A dad’s wish to honour a family tradition when naming his first son has caused a rift, after his wife decided she no longer wants to back out of the agreement.

The 37-year-old mum is now asking whether she’s in the wrong for no longer wanting to follow her husband’s family tradition. She says she and her 38-year-old husband have been married for 11 years, and have two daughters aged eight and four.

“I am currently 12-weeks pregnant with our third child,” she explained. “I just had an ultrasound and we were able to determine the sex of the baby, a little boy. We have found out the sex of all of our children this way.

“My husband is a ‘third’. As in, John Smith III. Before we got married and were having discussions about kids, he did make it very clear that passing down his name was very important to him if we had a son. At the time I thought it was really cute and adorable how much pride he took in it since most guys don’t really care about that sort of sentimental stuff.

“But as the years have gone by I’ve definitely cooled on the idea quite a bit and I don’t think I want to have our son be named after my husband that way.”

With their first two children being girls, the couple didn’t have to worry about the family tradition.

“But when we were choosing names for our daughters, my husband was very much in the ‘you can take the lead on naming our daughter because I already have the name picked out if we have a son’ camp. It’s not like he wasn’t involved in naming our daughters, but he definitely deferred to my opinion.

“So, when we found out we were having a boy, my husband was very excited. On the car ride home after the ultrasound it was all he could talk about. He was giddy like a teenager talking about how proud he would be of sharing his name with his son.

“I don’t know if it was the best time to bring this up, but I kind of had one of those ‘yeah, about that’ moments. I told him how I know we had talked about this many times before with our other kids and that I technically agreed to it years ago, but I don’t think I want to name our son the same as my husband.”

She says her husbands mood quickly shifted, and ‘all the joy went out of his body’.

“I told him that I just don’t want our son to be a ‘fourth’. It seems tacky and has weird aristocratic vibes that just don’t seem right to me. I told him that I am not totally against the idea, but I don’t want to just agree to it right now because I want time to think about other names too.

“He took that as me basically saying that I am going back on our years-long agreement and that there is no way we are naming our son after him. He said this is pretty much me telling him ‘maybe’ when I really mean ‘no’.”

The expecting mum says the disagreement has taken away all of the excitement of the upcoming birth of their baby, and that her husband has been withdraw and quiet.

“When I try to talk to him about it, he tells me he has nothing to say because he’s been very clear about where he stands on this and he feels betrayed by my change of heart.

“I asked him if he would want to think of some other names together and he told me to give him a list and he’ll look at it when he can. I know I technically agreed to this years ago, but it just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.”

Do you think what this mum has done is wrong? Or do you get her viewpoint? Let us know in the comments below. 

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