It’s a typical thing. Names that honour your family, their family; family past, family present.
[name_m]How[/name_m] do you feel about it? Have you felt the pressure of using a certain name, or felt a pressure to use a certain name but not given in? Have you taken it upon yourself to honour a family name of a certain ilk? [name_m]How[/name_m] did you choose who to use and were you worried someone else might feel left out?
Or do you have other traditions within your family that you feel compelled (or not) to follow when it comes to the name game?
I plan on using honor names, but I refuse to be pressured into using someone else’s (besides my future DH) idea of who to honor. I have a list of people that are important to me, and I will add my DH’s name choices in when the time comes, and I will be using those names. [name_f]My[/name_f] one major hold back on specific names is that we have so many people with the same name, used because they are family names. I will probably use variations of the names or give an individual FN (individual in comparison to the rest of the family) and honor MN as often as possible. There is one exception, but I will ensure there is a NN that allows them to stand out from the other family members with said name from day 1. It also helps that most of the names I would use are names I had fallen in love with anyway separate from honoring those with the names.
I also love to honor things/ideas/events that we love. [name_u]Nature[/name_u] names, literature names, etc. will also be included in my naming process.
I’ve kind of put pressure on myself to name a future daughter [name_f]Carrie[/name_f]. It was my great great grandmother’s name. She was very special to my late grandmother. She always said that if she’d had a daughter, her name would be [name_f]Carrie[/name_f]. She told me that within the same year that she died.
We swore not to use family names, as both sets of parents are separated and have new partners and families, so we had a lot of people to potentially have to include if we webt down that route!
In the end, our son did get an honour name (which we also love) in the middle spot: [name_u]Valentine[/name_u], after my beloved grandma [name_f]Valerie[/name_f] [name_f]Irene[/name_f], who died during my pregnancy. His first name has a family connection too, although that’s more of a nice bonus than the reason we chose it.
We gave our second daughter the middle name [name_f]Helena[/name_f], which is coincidentally the name both our mothers loved for a girl when they were expecting us. Again though, we wouldn’t have chosen it if we didn’t love it too!
[name_f]My[/name_f] parents, myself, my brother and my partner all have family names as middle names. I plan to do the same.
When I was younger, I said I would honour [name_f]Ann[/name_f], the middle name of my mother and maternal grandmother, in my daughters name. I said I would use [name_f]Anna[/name_f] as a middle name. Now I am more considering names ending in -ana as a first name, such as [name_f]Liliana[/name_f] or [name_f]Ariana[/name_f]. However, I only want two children, so there is a real possibility I will not have a daughter. Partly due to that, i am considering adding [name_f]Anna[/name_f] as a middle name when I get married, in which case I wouldnt worry so much about using it for my child.
I also like the idea of using two middle names, so that the child can have one middle from the father’s side and one from the mother’s. I dont know if I will actually do this, as I find it a struggle to make two family names sound good with a first name.
I’m lucky in that there’s no pressure to use family/honour names in my family. I chose [name_u]June[/name_u] for my daughter’s middle name because I wanted to honour my father, who passed away a long time ago and who was born in [name_u]June[/name_u], but I also love the name [name_u]June[/name_u] and it’s obviously a more subtle way of honouring someone than using the person’s name or a variation of it.
I like the idea of using middles that have some relevance or association, whether it’s a character from a book or film I love or an author or the meaning of the name is of significance to me. That will be the route I take for the second - that way I can choose a name that I love that will also link to something/someone that’s important to me.
There’s absolutely no pressure on me to use honor names - none of my siblings nor I have any as part of our own names - yet somehow I’ve become really fixated on the idea of using them for my own children. Maybe I need to let that go?
I sort of like the idea of them having one name that’s “their own” and one that carries their ancestry and loved ones with them though. And I feel that if my partner’s family names get passed on through his overly long double barreled surname then MY family should be passed on through the given names.
But same names just seem so damn tricky to honor. [name_f]My[/name_f] Mom’s first name is not a name I really love and it’s nigh impossible to come up with a name of similar sound or meaning that would honor her… and her mn is one of those beautiful but way over-used filler middles. I tried looking up alternatives for another family name that means wolf, and the only other wolf names I could find were [name_m]Adolph[/name_m] and variations there-of…
I do feel a little bit of pressure to use honour names, just because where I live that seems to be the thing to do.
[name_f]My[/name_f] biggest fear is having one element of our family feeling left out if they’re not honoured - there’s no way to honour our 4 parents, 5 siblings and 11 grandparents (combined between us) with 4 children unless we give our children all double middle names and first names that honour, so it’s easiest to just not unless it’s a truly meaningful name for us or something we already really love.
We have one honouring tradition we plan on continuing (every first-born male in S/O’s family has [name_m]John[/name_m] in their name) but otherwise we haven’t really decided on honour names.
I don’t feel pressured to use honour names, mainly because my parents didn’t name me after anyone. Incidentally, my SO was named after a family member and he doesn’t really like his name. So using family names isn’t something I feel strongly about, and if I did choose to use them it would be as middle names, not first names.
