Crosspost "How do I [22F] tell my boyfriend's[21M] family that our son won't have horrible family name?" from /r/relationships:

I frequent this subreddit a lot, but I never had an account before or anything. Never thought I'd have to post on here!

In a nut shell - me (22F) and my boyfriend (21M) recently found out that our soon-to-be-here baby will be a boy. We've been together for 3 years now. We're over the moon and I had already started making a list of names that I'd love for our son to have.

We had a celebration at my boyfriend's parent's house the other day to celebrate finding out the gender which I had been told was just family having a nice meal to celebrate. However, when I got there it was crazy - the house had been decorated with balloons and banners and it was more like a party. I was a bit overwhelmed but they're trying to be nice so I went along with it. However, and no one had mentioned this to me before - all of the balloons/banners and even the cake had my boyfriend's father's name on them. I kind of laughed and asked his mother why? And she laughed to which I was confused and said no really I don't get it? And she looked at me very seriously and said 'It's the name of the baby.'

I thought she was joking - she was not. I had no idea what to do or how to react. I am certainly NOT going to be naming my first child after my boyfriend's father - and I had no idea this was an expectation! I'm not trying to be rude, but his name (first AND middle!) is very old fashioned and I can't believe they expected me to use this name.

I went out to my boyfriend who was with the rest of his family and asked him if I could speak in private. He refused and said that would be rude to his family, so I asked him why his family thought our son would have his father's name? My boyfriend just shrugged and said he knew and thought I'd be okay with it! The whole family heard this conversation and it ended up in a big fight over why I don't want to name my child after the father, and it was so upsetting that I left early and had my sister come pick me up and take me home.

What do I do? My boyfriend 'apologised' but is still saying he doesn't see why I don't want to name the baby after his dad. I cannot do it, the name is just not going to happen. I don't want to be disrespectful but I feel sick at the idea of naming my child this. What do I do??

tldr Boyfriend's family want me to use dreadful family name for my son, don't want to use the name, no idea what to do.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who replied with advice, I didn't expect to get that many comments, so thank you for taking the time to reply. I feel like I've had a real eye opener with some of the comments, and now I'm worried that the problem here is much bigger than my baby's name. I'm going to talk to my boyfriend about it tonight. Thank you all again.

Posted by namedilema | 29 April 2018 | Link