We had dinner with in-laws last night, and it was friendly and pleasant. My husband and I have an avoidance plan that when encountered with tricky subjects we say nothing, and the conversation moves on. Obviously, they have a similar strategy, and we let the young couple guide the topics. Since we are all thrilled about their pregnancy, and they brought up the subject of names, we had fun saying what names appealed to us and the names we had a bit of trouble with because of associations with people that we didn't get along with. The whole thing of naming sometimes gets taken too seriously. My own regret is I didn't name my younger daughter's middle name after my mother, since our younger son has my father's name as his middle name. I even like my mother's name. But instead I gave her the middle name of a best friend at the time, who turned out to be totally disinterested in my daughter and never made any effort with her. That bothered me for a while, but I don't communicate with the friend any more, and my daughter has taken her maiden name as her middle name now, and her last name is that of her husband. So it all worked out in the end. My other daughter hated her middle name as a child, then grew to love it as an adult and gave the same middle name to her daughter. So time changes everything. And there is always going to court to change your name, if it really matters to you. I loved my name as a kid and still do, though I took my husband's last name when we married, so my maiden last name got dropped, but still pops up on legal documents and other places.
My one piece of advice to the expecting couple was to have several names ready and wait and see what you get. You may see him/her as more one name than the other. Thank goodness we all agreed no juniors or IIIs. I believe this baby will get his own special name.
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