Hi! So I’m a 31 year old woman and my husband Dan (not real name) is 33. We’ve been married for two years and a little over a month ago I gave birth to our daughter, Erin (also not real name. Actually just assume every name listed isn’t the real one lol) I’m using a fake acc because I know some of my family uses Reddit and I just want to be sure.

But anyways my mom’s side of the family has this tradition with first born daughters that they all have to be named after my great-great-grandmother, Grace-Ann. I don’t really have a problem with the name, in fact it’s actually my name but I just don’t think it fits me and didn’t want it for my daughter. My mom’s name is Grace-Ann, my grandmas name was Grace-Ann, AND my great-grandmas name was Grace-Ann. Rewinding a bit, basically the whole pregnancy my whole moms side of the family kept making jokes (that didn’t really feel like jokes) about me HAVING to name my child Grace-Ann if it was a girl. My husband and I wanted to be surprised by the gender when I gave birth, for some context. I would just chuckle a bit to keep the peace but I already knew I wouldn’t want to name her that. It’s just really old fashioned in my opinion and I wanted my daughter to be unique and not just another Grace-Ann. I’ve always gone by Annie, much to the dismay of my family, for that same reason.

Back to the present, I was scheduled for a c-section so we went to the hospital on the scheduled day and eventually when my daughter was born and I was all stitched up, I wanted to wait at least a day for anyone but me or my husband to visit just because I was really anxious about Erin getting sick or something (I’m just a paranoid person lol.) so the next day my mom and dad came to visit and as soon as they held her the began saying stuff like “hello little Grace-Ann” “you’re so beautiful Grace-Ann” and I figured it was a good a time as any to break the news I had chosen a different name. As soon as I said that her name was Erin all the color drained from my mother’s face and my dad looked like I sprung another head out of my shoulder.

Then they became so angry and started berating me about “how could you do this to the family” the first born girl of the generation is supposed to be a Grace-Ann” and stuff like that. I tried to explain to them that I didn’t want the name for my daughter. I also said that the next girl born among my cousins or if my little sister had a daughter they could name her Grace-Ann but that only seemed to make them angrier. They handed Erin back to me and said they needed to “take a lap” but the lap must’ve been to Timbuktu and back because they came back an hour later and it looked like my mom had been crying. She started trying to convince me to change her name and my dad just stood in the corner looking disappointed. I didn’t back down because even though it was a family tradition I’m my own person and in the end it’s my and my husband decision what we get to name our daughter. My parents started to raise their voices, causing Erin to get upset and at that point Dan stepped in and asked them to leave. I kept getting texts from my parents ranging from begging to yelling to even vaguely threatening to cut me off from the family if I didn’t change Erin’s name. I turned my phone off for the night because , hello I had just given BIRTH!!! In the morning I turned my phone back on to even more texts from my parents, as well as angry texts from my aunt, both my uncles and a couple of my cousins. As much as that hurt, some of my family texted to say they supported my decision which did make me feel better.

But anyways sorry this story is so long, I’m just really lost right now. Being a new mom is really stressing me out and my parents have barely even spoken to me except for a couple of dry texts asking how “the baby” was doing because they’ve never used her real name. I still get the occasional supportive text from some family members and I’ve grown closer with them because of that but I’ve also gotten some pretty nasty ones from other family members that have really gotten to me. I know I’m not going to back down about keeping my daughter’s name the same, but I just want to know how to fix my relationship with my family and make them understand my point of view. Please help!!!