He’s from “here”, though we were from two different parts of the US. He’s from the Northeast and I’m from the South. Two different cultures in many regards.
The trouble was that he was from a line of family where it was like a third (III) situation. His father wasn’t a junior, but it was like that. The first name remained the same, the middle name was chosen. Senior, junior, III, IV, and so on.
We picked out two names, one his family’s way, with a middle name as chosen, with a plan to call the son by the middle name instead of the first name. The other choice was to have the family name in the middle.
My husband got to choose. It was his choice to break the tradition (a little). We always knew we didn’t want to have a son called by his same first name. His grandfather, his father, and he were all called by the same first name, and by then time you get to the fourth, well, you’re a little out of good nicknames for a short name.
I respected that they got to choose the names of their children, and I just wanted to be able to choose the name of my own child. I let my husband make the final choice, when our son was born. It would’ve rocked the boat either way, because if we had chosen the family’s way, they wouldn’t have wanted to call our son by his middle name, so that would’ve been confusing.
I hate to say it, but I had a difficult relationship with my in-laws for most of the time of our marriage. It seems that only the last 15 years they have been more accepting of me. We managed 40 years of marriage despite the rocky start. FIL passed away about ten years ago, and MIL now adores me. I don’t know what took so long. Hubby’s sisters have all been fine, it was just the parents.
my MIL adored me too, when she wanted to come live with me!!!
but before that, not so much.
She never came to live with us. She could have if she had been kind but I noped out of that!!