It’s common to see boys named after their fathers, but you (almost) never see girls named after their mothers.
Easy points with the mother-in-law.
Because you need points with the person you married parents?
I’m guessing admiration plays more into it than ego.
A lot of people named after their fathers might also be named after their grandfathers.
My dads family had this whole thing of "same first, middle and last name for the first boy" which went back for generations.
All the second sons were Alan too! Genealogy gets kind of confusing.
No idea why he broke that trend for my brother but I did use both names as middle names for my son (my partner was set on him being named after his own Grandpa who had a much nicer name).
Yep, I'm the 4th of my namesake and kinda the 5th since my great great grandpa's nickname was my name
Yup, I was named after my grandmother and my daughter has two middle names for her grandmothers. She and I both like having that connection, but just with middle names we don’t use regularly. I’m not judging, but the thought of naming my child after me seemed weird. My husband luckily feels the same way because I would not have been down with naming our son after him. It just feels kinda narcissistic. They are their own people, not clones.
Im really glad my sister isnt named sheila then
My niece was named after my grandmother (in her case grand grandmother) because grandma died one week before my niece was born. So my brother and his wife thought it would be a way to honor her memory.
Strange but true. Grandmother might even be a more likely namesake than mother
As someone who was named after her grandma, yes
Huh. So weird hearing about a grandma named snackytacky 😳
Granny's an absolute snack
Snackytacky is the granddaughter Snacktack is the og
if the bloodline keeps going do we just add an extra y for each snacktack granddaughter?
The great granddaughter will be SnackathaTackatha
Followed in a few generations by SnakathatasticTackathatastic.
It skips a generation, it would be be great great granddaughter.
I think the proper way is SnackyTackyTickyTacky
Snackeigh Tackeigh
2 Snacky 2 Tacky
I'm not a family namiologist, but wouldn't the vowel change for the third+ generation. Going in vowel order, I believe it would be sneckteck, snicktick, snocktock, snucktuck. I have no idea what happens after that. Maybe start over but add roman numerals.
That'd be Gramsnacker.
It was a pretty common name for that generation.
Well you have to understand, she was a young woman once too
Yeah, whenever I hear about a girl named after a family member, it's almost always a grandmother.
My mother was named after her mother - they have the same first name with different middle names. I guess after having 14 kids grandma felt entitled to naming the last one after herself.
In the South African Afrikaans culture it’s very common to name your children after the grandparents.
So first son gets named after the father’s father. Second son gets named after the mother’s father. Third son tends to be an uncle or father directly.
First Daughter gets named after the mother’s mother. Second daughter the father’s mother. Third daughter an aunt or mother.
My husbands family is very big on this so usually when you run into someone who has a similar name with our surname you can usually track them down in the family tree pretty easy.
That said the girls definitely are not being given family names in my generation. My sons are named after their grandparents. But if I ever have another son or a daughter I won’t be doing family names.
Surprisingly, I (F) am named after my great-grandfather. His mother was fed up with having sons and named him a girls name anyways. (I think it was his middle name but the point stands.)
Leslie
snicker
Boss baby joke
Leslie
snicker
Surely you can't be serious?
I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.
Daughter named after great grandmother
My sister is named after our maternal grandmother and great aunt (both names combined into a single name), and my daughter is named after my mother. My wife’s sister is named after her grandmother, my first cousin is named after our grandmother (my paternal grandmother)… just to add a few data points that agree with your assessment.
Yeah girls often get named after their fathers too...
I know a girl named after her grandpa, her legal name is william 😭
Billie is a cute name at least
Yeah true. But it'd be funnier if she went by Billiam.
Billiam is a top-tier name, right next to Bobert.
I’m a man, William. Everyone has nicknamed me Billiam, Bildo, or Will-I-Am throughout my life. And each new time, I let them think they were the first.
