Comments on: In which I worry about naming a baby that isn’t even mine

By: Durga

Durga — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:49:17 +0000

The whole 1, 11, Jr, Sr thing isn’t a tradition in Australia.
But Michael being the eldest son in his family has his dad’s first name Grant as his middle name. Michael Grant….
So maybe we’ll do that with our future son…have michael as his middle name. I don’t think it’s really expected but i mean why not eh?

I Tamil tradition…The father’s first name is is wife’s and children’s last name. So the dad if he was called Ravi Shankar….the kids would be Julie Ravi….etc.
It was this way till my generation of kids in Aus….but has change since.

By: SJ

SJ — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 03:18:14 +0000

My first born is a “Jr.” I wasn’t really onboard with the idea at first but then I realized how important it was to him to have a “Jr.” and so we went with it.

I have no idea if our boy will carry the legacy on or not, and really it doesn’t matter to me. I really have no idea how all of that officially works. I just know that my husband wanted to name our second born a III and I simply said HELL NO!

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:03:33 +0000

I have actually wondered about this very thing. It is very likely that my only brother will not be having children for the same reason as your brother Biffy, and my brother carries a family middle name. (He is the third generation of the middle name, and before that it was our great-grandfather’s first name.) I do NOT like the name and was always glad that the responsibility, if any, to carry it on would belong to him. But now…? Anyway, I won’t do it. But I am also concerned with the whole carrying on the whole last name thing as I am the only one with my last name in my generation besides my bro, so it likely dies with me. I was going to keep it for me regardless, but can I pass it down to my own kids? What about my future husband? So many things to think about…

I know for sure I will never, ever, ever have a “Jr.” or “II” though. I HATE that… unless you can come up with two clearly distinct nicknames, it is just way too confusing. My cousin did the junior thing with her son and you either have to call him “Baby X” (which isn’t working much anymore) or “X MiddleName” (which is just too long for someone that small).

By: Kait

Kait — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 05:32:11 +0000

Technically, I’m not sure that the younger brother’s son would qualify as the Third in this sequence, anyway. If Biffopher had been the older brother’s name (first in line) and the younger brother named his son Biffopher, he wouldn’t be Biffopher Jr. because he’s not the son of the original Biffopher. At least, that’s my theory.

I was named after my father’s maternal grandmother. We’re naming our daughter after her mother’s paternal grandmother. We wanted to carry on the tradition, but I couldn’t stand to call my daughter Betty. Sorry Nana!

By: Pamela

Pamela — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:48:12 +0000

Well, I can see by the post made while I was writing that I misread the part about your brother being the IInd already. And, oops! My link doesn’t work. Let’s try it this way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffix_%28name%29 Hopefully, the information there will still help.

Oh, and you keep the legacy going by continuing the good things about your father and your grandmother.