Respect my child's name, please!

General Name Discussion
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Interesting Article

(RealSimple.com) – A modern manners columnist answers a reader question about a sensitive family issue.

Q. What do you do when your parents won’t call your kids by their given names?
– [name]Christine[/name] [name]Miller[/name] Droessler, San [name]Francisco[/name], [name]California[/name]

A. As absurd and inconceivable as this question may seem to some, child-name rejection appears to be a bona fide cultural phenomenon.

I have a colleague whose mother didn’t like her grandson’s name, [name]Max[/name], so she started calling him by his middle name, [name]Oliver[/name].

An old friend’s father, after learning his new granddaughter’s name was [name]Margo[/name], bellowed, “That’s a hooker’s name!”

Still another pal’s mom said outright, “I don’t like the name [name]Leo[/name].”

Crazy, right? Maybe these overreactions can be traced to the fact that so many of us choose names from our parents’ parents’ generation (see [name]Max[/name], above) and so our folks are predisposed to find them old-fashioned.

Or, conversely, they recoil at names that seem too quirky or modern (think [name]Bowie[/name]). Or maybe grandparents simply feel blindsided. I’m not advocating that people consult with their moms and dads beforehand.

On the contrary, my friends who did regretted it, realizing they had opened themselves up to an endless string of future vetoes on other issues. (“Why on earth would a toddler take yoga?” or “What the heck is the Suzuki Method?”) But this could be the point where the problem starts.

I didn’t tap my parents for naming advice before my first child was born, and when my husband and I announced her name, [name]Thelma[/name], there was a long, stunned silence accompanied by a look of horror and disappointment. To soften the blow, we offered up [name]Tillie[/name] as a nickname, which they took to immediately.

But we quickly realized our baby was truly a [name]Thelma[/name], even as an avalanche of gifts and cards came in, all addressed to [name]Tillie[/name]. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I could see that if we didn’t put out an APB, pronto, the nickname would stick.

We explained to our families that we were calling her only [name]Thelma[/name], and to their credit, they readily accepted her real name.

So speak up about what you would like your child to be called, and the sooner the better. I’ll bet, eventually, your folks will warm to it. When I checked in with my friend whose mother had originally hated the name [name]Leo[/name], she told me her mom had recently gushed, “He’s just such a [name]Leo[/name]!”

Hey, if my folks could learn to love the name [name]Thelma[/name], anything is possible.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/04/20/rs.respect.my.childs.name/index.html?hpt=Sbin

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Interesting article. I decided not to share our potential name choices with our families after hearing too many negative opinions early on in the discussion process. I figure that after the baby is born and named, our families will just accept the name we choose. It never occurred to me that they might not…

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I liked that article. Thanks for posting!

We didn’t share with my parents beforehand and I was not popular because of it. My mom spent hours and hours trying to guess. When we told her our daughters name ([name]Lucia[/name] [name]Marie[/name]) my mom wasn’t thrilled but tried her hardest to be respectful. She threw a couple minor concerns in there before we officially signed the papers “will people know how to spell it?”. “All of my friends are going to pronounce it wrong” but we stood firm and [name]Lucia[/name] is definitely a [name]Lucia[/name]! We may at some point call her [name]Lucy[/name] (which my parents are dying to do!) But they have respectfully kept to her given name and I am proud of them… And I think its growing on them!

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It is difficult for the grandparents of today to embrace names that are in their opinion ‘old lady’ it takes time for them to see them in a different light to their old great aunt [name]Lil[/name] who wore black and was obviously a witch, instead of the beautiful [name]Lily[/name] who wows everyone she meets.

It takes time to adjust, however, the grandparents have to remember to mask their shock a little to avoid upsetting the parents to be, they must also embrace the baby’s name as their favourite name of all time once the baby arrives. A big learning curve for some grandparents.

Being the name nerd that I am and having a particularly easy going daughter she used to get ‘the name of the day’ from me. I was not trying to push a name (well almost always, as sometimes a name just rang bells for me, but I managed to control myself and just put the names out there for consideration.)

In the end she went with names that they had had on their list for ages.

Most grandparents are not up with the latest trends as this name nerd nanna, so it is hard for them to understand why the kids could like names that are in their opinion very ‘old fashioned’.

So, just ease them gently into the name you have that may remind them of crotchey, eccentric relatives from the past. It takes time to ‘redo’ the image in one’s mind.