Seriously. |
I'd be flattered. Most people associate names positively or negatively, and SIL must really be fond of your son to want hers to have the same name (even if it is subconscious, she has a positive association with the name Teddy). |
OP, I'm with you. Unless SIL is naming "Teddy" after her own father or something like that, it's bad form. Your MIL is right to be annoyed, too, because she'll have to deal with this more than anyone.
Agree with other posters: start calling the baby Teddy Two NOW. It may solve your problem. |
Ugh I feel for you and there is no reason for this. Does SIL resent that you got the family name first? Because this sounds petty to me.
Anecdote, my cousin and her SIL have had an ongoing passive aggressive saga like this. Pregnant at the same time with boys, SIL was going to name her son Jeremy, cousin was going with Brian. SIL delivers first names her son Brian said she just loved the name so much. Cousin was pissed but instead of letting it go she named her son Bryan and its been a bitchy underhanded comment fest ever since. |
I have a feeling your son is going to be Tom or Thomas. I had to read twice to figure out how and why you got Teddy out of Thomas Edward.
I realize it took a lot of thought and clever thinking, plus a lot of explaining I'm sure when your son was born, with telling the story of the grandfathers and pointing out the initials. Your SIL is just taking the direct route from Theodore to Teddy, which is what you should have done instead of a long roundabout way with explanation needed. I bet your family is going to start calling your son Thomas |
Boys very quickly want to drop the nicknames ending in "y". Totally not cool past third or fourth grade. Do your own kid a favor and stop the nonsense--especially since Teddy isn't even a real nickname for Thomas. Talk about convoluted.
There are a lot of passive aggressive women on this site and a tremendous amount of immaturity and entitlement. You don't "own" a name, ladies. You will be a lot happier if you save your indignant outrage for something that really matters. |
Call him "Baby Teddy" . . . forever. |
I have a nice big Irish family that has about 10 names for 100 people. We have loads of duplicates! It does lead to many "Big John" "Little John" situations (or Jimmy having to hold onto the juvienile nickname into adulthood because Jim was still alive) at family events but family time is only part daily life. I share a name with my cousin but we never went to school together or did any activities together so it really didn't matter 95% of the time. At family events folks just tacked our middle names onto our first names if need be.
And since her guy is younger, it will always be obvious that she was the one who confused things! ![]() |
Grow up, op. |
+1,000,000 |
I may be the runner up. I am the product of an affair my married father had with my single mother. My unusual name is...his wife's name. |
![]() OP, let this go. For a while you might have Teddy and Teddy. So what? |