Good lord, did the father do this while the mother was unconscious after birth… 😭
I think in most cases it's bc they didn't have a boy
i know multiple sets of siblings where the older sister clearly got the female variation of the dad's name (Charla, Antonia, Michaela) and the younger brother still gets the dad's name (Charles, Anthony, Micheal) which is bonkers to me. like they panicked with a firstborn daughter and needed the name to live on desperately, but then forget once the son is born
The girl is a jic moment. Now if a boy got the name first and a girl after...I wouldn't know what to think about that
What about George Foreman (of the grill)? All his sons have the same name (middle and all) and one of the daughters has the girl version.
I don't know if I feel worse for the sons or that one daughter. I don't imagine it's that great for the other daughters either since it rather gives vibes of not considering girls of equal value to sons.
I heard it's a one way thing though. Once enough girls have a particular guy's name, fewer males will be given that name. So eventually it becomes a girls-only name.
They couldn’t even go with Willamina?
Yep, my grandmother went by her middle name because her first name was the same as her dads...
My sister has a feminized version of our dad’s name. If she was a boy she’d be a junior or II.
You should call her jr from now on
My mom is named after her uncle. His name is John
Lol does she go by that
Her mom tossed a "ya" at the end and called it a day. Getting people to spell/pronounce her name right is a nightmare for her
I'd probably just go by jo
I really thought Joanna/Johanna would've been the easy choice there, wow.
I've seen them add A to the end of a name or try to turn a male name feminine. Kind of how Will Smith and his wife did with their kids Willow and Jaden
JonBenet Ramsey comes to mind
A lot of girls in my family, whose mothers took their husbands name, have my grandfathers last name as their middle. Including me…
Yup. My daughter has the feminine version of my name, and I have my father’s name as my first name, and my grandfather’s name as a middle name. My daughter has the feminine version of my father-in-law’s middle name as her middle name as well.
So yeah, one little girl named after two guys, one of which was also named after two guys.
My sister is named after my dad.
I’m sure all the women in these stories definitely appreciate y’all permanently sticking them with a non feminine name 👍 all so the dad’s ego could increase by 2%
As a “III”, I can say it was 100% ego.
I broke the chain.
I went to high school with a guy who came from a family where the firstborn son was named Virgil. They didn't use generational suffixes though, but he thought he was the sixth. I wonder what happened to that guy and whether he took pity on his son, or kept it going for fun.
Shit, if I were Virgil the V I'd name my kid Virgil the VI as well. That's fuckin sick. I bet the 7th gets superpowers.
Virgil is a cool fucking name too
It's one of those old-timey badass names, like Atticus.
100% chance of getting nicknamed virgin, though
Tell me you are filthy rich without telling me you are filthy rich kind of name.
Virgil X completes the punchcard and Virgil XI gets the free sandwich.
worm point political memory rhythm spoon angle repeat abundant drab
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
Also, did he have names for his pistols?
Perhaps he is also the storm that is approaching
Mayhaps he also took a little vacation to the glowing sea
Maybe that's what the "Vi" in Virgil stands for. His grandfather must have been called Ivrgil then.
So they’re doing the same as the Danish kings who alternate between Christian and Frederik. We are currently at Frederik X.
I broke the chain.
Good for you.
I know a guy who is a V. He feels the constant pressure to not be the asshole who breaks the streak and doesn't have a son and then makes him the 6th.
I’m a VI. Would I be the asshole for not having the VII?
Yes you are required by law to continue until at least C
I think they've been going long enough that someone has already been a C.
I don't think so... But what would V, IV, and III (and their spouses) think?
I only ever knew V, my father. I take it there’d be no hard feelings.
Then you're good to do whatever you want, no hard feelings. Sadly some families aren't as understanding to breaking from "tradition."
It'd be cool for the kid honestly. Just give them a normal middle name and let them choose what to go by
At least he's not one of George Foreman's kids.
I know a guy who is a V and just goes by V, which is a pretty cool name.
I read that 'lil' - like as an alternative to jr. As though Bow Wow thought, I will name my son after me and he will rap for a bit.
Yup. Brother is a "III" and he hates his name. He has sons, none of whom is a "IV".