Another issue for me is that if I chose to honour one family member and not another then some people are going to feel slighted or ignored. I wonder, how do people navigate this? If you named your son after your father, did you feel obliged to name your next son after your SO’s father?
We have honour names on our list just because we want to. I feel zero pressure at all. [name_f]My[/name_f] sibling and I don’t have honour names - we don’t even have middle names!
On one side, I asked my Mum whether she really wanted us to use their names, to which she said not all and we should do as we like. And on the other side, hubby’s parent’s (who are the more traditional types) already have several grandchildren and at least two of them have honour names already. If anything, I want to honour my and his mother’s the most - be because my mum is my hero and because his family is very patriarchal and I want his mum to be recognised as well.
Our selection of honour names are diminutives or different names with the same meaning. We won’t be using any family / parental names straight up.
I’ve wondered this too, especially given you can’t perfectly predict how many children you’ll have or their sex. I guess this is why firstborns often get loaded with all the “heirloom” names (two of my nephews have the “child’s name - father’s name - grandfather’s name” pattern). But seriously, I think you just have to be willing to possibly let go of some names, and family members need to realise you’re not going to keep having babies just so great uncle [name_u]Norris[/name_u] gets to have his name in lights. I want to say “everyone understands”, but I’m sure they don’t and sadly I’m sure many family have had arguments because of it. (A friend of ours said her mother in law demanded they legally change their baby’s name because the spelling wasn’t exactly the same as great great grandma or whoever it was they were honouring!)
I’m far off having kids, so I’m probably way too young for my family to make me feel any pressure over using honour names. There are two family names that I’m kind of expected to use (one in particular) but I personally want to use them because honouring family is important to me. Most of my family members who have had children in recent years haven’t used any honour names and as far as I know no one has said anything about it or expected anything different.
I put more pressure on myself to use honour names – trying to include at least one in all of my combos and also trying to find names I love and that honour people I love. I’d also feel bad if I used some names but not others and I think that is where the pressure from other people would come in. Overall though, I don’t think it would be a huge issue and if I have children then I won’t hesitate to use honour names.
Our boys have their grandpas’ first names as their middle names. No one pressured us into it, I just really wanted to honor my dad and felt like if one of them has my dad’s name then the other should have hubby’s dad’s name. We were initially planning to go with more adventurous middles or give second middles so we would get to choose another name we liked, but I’m glad we went with the honor names and kept it simple.
If we have a girl she will be named after her grandmas in some way.
[name_u]Honor[/name_u] names are kind of my thing. I love pulling inspiration from way back in the family tree, as well as from the people I am close to now. Names always get extra points from me if they honor family – it’s just something I find special and, therefore, important.
I’ve never felt any pressure, though. I wouldn’t use a name I disliked just for the sake of honoring someone. I also like exploring different variations of family names sometimes to give them a more original feeling.
I’m not planning on having kids for a good 4-5 years or so yet, but I know that when I do certain names that honor family will be very important to me (i.e. pretty much non-negotiable).
[name_f]My[/name_f] mom was named after her grandmother, who was named after her grandmother. [name_f]Every[/name_f] other generation of women in my maternal line has been named [name_f]Kathryn[/name_f]. I won’t be continuing the tradition with my own daughter, for several reasons. The main reason is that I have always had to spell my own name ([name_f]Kristine[/name_f]) to people and with the multiple variations of [name_f]Kathryn[/name_f], my future daughter would have the same problem. There was an uproar when I first mentioned this years ago, but thankfully it has since ceased.
[name_u]Honor[/name_u] names are not a tradition in my family but my SO’s family does use them. We did not plan on using a honor name but ended up honoring both my SO and me. We had a horrible time deciding on a name. Are styles are very different. We ended up using [name_u]Max[/name_u] [name_u]Lee[/name_u]. [name_u]Max[/name_u] is my SO’s middle name and [name_u]Lee[/name_u] is my middle name.
Wow, what fantastic responses! It seems like in a lot of cases, the use of honour names isn’t quite straight-forward.
I was prompted to ask the question given my own circumstances at the moment. Both DH and I have middle names honouring family members, but it’s not necessarily a tradition. Neither side of our family has ever made mention of using a certain name, but we’ve said from the get-go that we wouldn’t use any “honour names” to avoid anyone being left out. Instead, we’ve opted for names that honour our respective heritages.
Until I fell head over heels with a combination that includes my father-in-law’s name. He’s wonderful, he has a wonderful name, and it also happens to represent the city where Hubby and I started our life together. But I feel like I need to let that option go. [name_f]Do[/name_f] I think that my father will feel left out? No, not really. But I just don’t want to go there.
Because I don’t know much about my family—mother’s or father’s side, I really like the idea of using honor names. It seems like a really great way to connect to the past. For my two sons, I took from their father’s family but changed them just a bit to make them their own special names. Great grandfather [name_u]Theo[/name_u] became [name_m]Theodore[/name_m] and grandpa [name_u]James[/name_u] became [name_u]Jameson[/name_u]. We were under no pressure at all to use family names but it just felt right.