Hi Swistle!

I am a long-time reader, first-time name-help-seeker. We have two kids, @lice and H@rvey. My older child @lice is five years old and has been pretty insistent about not being a girl since age three. We have been following @lice’s lead and using she/her pronouns but always saying “kid” instead of “girl,” etc. It was never clear to me if @lice is trans or nonbinary or something else, but over the weekend he finally told us that he is a boy and wants to use he/him pronouns. I am fully supportive of this, although I am terrified given the political climate in our state and the fact that gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth has recently been completely outlawed. Buuuuut let’s ignore that for now and turn to the fun things: (non-)baby names!

I love the name @lice and am so very sad to see it (probably) go. I am not sure if @lice even knows that his first name is traditionally feminine, but we are going to have that conversation soon. If he were, say, a pre-teen, I would let him choose whatever he wanted as a new name (assuming he wants a new name), but I am somewhat worried that at this age we would end up with a preschooler named “Spiderman.” If he were assigned male at birth, he would have been H@rvey, although having two of them in our house seems needlessly confusing now.

What should we put on the short-list of options to present to him? Ideally I would like suggestions in the same style as @lice and H@rvey. Maybe keep the same first initial? Maybe not? His middle name is R@do (rhymes with Play-Doh), which is his late great-grandmother’s name but rare enough to pass as male or gender-neutral or whatever. I like Alex too, since it’s pretty close to @lice and adds an “X,” which is kind of fun. Something somewhat gender neutral might cover more bases as his identity evolves over time. Do you or your readers have any other suggestions?

Thanks!
J@k

I might offer him Al or Rado or A.R. or maybe Alex/Alix, to see if he wants to use any of those, and wait on any further re-namings until he is older and more able to lead/direct the process. In fact, my first thought was to continue calling him @lice for the time being, and follow his lead on the renaming as you have followed his lead on pronouns; but my second thought was that it does seem like it would be nice to get something less Girl in place before gradeschool begins, if only to reduce the amount of time you have to spend discussing it with people who don’t need to know, and aren’t even asking to know, but have merely tripped over the combination of a currently-used-for-girls name plus he/him pronouns.

I lean toward choosing a nickname that comes from his given names for now, rather than coming up with something new. This is, again, to follow his lead, and to avoid jumping the gun, and to reduce the total number of name changes. On the other hand, I admit it also appeals to me to think of temporarily/informally renaming him Ellis: very, very close in sound to @lice, yet worlds apart in style—and a nice fit with H@rvey. Alfie appeals similarly, though is a bigger jump in sound; very nice with H@rvey, though.

Update on Baby Boy Molina Maplepines

What sister names would you suggest for a Gemma? The Baby Name Wizard says Zara, Chloe, Gillian, Felicity, Fiona, Isla. But I wouldn’t go with Chloe: too big a popularity gap. And I wouldn’t go with Gillian: it feels to me like a very different style. I think Felicity sounds too light and tripsy with Gemma: the contrast gives Gemma an unearned stodgy feel. I might think the same about Isla and its lack of strong consonants. I think Fiona works.

I’m undecided about Zara. It could be perfect: if Gemma was chosen because the parents like Emma but found it too popular, Zara could be considered the same sort of twist on Sarah.

One of the reasons I’m a little flummoxed by the name Gemma is that I haven’t encountered it enough to know how to hear it, or to know why parents choose it. IS it chosen as a less-common Emma? Is it chosen for its Italian roots or its English feel? Is it chosen because of the word “gem”—i.e., do parents use it the way they might use Pearl or Ruby or Jade or Jasper? I don’t know whether to put it with Bianca or Harriet, with Avalon or Olive, with Agatha or Adelyn or Audra.

Have you encountered the name Gemma more than I have, and have you had more of a chance to develop a feeling for its style and usage? I would be VERY INTERESTED to hear what you think. And especially I would be interested to hear if you already know of some sibling groups that contain a Gemma.

Commenter ErinInSoCal had a good idea for a post. She commented on the post asking how much it bothers us to correct a mispronounced name, saying her daughter Beatrix is often called Beatrice, and her daughter’s nickname Bea (BEE-uh) is almost exclusively mispronounced Bee. Then she added:

Oh well, she’s turning 18 soon and going off to college, so she has the chance to reinvent her name if need be!

(Which, btw Swistle, could be another interesting thread — who started using a different version of their name when they moved/went to college/started a new job?)

Oh, I am SO interested to hear these stories. A friend’s daughter, named something along the lines of Haven Rose, started going by Rose as part of her new college experience. A co-worker mentioned that her Uncle Joseph is known to all his old childhood friends and most family members as Rusty—a nickname of his middle name, Russell, which he went by until he got his first job and thought he should use his first name to sound more professional.

Did you seize a life transition as an opportunity to make a name transition? Or has one of your children done so?

