family and “your husband’s side” of the family; it is not necessary to further divide that into your mother’s, your father’s, his mother’s, his father’s. Perhaps the second baby could have an honor name from your husband’s side of the family, rather than a second honor name from your side. If you put it that way to your mother (that the first baby has an honor name from your side of the family, so the second baby has an honor name from your husband’s side), I would hope that would seem reasonable to her. She may still be in the mindset of naming her own babies, where there would have been “her side” and “her husband’s side.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren writes: Absolutely love your site! Currently trying for baby number one, and in discussing names with DH, I got to wondering if you had ever addressed the issue of honor names for deceased family members who might not have been the greatest of people. Let me elaborate. If we have a daughter, I want […]<\/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-8651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2fx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8651","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=8651"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8654,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8651\/revisions\/8654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}