I used to work with a guy named Walter who was an IV. We called him WTF pejoratively (he was bonkers).
Yup I'm in a similar situation but with "inverted" names Let's say my grandpa is named John Adam, my dad is named Adam John and I'm named John Adam as well. My dad asked me if I'm gonna name my son Adam John and I said fuck no
My niece is a “X” and her name is Frances. Kind of sucks for her but it’s also really awesome at the same time. My sister just gave her a completely different nickname that everyone except my mom and grandma call her lol
I actually named my son II instead of Jr because I had an uncle who absolutely hated being called Junior.
You would have thought I murdered someone with all the controversy it caused.
Screw them, I refused to put my child through that. And he thanked me when he got older.
That's all the validation that a mother needs!
As far as I know, number I was a real asshole. All the kids were rape kids (my dad included). He just went by his non roman numeral name.
My dad wasn’t as big of an asshole, but was legally II from day 1
As a IV, I am keeping it going, even though my father and I go by our middle names.
oooh, that's interesting! Makes me wonder if anyone has the repeated name as the middle.
I mean I’m a V and all 5 of us, dad, granddad, and the greats, have the same first, middle, last. Funny part to is my grandmother told my mom they didn’t have to keep it going, but they did it anyways. Personally I don’t plan to keep it going. 5 is a too many in my opinion. However, it is pretty cool that some where there is a picture with four generations of us somewhere.
Lorelai Gilmore and Lorelai “Rory” Gilmore, Jr. — the main characters in the TV show Gilmore Girls — are fun counterexamples of this, after the elder Lorelai had the same realization.
and Lorelai Gilmore is named after Richard’s mother, Lorelai Gilmore.
There's always a bigger smaller fish.
King of The Hill is another counter example
Peggy's real name is Bobby.
I don’t get it / how so
Kahn, Hank's next door neighbor, named his daughter Kahn Jr.
I think it only comes up in the first episode; she goes by Connie. Not quite the same thing as the post title though.
He calls her Kahn Jr throughout the show, but he’s the only one who does so.
See it all the time, actually. Especially in Latin American families
Yep, half of my family is south American and is the norm.
Agreed. My mother is like the fourth in a row with her name.
Yep, at least for me and my cousins this is true.
That's just because half of them are called Maria
I begged my wife to name our daughter Emily Jr. She said no. :( I really wanted to yell at soccer games "Way to go, Junior!!!" to an all girl's team and watch the confusion on peoples' faces.
Haha I also wanted to name our daughter after my wife. I thought adding the suffix “missy” at the end would be cute and somehow made sense to me as the equivalent of junior. My wife was not having it
I knew a girl named Melissa Jr. after her mom, and she went by the nickname Missy
Most would probably assume it's a nickname
Yeah dads yell “let’s go sport, come on kid, go junior” at soccer games all the time no matter what their daughters are actually named. No one would be confused or give a fuck lol.
The kids can call her Emju
Honestly, these days. I’d be moderately worried about someone assuming there’s a Trans Athlete on the team. And getting all up in arms about it.
My name is Mary Amanda, mom is Mary Lynn, Grandma is Mary Florence, G-Grandma Mary Margaret and it goes back I think at least another 3-4 generations. My great grandma was from Mexico, I've heard it's traditional that the first daughter is named after the mother. I've always loved it, it's made me feel more connected to my family. I've always known I would name a daughter one day Mary something but now that we're getting closer to having our own family, it does feel egotistical, if an outsider doesn't know it's a family tradition, I think I'll always feel like I have to explain but men do it all the time without blinking an eye.
I share the name of my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother who are also from Mexico. I think it’s a beautiful tradition and hope to continue it for my future daughter someday day. I grew up going by my middle name and have loved having the flexibility to go by either name depending on the situation/ relationship.
You should totally do it. We need more matriarch-centered generational identifications. I'm Latina and I really appreciate my female line. If you do it right, you almost feel like witches that carry a mother-to-daughter secret :)
I'm not having kids, but if I did have a girl, I'd totally call her like myself, my mom, and her grandma (likely changing the middle name). It's a powerful generational name for us (in a sea of greatly defective men in our family).
