As the previous educator mentioned, the surname is ironic, not only because of the destructive way in which the Breedloves demonstrate love to each other, but also because that destructive behavior is a manifestation of their self-hatred, which results from internalized racism.
Cholly only knows how to express love through sex because he never learned to value himself beyond his virility. Morrison uses this character to explore the ways in which black men are objectified in a society that is obsessed with their sexuality.
Pauline, Cholly's wife and Pecola's mother, is unable to express maternal love to her daughter due to the way in which childbirth, among black women, was regarded less as birthing than as breeding. There is a scene in the novel in which a doctor brings in medical students to observe Pauline in labor and compares her labor to that of farm animals. This birthing experience is connected to the dehumanization that black women experienced during slavery when their birthing experiences were inseparable from the slave economy. Pauline sees Pecola as a replica of herself—someone who was brought into the world to suffer. So, she expresses maternal love instead toward the little white girl whom she serves as a nanny. Pauline has been instructed, through internalized racism, to believe that the little girl in her charge is more worthy of love. The scene in which Pauline slaps Pecola and refuses to acknowledge her daughter's presence in favor of comforting the little white girl is one of the most harrowing in the book because it's such an explicit rejection of Pecola, whom Pauline should "naturally" love, and an implicit rejection of Pauline's selfhood, of which Pecola is a reflection.
Pecola is unable to "breed love" for herself due to learning that being black—and, particularly being a dark-skinned black girl—means that she is deemed less worthy in a racist society. She loves the images of the blue-eyed girl on the Mary Jane candies that she devours, as though, by consuming them, along with cinematic images of the adored Shirley Temple (whom the narrator Claudia despises for her inauthentic and idealized image), she, too, can obtain some of what makes such images so beloved.
The name Breedlove suggests a person or family that "breeds love," i.e., that creates and gives birth to it. In the context of The Bluest Eye, the name is somewhat ironic, as the Breedloves aren't a particularly loving family in any conventional sense. Cholly and Pauline certainly loved each other when they first met, but their love has now transformed into something dark and even frightening. They express their affection, such as it is, through physical combat, and their sexual interactions are troubling as well. Later in the book, Cholly rapes Pecola. The narrator says that he does so because he didn't know any other way to express his love. So the Breedloves do feel something that they call love, but it works in a devastatingly destructive way. The book juxtaposes this love with that within the MacTeer family, which is a nurturing love even if the parents sometimes speak harshly to or ignore their children. So the family named "Breedlove" is the family notable for having their love breed something dark and destructive.
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