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DH's grandfather had two good friends: one man's fn was Ernest and the other's ln was Fraser. My FIL was named Ernest Fraser Ln, but never answered to either: he got the nickname Q or Kew as a baby and it stuck. His first son, DH, was named Ernest H-name - Ernest after his father, H-name because his parents both liked it. So, OK. Two more sons arrived: Roy Fraser and Fraser David. DH has always regretted that he got Ernest instead of Fraser, which he prefers, though he has always gone by H-name. Although we love the name Fraser, and my BILs, we thought there were already enough Frasers in the family; we did use David as our son's first mn, but we would have anyway for other reasons. It never occurred to either of us to use Ernest, and two H-name people in the same house would have been confusing.

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So, in the end we just agreed on a name we both liked. If he had wanted a name, family or otherwise, that I didn't like, we'd have discussed it, considered options and found something that we could agree on.

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The closest we came to the issue you actually raised, was in naming our first daughter. DH's mother died of cancer when he was 5, and he wanted to use her name. My mother died young, but he had known and loved her, so her name was also in the mix. MIL's names - she was Afrikaans - were Bertha Maria, and we didn't like either so we changed Maria to Mary. My mother had disliked her own name, Beatrice, which was her mother's mn, but we both wanted to use it and did. If she had been alive at the time, she would have encouraged us to do whatever we wanted, but she would also have mentioned the problems she had experienced with the nns for Beatrice, most of which she disliked. But it would have been our choice for our child, and she would have respected it. So, I suppose the answer is to pick your partner with care!