Do it, that’s so cool!!! Don’t break the chain unless you actually WANT to. Never do anything like that because of what others might think. It’s not your problem if they assume or are judgemental 🤷🏼
South American here. My great Grandmother had 13 children. 7 men and 6 women. All men were called Joseph "something" and all women were called Mary "something". That includes one Jospeh Mary and one Mary Joseph.
I feel this. I’m 6th in a line of the matriarchal name.
The naming after their father is very cultural though. I've never met nor heard about anyone named after his father where I live.
Same here, it would be considered extremely weird for a parent to give their name to their child.
Children either get the name of their grandparents, or something original.
Same, I don't know anyone named after their parent.
Naming a child after the father and putting a number on the end feels very American to me. It's definitely not common in lots of other countries.
It's not common here in the UK, it feels very... self important?
We chose original first names and middle names after grandparents (took turns which side, but only names we liked)
It would be super fucking weird to name my kids after me especially as I share a rare name with a semi-famous person
Unusual here in Australia too — I’ve never met anyone with the same name as their father.
Yeah for it to be 'european medieval nobility' numbering it would still go with using name of someone further in family tree and putting numbers, would be weird these days, but that way it wuld not be Usa weird.
When names were less varied, you did get a lot of Mary, Elizabeth, Anne, Margaret, etc so inadvertently there's a lot of people named the same as their mothers and grandmothers but it fell out of fashion after a time.
Doing any genealogy, you find a butt load of John, James, Edward, Mary, Elizabeth, etc. It gets tedious lol
Mary Elizabeth Anne Margaret sounds like the name of a single British royal. Who would probably get called Dodo or something.
Female names are still more clustered in relatively few names. Albeit not nearly as extreme.
Found that out when looking up my (future) son's name which is technically either male or female, and I was curious of the ratio. Nearly 1.5x as many male babies named it, but it was something like the 204th most popular boy name and 195th most popular girl name.
Amusingly my wife picked my middle name (I had no say). Mostly because she always thought it was much cooler than my first name.
Unisex names are super interesting for ratios. Society still tends to lean one way or the other with names, regardless of the egalitarian intention.
Once people start naming their girls a “boy name”, there’s maybe a couple decades where it could go either way, and then it generally becomes exclusively a girls name. Examples: Taylor, Madison, Leslie, Lindsay, Avery
I actually know a group of 3 sisters named Mary, it’s just religious tradition.
In one branch of my family, going back several generations, if you were female, your middle name was likely "Marie." From the 1870s to now.
My son has my middle name and my daughter has my wifes's.
Both have older family ties to them and we thought it would be nice if they had some meaning, but we wanted them to have their own first names.
I just learned that Tig Notaro's birth name is Mathilde O'Callaghan Notaro. Her mother's name was also Mathilde O'Callaghan, but she went by Susie. Susie's mother was also named Mathilde, but she went by Tilly. That's three Mathildes in a row, none of whom went by their actual name.
I’m grateful I was named after my uncle (Oscar) then and not my father (Cornelio).
Cornelio would have been a rough name to be stuck with lol
I am the great Cornelio and I need TP for my bunghole
Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen
As soon as I saw the name....
Wait Cornelio is sweet af! (Oscar is too)
I was named after an actress my dad crushed on in high school
what’s it like having names that mean important things guys
Women tend to place names on their children that hold significance to themselves like an aunt or grandmother. Men tend to name their children after the one person who holds the most significance to them. Themselves. /s
I have an Americanized version of my grandmothers name
Wait, you're the granddaughter of Doña Dona Desaprobadora?
Dead 🤣
My mom was named after her mother.
Based on this person's (not random) sample it was almost as common as naming a son after his father, though both have gotten less common recently.
My mom was also named after her mother
I’m named after my mom, it was my dad’s idea, she had other names picked out but settled and just put her pick as my middle name… my dad immediately gave me a wildly different nickname, which was the only thing anyone called me until high school.
