"Choosing a name for my two babies was a stressful process. It felt like such a monumental decision. Their name lives with them forever. It’s how they’re presented to the world. Would their name stand the test of time or show up on a ‘trendy once but out of vogue now’ list by the time they were older? Was there any possibility that their name would lend itself to an unfavorable nickname they’d be teased about? For most parents, choosing their child’s name is carefully considered, and the pressure to feel like you’ve chosen the ‘right’ name is high. Compounding that pressure was the decision over using a family name for my baby or not.
Using a family name has been an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) rule on both sides of my family that has been passed on for generations. Family names are also a tradition that has deep cultural roots where I grew up, and I worried about choosing a name outside of the family and what repercussions that might have.
Family names run strong in the South and in my family
I grew up in South Carolina, and my husband Virginia. It’s a bit of a Southern tradition to use family names. It’s seen as a way to honor family members, and in my family and community passing names down (I went to school with lots of Jrs and ‘Tripps’) is a practice so ingrained in the culture that I remember gossipy conversations exclaiming disbelief when new parents chose to forgo a family name.
My siblings and I were all named exclusively after family members—me after my grandmother, my sister after our great-grandmother, and my brother after my dad. There are at least six Westons on my mom’s side of the family, a nod to my mom’s dad, and the same names have been repeated over and over. My husband is one of four boys, and each of their names were carefully drawn from the family tree.
Using family names was just something that you did and was something I assumed my husband and I would do when we had children. My sister and brother-in-law had already continued the tradition when their son was born before my daughter, choosing a name from each side of the family for him. It felt like my sister set a precedent for our generation—that the expectation would be for any of our children to use the same pool of names, too.
My husband and I put a lot of effort into trying to use a family name
The pressure was on to use a family name when we found out we were pregnant—at least that’s what I perceived. I didn’t want to be the first person in the family to break from tradition.
When we found out we were having a girl, we set out to round up all the potential names that were on the table. My cousin sent screenshots of a family genealogy study. My parents and my in-laws sent us lists of names as well, so we felt like we had a full picture of “all” of our options.
At first, it seemed like it would be an easy task to find family names that would satisfy tradition and be names that my husband and I loved, too, with so many to choose from. We quickly decided on Emily as a first name. It’s always been a favorite girl name of mine, and it happened to be my maternal grandmother’s name, a woman I deeply loved.
And then we were stuck combing through options for a middle name. None of the family names seemed right. Still, I felt I was ‘supposed to’ and seriously debated using a family middle name to assuage the guilt I was feeling.
Choosing not to use a family name
When we decided on Katherine as her middle name, one that we had not seen on any of the family lists, I preemptively worried about what our families would think. After announcing her name, we did get a question about where Katherine came from, but a few days later, we got the ‘good news’ that it was a great great somebody’s name. A weight lifted off my shoulder. All was well, except for the fact that now I was feeling guilty that my daughter had two names from my side of the family and none from my husband’s.
The pressure to use a family name didn’t go away
After seeing the questions and confusion over our first daughter’s name, the pressure felt higher to use a family name when we found out we were having another girl. It was also important to me to use a name from my husband’s side, for fear that we’d over-represent my side of the family.
But it’s not as if there were any more names to choose from, and two more baby girls had been born on my husband’s side. To no surprise, they both had family names, three of which had been on our short list of names we’d consider, and we didn’t feel right using any of them for our daughter. We sat stumped. Then our daughter was born nearly six weeks early.
It took us days to name our second baby after she was born
It had been a rough couple of days already. My husband was across the country on a business trip when I went into labor, so I had driven myself to the hospital. I ended up with an unexpected c-section because she was breech, and I saw my daughter whisked away to the NICU immediately after giving birth. My brain was at capacity trying to navigate all that had happened, but I also knew we needed to figure out what to call her sooner rather than later.
She sat unnamed for two days in her little corner of the NICU as my husband and I tried to figure it out. Our top two contenders were Charlotte, a more classic name that we hadn’t seen pop up in family research but felt confident probably existed somewhere, and a more modern name, Cameron, one that most certainly had never appeared on either side of the family.
“She sat unnamed for two days in her little corner of the NICU as my husband and I tried to figure it out.”
After much consideration and guilt, we went with Cameron and paired it with Elizabeth, a family name on my husband’s side. I felt relieved knowing we had used something from his side, but I was anxious to tell our families what we had chosen for our daughter, knowing we would get questions.
Sure enough, as soon as we announced that ‘baby girl Harrell’ finally had a real name, we got a text asking if Cameron was a family name. My husband responded with “It is now!” but I instantly panicked, thinking that perhaps we had made a mistake.
I still feel guilty, but don’t feel sorry for the names we chose
Looking back on the baby naming process, I still feel some level of guilt that my girls don’t have full family names. Tradition is important to me, and I know how important it is to my family, but I’m also really glad that we didn’t settle on a name just for tradition’s sake. I know I would have felt even more guilty, though, had we chosen names that didn’t seem 100 percent right.
My girls’ names fit them. I cannot imagine Cameron as a Charlotte—it’s a great name, but it just wouldn’t have suited her personality.
Yes, I felt pressure to use a family name, but most of the pressure was self-induced because of what I had seen growing up.
Cameron is now part of the family tree, and who knows? Maybe her daughter or granddaughter will be a Cameron. Or maybe not. That’s the beauty of a family tree. It’s always blossoming and blooming into new branches.
Elliott Harrell, Contributing Writer
Elliott is a mom of two little girls and is based in Raleigh, NC. She spends her days running a sales team and doing laundry and her nights writing about the things that she loves. She’s passionate about all things motherhood and women’s health. When she’s not working, writing or parenting you can find her trying a new restaurant in town or working on her latest needlepoint project.