I feel like I’m losing my absolute mind and my pregnancy hormones are definitely not helping, but I desperately need a reality check.
I’m 26 weeks along with our first baby, a girl. My husband’s grandmother passed away last year, and she was admittedly a wonderful woman who practically raised him. Her legal name was Bertha. For the past two months, my husband and his mother have been relentlessly insisting that we have to name our daughter Bertha to "carry on the legacy."
I told them very gently from day one that I think giving a child born in this generation that first name is basically handing her a lifetime of schoolyard bullying. I offered to use it as a middle name, or find a modern variation like Birdie or Beatrice, but they treated that like a slap in the face.
last night at Sunday dinner, my MIL literally started crying, saying I’m "erasing his grandmother's memory" and my husband went completely quiet instead of backing me up. He told me on the drive home that I’m being shallow and that "names grow on people."
am I genuinely being a horrible person for putting my foot down on this? I dont want our kid to spend her whole childhood hating her legal name.