I named my son almost the exact same name as my stepson. My husband was fine with it.

• I always wanted to name my son after my great-grandfather to honor him.
• However, when I married my husband, his son had almost an identical name.
• I talked it over with him, and he was OK with it.

I always knew that once I had children, I wanted their names to have important meanings behind them. I didn't want just to pick names that I liked, but names that had a purpose. In my case, I knew I wanted to name my children after loved ones.

This was an especially easy decision since I now live in Italy, and that's a normal practice here. In fact, there's usually a pattern of naming your firstborn son after your husband's father, or your firstborn daughter after your husband's mother, and the second child after the mother's father or mother, depending on the sex. You get the picture.

While I didn't exactly want to follow that pattern, I knew that my children would be named after loved ones who had passed on. Five years ago, when I welcomed my first child, I named her Antonia, after my beautiful late grandma. I always knew that if I eventually had a son, I would want to name him after my great-grandfather, Nicola. So last year, when I got pregnant and found out it was a boy, I already had his name all set.

But I was in a bit of a conundrum over the name. My husband already had a son from a previous relationship, and he was named Nicolo.

I had some concerns over the name but still wanted to use it

I was a bit concerned about picking a name so close to the name of my husband's son. After all, I didn't want the choice to be disrespectful to my stepson. Even my own mother pointed out that perhaps naming my son such a similar name wasn't the best idea.

But my husband is a bit older than I am, and my stepson is my age, lives far away from us, and though he is a beloved part of our family, we very rarely see him. I probably would have felt more odd naming my son such a similar name had my stepson been younger and a closer part of our family. Also, while the names look similar and have just a letter difference, they sound different when said out loud.

When people find out that my son and my stepson have such similar names, I am quick to point out that they are pronounced differently, because I want to make sure people never confuse them and don't accidentally call my son the wrong name, though I could understand why it might happen. For example, my son's name is pronounced knee-cola, whereas my stepson's name is pronounced knee-co-low.

I'm glad we made the decision to name our son Nicola

There have been times I have wondered if I did the right thing naming my son with a similar name as my stepson. While I can not attest to how my stepson or his mother feel, my husband was completely on board with naming our son Nicola, because besides being the name of my great-grandfather, it is also the name of my husband's father. I never want anyone to think that this decision was made in any way as an insult to my stepson or even his mother. It's just a coincidence that my great-grandfather and my stepson had such a similar name.

But the most important thing for me was to honor my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather is who I have to thank for the life I now live with my family in Italy. He moved to the United States as a young boy and later worked hard in life to provide for his family.

It is through his lineage that I was able to make Italy my new home through citizenship, and Italy is where I met my husband. I sadly never met my great-grandfather Nicola, but he has been an influence to me in more ways than he will ever know and was, of course, a big part of my mother and grandmother's life, so it meant so much to me to have a son that would be named after him. I can only imagine how my great-grandfather would feel knowing that he has a great-grandson who lives back in his home country of Italy, just two hours away from his hometown.