[TW: mention of suicide attempt]

My husband (39M) and I(28F) have been together for almost 6 years and we have a very wonderful and healthy relationship. I love him dearly and we always try to tackle problems together, us against the world.

3 years ago, we welcomed our daughter into rhe world and a month later, his parents moved from Puerto Rico to Tennessee to find a house for all of us to live in together. My MIL is an absolute gem of a woman, she's incredible. She's so sweet and also such a powerful person. We gave her name to our daughter as one of her middle names to honor her and the amazing person she is. She had DH at 40yrs old and basically raised him by herself because his dad is one of those patriarchal men who believes that men don't have to do the child rearing.

My husband and I had long since decided and agreed that he would be an active caregiver for our children and be an active dad. It's what we both want. My JNFIL feels that it's wrong and that I should have quit my job at the time to stay home and take care of the baby, regardless of the fact that we literally could not afford it.

After we moved our families in together, JNFIL and I started clashing. He routinely told me I needed to "be a better housewife", quit my job to be a SAHM, respect that he "is the head of the house", and to be aware that "parents come before wives". The last one was him basically trying to push my husband to prioritize his parents above me and our relationship. I became so depressed from the treatment I was receiving, being treated like garbage or even less than that, that I actually attemped suicide a year and a half into the living situation. I went to residential treatment and JNFIL told my husband that it's a shame I "didn't finish the job". There are tons of others but they're painful to relive.

On to the topic at hand: I just gave birth to our son this evening and months ago, when we found out it was a boy, we had a sit down about his name. Originally we had planned to give our hypothetical son my husband's middle name to share. The problem is, his middle name is JNFIL's first name. After the treatment I received for two years and finding out we were having a boy, I had a full blown panic attack at the thought of my son having JNFIL's name attached to him like that. To me, using someone's first name as a middle name is an honorific. Just like how we used MIL's name for our daughter, because I wanted to bestow that honor upon her because she's a wonderful person. Husband and I talked about it for a while and he quietly relented, picking another middle name that was similar but not the same. Think José/Josué (Joseph/Joshua).

The trouble has come up with our son's last name specifically and my husband has said it's directly because of the middle name. All the men born in my husband's family have their last names hyphenated, father's last name - mother's maiden name. I liked the idea of doing that for our son because my dad only had me and my half sister, so his last name basically dies there. I've brought it up to hubs a few times over my pregnancy and he always just said no and wouldn't explain. So I finally asked him to explain tonight. He said he doesn't feel like it's fair to do that when our son doesn't even share my husband's middle name. I explained that it was never about it being my husband's middle name, it was about it being the first name of his father who treated me like a second class citizen for two years and said absolutely horrible things to me and about me. I didn't want to honor his father in that way after what he's done. I asked him later, how would he feel if my dad had treated HIM that way. To my knowledge, my father has never treated my husband poorly. My husband has never said he's had negative interactions with my dad, and I've never witnessed any. If I had, I would have told my dad to back tf off right away because that's my husband.

I might be the asshole because I still want to hyphenate our son's last name, but my husband doesn't. He feels jilted that they won't share a middle name, regardless of how that specific name makes me feel. I also might be TA becauseI don't really want to let this go until we've fully hashed it out either, and I don't want to sign the birth certificate until we come to a full understanding.

ETA: We do not live with them anymore. After roughly two years of the bs we did move out. That event came after my husband and my MIL had assured me that JNFIL would not behave that way anymore and then he did. Just wanted to clarify that as it's come up a few times.