I understand the importance of family tradition and family names, but some people take that kind of stuff way too far…

Especially when they try to tell other people to do it!

A woman took to Reddit to ask the fine folks there if she’s doing anything wrong when it comes to naming her baby.

Let’s see what she had to say!

AITA for not following my husband’s family tradition?

“My (28f) husband (29m) comes from a very traditional family. While we disagree with his family on many things, it has never really been an issue until now.

I am currently 8 months pregnant and my husband and I couldn’t be happier as we’ve been trying for a while.

Since I first found out I was pregnant, we’ve been discussing names for our child. In my husband’s family, the tradition wants the child to be named after his grandfather.

Basically, first-born men in his family only have one of two names: James or Henry. My husband’s grandfather was James, so his name is James too. My husband’s father is called Henry, so our child should be too. And so on and so forth.

They wanted to do their own thing.

But my husband and I didn’t really feel like calling our child Henry, and although it’s a beautiful way to honor family members, we really wanted our child to have a name that would be personal, that would truly be his.

So we chose another name, and decided to wait until after the birth to reveal it to everyone.

This week, my mother in law came to visit us and help us set up for the baby. She brought us some presents, amongst which was a bunch of clothes on which she hand embroidered the name Henry.

I said that it was nice and thanked her for it, but told her that we wouldn’t be naming our child Henry, as we had already told her in the past.

She started insisting and saying that it was a tradition so it had to be that way.

I explained to her that we’d rather give our child a name that we chose, and that Henry could be his middle name.

Here we go…

She immediately went to my husband and started saying things like “you’re not going to let her do that to our family” and making it very dramatic, saying that I was breaking a tradition that went back hundreds of years (honestly, not sure about that).

My husband tried to explain that we both agreed on the name, and all the reasons why we made that choice, but she wouldn’t listen.

She suggested that we names him Henry on paper, as his legal name, and then called him something else, but I thought that would be confusing for him and told her that he would be named what we chose.

She kept begging my husband and saying that I was ruining the family tradition, and at one point I lost it (which is partially to blame on hormones I think) and told her that it was our child, so we did what we wanted, and we didn’t have to follow a stupid tradition.

Some people…

She stormed out and my husband has since received texts from his father and sister accusing me of making his mother feel really bad and some other stuff that I don’t really remember.

I get the importance of tradition and it can be really beautiful, but also I feel like that shouldn’t be an obligation and it’s okay to change things.

We won’t change our baby’s name because we’re really set on that, but maybe we were wrong for not following the tradition?

I’m not entirely sure, and am mentally exhausted by all this drama.”

That is a lot of drama over a name.

Now let’s see what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another individual spoke up.

This Reddit user said she’s NTA.

Another person agreed.

And this individual had a lot to say.

Some people can be so pushy when it comes to family names…

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.