My great-grandmother's name was Maria, probably Maria something. One of her daughter's was Maria Cristina. Another Maria Magdalena. Yet another Maria del Carmen. Then there was my grandma, the oldest, named Toribia. I've looked up that name, and honestly it's so rare you can't even find what it means, aside from "this one I don't like as much" I guess. My grandma never went by that name. Hated it.
I tried so hard to get my wife to agree to name my daughter Amanda Jr. but she wouldn't do it...
It'd be weird since your wife's name is Melody!
Barack Obama's mother wasn't an exception to this rule. But she was a rare case of being named after her father, Stanley. At least, according to her. According to her Uncle, Stanley's mother named her that after Bette Davis' character in the movie"In This Our Life". The story of two sisters. As adults. Both of whom were given male names by their parents.
Although, come to think of it, actress Cobina Wright, Jr. is the daughter of William Wright, and his wife, Corbina Wright. And that's actually an example of what the OP is asking for.
Actress Lucille Ball had a daughter named Lucie.
I gave my girls my grandmother's name as a middle name. You're right though, but I'm sure it will change eventually, maybe.
I (female) have the same name as my mother. We're not Hispanic so it's not cultural.
No idea why. In fact, I'm going to ask tomorrow.
Nancy Sinatra is the only women I can think of
Lorelai Gilmore had this exact same thought on October 8th, 1984.
Patriarchy hard at work.
No doubt. Plus their need to claim, own, and let it be known what’s “theirs”.
My grandma and her mother had the same name.
Maybe that's common among witches
Tell that to my gf family. They are all called the same
Are you sure they are not, in fact, the same time traveler?
My grandmother was named after her mother. They were both "Winnifred."
George Foreman named all his kids after himself... even his daughter.
That's actually a more recent thing. Like only in the last 100 yrs. Before that it was very common to name daughters after their mother. They often took on nicknames.
I do a lot of geneology and it's not uncommon to see "Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary" going up the tree or even siblings with the mother all having the same name. Mary is one of the most popular western names prior to 1900s in western families. And germany...wow germany prior to 1900 loved to use like the same 5 names for all women. "Wilhelmine, Olga, else, Irma and anne" I see these everywhere.
You do still see it today but now you see it skipped. My own daughter is named after her grandmother but we shortened the name.
It’s because men want to honor themselves and women want to honor other women they look up to.
I'm named after my mom (daughter)
Older sister is named after our mom. When asked why? She states that she had 1 name in mind but her sister-in-law named HER baby that and then she landed on Donna but was afraid my sister would be made fun of and called donut -__-
It is absolutely rare outside news or movies from Usa to see children have se first name as their parent, and absolutely strange AF, like 99,9% of time.
Men think they have a legacy. It’s a very self important view of things.
Yes, mothers don't need that ego boost
My wife has the same first name as her mother
Not true Queen Elizabeth had a boy named Elizabeth.
How about boys named after their mothers
My cousin’s first name is his mom’s maiden name (and also my last name.)
I donno if it counts, but my mom gave me her middle name. When I was born she changed her middle name to her maiden name.
My family did this with the mothers. My aunt and grandmother have the same name, as well as several generations before (not sure how many)
My aunt broke the tradition with my cousin, but my cousins middle name is the name. My mom was very grateful my dad wasn't expected to hold up the tradition lol
Some cultures do it. Greeks name their firstborn daughter after the maternal grandmother. I was at school with a pair of first cousins born a few months apart both named Pariece.
Backstory no one asked for: In Gilmore Girls that’s the exact reason that Lorelai named her daughter after her! She goes by “Rory” but her legal name is “Lorelai” (idk why I was so excited to share that)
That's exactly what Lorelai Gilmore thought when giving birth
Clearly you've never met a Marie
I’ve seen girls and even boys being named after their mothers
The Queen was named after her mother.
Wait til you find out about Iceland.
Girls are often named after grandmothers for some reason.