Junior or no? Thoughts on naming your child after dad.

arcook0307

To ME personally it feels weird.  My husband is Caleb.  I love the name but not the fact that it's no fun to pick out a new name and it's just odd having two people with the same name when you're talking to others.  Are there any better nicknames besides "Junior"?  I know someone who calls his kid Buddy.....and I am definitely not a fan of that either.  I seriously thought his name was Buddy for the longest time! lol  I would love to do this to make my husband happy but I just don't know...

Atleighdan

I have a student at school who is a junior. They call him TJ. t is the first initial of his first name and j for the junior. I think the same could work for Caleb. You could call him CJ.

Zimger

I wouldn't. Simply for the fact that it can cause confusion with paperwork (i.e bills, ss numbers, debt, ect)

My DH is a Jr. and he still gets mail addressed to his dad who has been deceased for almost ten years.

We will use either his first or middle name to honor him.

salt78

My family does this a lot. My cousin is a 4th. My brother and his cousin are both named after their grandfather. My daughter is named after my grandmother. I don't think there is anything "odd" about there being multiple Richards or Josephs or Bettys. It's more about honoring family and passing the name down.

ETA for clarity and: In the case of my cousin, they call his grandfather D.ick (unfortunate that TB won't even let me type it out), his father is Richard, and then he is Rich. My brother goes by his middle name and his cousin goes by Joe.

Zimger

salt78:

My family does this a lot. My cousin is a 4th. My brother is named after his grandfather. My daughter is named after my grandmother. I don't think there is anything "odd" about there being two Bettys.

We name children after family members also. The difference with the Jr. seems to be that one often gets confused with the other in paperwork. I guess it's easy to do since the names are very similar and usually they both live in the same household for a time and therefore have the same address for years.

Naming children after grandparents doesn't seem to cause those same issues.

 

+ASH+

Big discussion about this over the weekend:

 https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/72013295.aspx

 

For me, we passed on my husband's middle name because it had been through several generations, but I hate "Junior". 

SoleilMoon

We are most likely going with DH's first name but different middle name if this baby is a boy.  Simply for the fact that we cannot agree on any boy names and b/c of that the idea of having a son with his name has grown on him.  I don't mind b/c he has a good strong unique name.

mama2bJessica

It's traditional in Judaism to use the first letter of a deceased loved one to honor that person.  You could use the 'C' as a starting point.  Good luck!

modernfairytale8709

I work in finance, and I can tell you that naming giving 2 people that live at the same address the same name can be a nightmare from a credit standpoint.

Also, I just don't like it. I want my children to be their own people, with their own names.

June2007

I hate legacy names. Give a person their own name! The point of a name is to identify you as a seperate person.

I have seen people do the following: use the initials (so if it was Caleb John they call the son CJ), call the son by the middle name, Trey (for the third), or use a nick name unrelated to their real name (like your friend Buddy).

JMU_Bride09

I didn't want a junior, so we gave DS a name that is the Irish form of MH's name. They are similar, but each has their own name.

alohamora

It is NMS and seems egotistical to me to pass on the exact same name, especially if the dad demands it.  

I am a big fan of family names though. 

mrsjenni

I hate juniors.  Give your son Caleb as a middle name and be done with it. 

joyfullyfound

Is it a tradition in your DH's family? If so, it would be really cool to continue it! If not, and you really can't get into the idea, I'd do Caleb as the MN - it's a great name!  

I know a few people with Juniors. Usually the Dad calls his son by his name (in this case, Caleb) or whatever NN you come up with, and the son calls him Dad in return. Mom usually ends up calling her husband Dad in front of the LOs, anyways, so there really isn't any confusion. 

BrideBuddies

The kid deserves his own name.  But I'm not opposed to sharing his father's FN or MN as the child's MN.    Both my husband and my son have Henry as their MN.  But it's a family name for both sides, so  it worked well for us.

 

IrishTraveler

I don't like it. DH is a "II," and we opted not to continue the tradition. When he was a kid, he was given a cutesy version of his dad's nickname. When he got to college, he changed it altogether to have a separate nickname from his dad. (We aren't sure why his family didn't do that to begin with.) DH's grandfather also shared DH's and FIL's first name but not the middle name. We considered using that name as DS's middle name, but we never seriously thought about making him a "III." We decided DS should get to have his own name.

blu-eyedwife

mama2bJessica:

It's traditional in Judaism to use the first letter of a deceased loved one to honor that person.  You could use the 'C' as a starting point.  Good luck!

But that's also because in Judaism it's considered bad form to name after someone living.  It's inviting the Angel of Death to take the wrong one.

starshineamator

My brother was named after my dad- Russell. People used to refer to them as "big Russell" and "little Russell" which was actually pretty cute. Or my brother went by Rusty (which my dad was never called). It was never an issue. 

But with a name like Caleb, I'm not sure what you could get for nicknames out of that, other than Cal. If your husband has never gone by that maybe your son could? Or his middle name, like others suggested, or initials (depends on the mn though I guess).

Is this something that your husband really wants, and he's told you, or do you just think it will make him happy to have his son named after him? If you haven't talked about it you should. Before we found out for sure that we are having a girl, I told Spouse that maybe we could use his fn as our son's mn, and he really didn't like the idea, and didn't want us to name him after him at all! It didn't end up being an issue for us, but you might be surprised at what your H wants/doesn't want! 

UberBiz

arcook0307:

To ME personally it feels weird.  My husband is Caleb.  I love the name but not the fact that it's no fun to pick out a new name and it's just odd having two people with the same name when you're talking to others.  Are there any better nicknames besides "Junior"?  I know someone who calls his kid Buddy.....and I am definitely not a fan of that either.  I seriously thought his name was Buddy for the longest time! lol  I would love to do this to make my husband happy but I just don't know...

LoL this is funny because my FI is a Jr. and has always gone by "Buddy."  We are having "the third" so I don't see any issue with passing on the family name.

FrecklesInside

Personal opinion: I think LO deserves his own name. I like honoring family names in the MN spot but I really dislike giving a family name, especially directly from the parent, in the FN spot. I think it is SO egotistical (sorry), I really don't get it, and it is super annoying that is such a male tradition (what, female names count for nothing? Only the men are important and should pass down their name?)

I understand my opinion might be unpopular and probably even offends some people, but I don't get this "tradition" at all.