Her Mother-In-Law Wanted Her Granddaughter To Be Named After Her, But When They Disagreed Tensions In The Family Rose

Heide Lazaro

4 months ago

Source: Reddit/AITA/Canva

For soon-to-be parents, naming their baby is one of the exciting parts of parenting.

They are the best people to decide what their baby will be called.

This woman‘s mother-in-law, however, assumed that the baby would be named after her name so she started announcing it to her friends.

When she learned that it wasn’t the case, things heated up.

Check out the full story below!

AITA for not naming my daughter after MIL, and neither allowing her to have a special nickname for her granddaughter?

I (29F) recently welcomed my daughter Carolyn, about a month back.

Her name has been a point of contention with my MIL (Margaret) ever since.

For context, my SIL (husband’s sister, Lena, 27F) had her baby daughter two years ago, and named her “Agatha,” after her own MIL.

Needless to say, Granny Agatha was overjoyed.

This woman’s mother-in-law expects that her baby will be named after her.

This naming slightly miffed Lena’s mom and my MIL (Margaret), as the baby hadn’t been named after her, nor given a middle name honoring her.

Although she never communicated this with Lena directly, she would make backhanded comments about this.

When MIL found out that my husband and I were having a girl, she assumed we were going to name her Margaret or something similar like Margot.

Even though we had never said anything as such.

Her husband said it could be just a superficial idea.

When we announced the baby’s gender at a family gathering, she responded that she “cannot wait to meet mini Margaret.”

I didn’t say anything at the time to avoid conflict in front of the entire family, but brought it up in private with my husband later that day.

He said that she probably said it “on a whim” out of endearment for her granddaughter, since we had not yet decided upon a name at the time.

The couple put off announcing their baby’s name.

My husband did bring up honoring MIL, but I vetoed it. He didn’t push much either.

When we finally did decide upon the name though, a few weeks later, I had a bad feeling about her reaction.

I really didn’t want someone to constantly pester us or try to convince us of changing the name just a few weeks before birth.

So I told my husband that I wanted to meet the baby first and be fully convinced that she was a “Carolyn” before announcing the names.

However, her MIL has been making her own announcement.

Unbeknownst to us, all this while, my MIL had been going around telling her friends how the baby was going to be named after her and how they would be Peggy and “Maggie”.

After Carolyn was born and we announced her name to family and friends, my MIL was LIVID.

She argued about how we “broke the tradition” by choosing a different name “last minute.”

An argument started between the two.

I responded that my SIL naming her daughter after her own MIL does not constitute/lay down any “tradition.”

And naming my daughter Margaret/Margot was never in consideration in the first place.

She then claimed that we were embarrassing her in front of all her friends now that she had told them about the granddaughter being named after her.

Now, her husband says she’s being harsh.

My husband tried to intervene by saying that she can still call the baby Maggie if she’d like and that could be her nickname for Carolyn.

But by that point, I was so mad over the situation that I refused to let that happen.

My husband and I later had a mini argument over this.

He said that although he understands that MIL is being a bit unreasonable, I was being too harsh by not even allowing Maggie as a nickname for her.

I said that I would have considered doing so had she not gone behind our backs and spread the word about the baby being named after her, and later arguing/accusing us of embarrassing her.

That’s some serious family drama.

Let’s see how other people reacted to this story.

This user agrees that it isn’t a tradition.