Over in the strange world of advice columnists, the best in the business, Carolyn Hax, just got a doozy of a question. Someone named “Confused” is about to have a baby, and her ethically-challenged family, especially the mother-to-be’s mom, is putting on a full court press to guilt the couple into naming their child “Ben.” You see, Uncle Ben, who suffered from bi-polar syndrome, killed himself a couple of years ago, and his still-surviving siblings feel guilty about it. (The expectant parents, in contrast, didn’t have much of a relationship with Ben, and hadn’t spoken to him for years before his tragic demise.) So they all got together in an orgy of crazed presumptuousness, and resolved to send their mea culpas to the cosmos by inflicting the name of the family suicide on a helpless baby. Apparently Confused’s grandfather, Old and Even More Confused, is especially wracked with remorse over what he sees as his part in his brother’s fatal misery, and has decided that a new happy little Ben is just what the spirit of Dead Ben craves, and will make all well between the brothers, just like the old days. Or something.
Yechhh!
Like about 99% of advice columnist letters, this one should have been a breezeto answer before it was written, as in “No! What the hell’s the matter with you people? Get out of our faces: we’ll name our kid what we want, and Ben isn’t even in the running.” Still, I know how relentless mothers can be, especially when backed by reinforcements, so I suppose the writer was just seeking printed support from an expert at telling irrational people to shape up, so she could shake it in their faces. At least, I hope so. If she is seriously considering caving in to this morbid emotional blackmail, young Ben has a miserable life ahead of him in this family, and that name may end up two for two.
Fortunately, Hax comes through, as she usually does, writing,
They’re looking to dump all this historic freight on a baby — blackmailing you with your grandfather’s life! — just so they can keep dodging that painful trip to the mirror. Shame on them. You needn’t say that, though. Just this: “I agree we all need to heal. It is not a baby’s job, though, to heal us — he comes into the world just as himself, with a clean slate. I owe him that. I think we owe him that. I don’t expect you all to agree but hope you’ll respect our decision.”
Then the couple can go ahead and name the kid something else.
Like, say “Robin.”
Ethics Alarms 
I read that column this morning. I’m betting the mother-in-law keeps talking it up to Grandpa which is why she can constantly tell the expectant parents how Grandpa is looking forward to Baby Ben. “Confused” even admitted that her father-in-law is growing tired of his wife bringing the subject up every chance she gets.
Carolyn’s advice was right on target. No one thinks, when pushing a family name on an unborn baby, how that child might be burdened. I particularly liked how Carolyn pointed out that none of the family members seems to be considering what happens when the child wants to know more about Uncle Ben.
“Yup, kid, you were named after a mentally-disturbed, estranged family member who committed suicide.”
Yuck is right. I can see naming a child after a slain veteran family member as a memorial, because that’s more of an honor than a burden, but not after a “problem” family member, and not in the hopes of healing a rift. That smacks too much of the “babies make everything better” trope. That said, even the veteran thing can become a burden if the kid feels like he needs to be a “hero” to live up to the name. I think Judaism has it right with the tradition of giving a name that just begins with the same letter as the person you want to honor, that way you can honor whoever but let the kid keep his/her own identity.
Name him “Sue”. That’ll piss everybody off.
Remember when we used to name children after great Americans? How about George Washington (whatever)?
Solve the whole problem…Benjamin Franklin Whatever. Good idea, Steven.
I presume this family with this peculiar dysfunction already knows for a fact that the baby to be born is a male. Then again, I suppose there are worse names for a girl than “Ben.” Like Benjamin. Or Ben-Ali (no – never mind – that’s actually OK for a girl, once you get past the “Ben = son” notion).
I’m sorry Jack, it’s not your fault that I burst out laughing when you ended that one sentence so baseball-y: “…that name may end up two for two.”
Am I the only one who thinks it’s kinda weird to try to name someone before they’re born? Before you can LOOK at them and think, “You look like a this, you feel like a that?”
My first boy had his name picked out for him 10 years before he was born. He looks like his name because it’s his name. You look at pets before they get a name, but not necessarily children.
My son and daughter-in-law had a name picked out for their daughter, and as soon as she was born they said ‘She’s not ***!’ and they started to redo the process (which here involves much counting of the brush strokes of the kanji to assure an auspicious combination) and named her. They didn’t pick a name before the second child was born.
My parents had a name picked out for me in advance: Melissa.
They were quite confident that I was going to be a girl . . . like “Dewey Defeats Truman” confident.
–Dwayne
Made me chuckle to fantasize of parents planning ahead with a cute, if anachronistic, sense of humor: If it’s a girl, it’s Dewey; a boy, Truman.
I await someone’s pointing to the true story of precisely that being done.
Dwayne, at least you didn’t belong to a family that made sure the initials of a newborn were chosen to remind of the parent’s dismay at a particular person’s being elected to the White House: e.g., “Sean Hickam Townsend.”