What’s more important: tradition or desire? Families are entering this exact debate when it comes to naming babies. The kicker? Grandparents are offering obscene bribes in order to have a say in their grandchildren’s names.
Like $10,000, according to an instance from 2015 when a Chicago dad’s parents offered that much money in order to continue a family name.
The offers just go up from there. Ownership of family businesses gets thrown in and in-laws are paying for dream weddings in order to have their voices heard when it comes to naming their heirs.
Granted, us millennials are coming up with some wacky baby names these days. Names like Nova, Paisley and Levi made the top 50 most popular baby names this year, so I can see how grandparents are cringing when it’s their kids’ turn to name a human child.
The compromise seems to be using family names as middle names, or putting one thing on a birth certificate and using something completely different as the kid grows up.
Is there a price on having a monopoly over your child’s name? When things like non-paid maternity leave and ever-increasing tuition for four-year colleges come into play, there just might be. One New Yorker’s mother talked about paying for her grandchild’s education if they could carry a name from her side of the family.
“If I really believed I could have gotten her to pay for college, it really seems foolish of me not to put my discomfort aside,” the mom-to-be told the New York Times. “I would probably always resent that person, but to be able to take care of that anxiety, that would be nice.”
From someone in thousands of dollars of student debt, take it from me -- that’s definitely worth something.