Update on Baby Girl Raiserhöffer: Finding a Name that Works in Germany and the United States

Commenter Jaida had a fun idea for a post:

I wonder if Swistle has ever done a reader poll to see how many readers have difficult-to-pronounce names and how much it bothers them to have to correct people. It seems like something we all worry a lot about as namers but my own experience is that mispronunciation causes a brief moment of embarrassment/correction and then everyone moves on and there is one more person in the world that knows how to pronounce the name (no shade to anyone more affected by it, I just hope it doesn’t prevent someone from using a name they love!)

There are two separate baby-naming angles here: one is the tolerance parents have themselves for correcting/demonstrating the pronunciation of their child’s name, and the other is how people feel about needing to correct their own names. Both are good to consider when naming a child. If I, personally, am a parent who feels cheerful and relaxed about correcting a pronunciation a million times, that’s different than if I, personally, am a parent who clenches my teeth every time. If I clench my teeth every time, I should not do that to myself or to the world.

But it is also useful to get an idea for how the CHILD (and, of course, the resulting GROWN ADULT) feels about having such a name. It’s not something we can know ahead of time when naming our own personal child—but it seems like it would be useful to have a STATISTICAL feeling about it. That is, are 95% of people with constantly-correct-the-pronunciation names perfectly happy to do it, and only 5% clench their teeth? or is it the other way around? or is it something in between? I can’t do a poll, but I can ask for a voluntary anecdotal offering.

I have a not-very-difficult-to-pronounce name that is also common in my age group (Kristen), and it still gets mispronounced pretty often: I have learned to respond to Kristine, Kiersten, Kirsten. It is, to me, NOT EVEN REMOTELY a big enough issue to make me wish I’d been named something else—and, based on that experience, I’ve advised parents not to shy away from a name just because it might sometimes be mispronounced. But I had someone on my freshman year college dorm floor named Alysa, pronounced ah-LEE-sah, and 99% of the time she was called either ah-LISS-sah (by people who saw the name without hearing it) or Lisa (by people who heard the name without seeing it). Each time, she would close her eyes, as if praying for patience, and then say through clenched teeth: “It’s ah-LEE-sa.” At some point a name isn’t worth the daily lord-give-me-strength, either for the name-bearer or for anyone else.

So clearly there are going to be SWATHS of names here, from mispronounced-at-only-a-normal/tolerable level (like Kristen) to mispronounced-almost-all-the-time (like Alysa), and everything in between and outside, and I think we want to hear from them all. If you are a Lara and people call you Laura; if you are an Andrea and your parents wanted it pronounced on-DRAY-ah; if you are a Mia and people say MEE-ah and MY-ah; if you are a Kati and no one ever knows whether to say it like Katie or like KAH-tee; if you are a Salomé and sometimes people say suh-LOME; if your name is so unfamiliar, you’re accustomed to hearing “Uhhhh…” and knowing they mean you: How much does it bug you? how much does it affect your life? does it make you wish you were named something else, or is it just part of your name and you don’t mind?

Update on Baby Girl Beach: Finding Balance in a Name

We’re a French American couple and both like the name Salomé. As accents cannot be printed on most documents, we’re concerned about whether people will be familiar with the name or get it wrong all the time. We’re also wondering the pronunciations we can expect without the accent?
Thank you all.

Oh! This is especially fun because I am only slightly familiar with the name: I have never encountered a Salomé in person, or in a way where I would have heard it pronounced (e.g., on a character in a television show). Before I look it up, I will make note of my first guesses. I know it makes no sense, but it’s a data point: even WITH the accent mark, I somehow first read it sah-LOME. Then I noticed the accent, and my second attempt was sal-oh-may.

I looked it up online and found some helpful guides that would read it out loud for me, the first of which aligned closely with my second guess: they spelled it out as sal-uh-may, and said it with more uh than oh, but very similar.

The second link pronounced it sah-LOH-mee, which…can that be right? Like the word salami, but with a LOH instead of a LAH?

The third link pronounced it SAL-oh-mee. Same sounds, different emphasis.

Well. My guess is that this will be a name that will be mispronounced fairly often, if so many internet sources have different ideas even about how it SHOULD be pronounced. But I further guess that although people may stumble when they first encounter it, they will quickly learn it. My own favorite pronunciation is sal-uh-may.

Commenters: If you have not encountered the name in person before, how did you initially think it was pronounced? If you HAVE encountered it in person before, how did that person pronounce it? Would it throw you off if you encountered the name in writing but without the accent mark?

Update on Baby Girl Bailey, Sister to Oswald and Reuben

Hello,

I just had my baby via emergency c-section at 26 weeks. He came out weighing 1.8 pounds, and we’re taking it day-by-day hoping that he continues to get stronger. We don’t want to leave him without a name for long, but we’re struggling to find something we feel right about. Can you help?? 🙏

1. Walsh, or potentially that hyphenated with Stakland

2. Boy

3. We live in the US

4. We are liking the name Kai or Kylo but are slightly wary of the popularity of it due to the association with the Star Wars franchise.

Please please help.

Stef

I hope you will find yourself able to take the time you need. The baby is earlier than expected; you thought you had more time to decide on a name, but suddenly he is here. It can feel like there needs to be a huge panicky rush to catch up. But everyone including the baby will understand if you need some time to adjust to this new schedule of events. I would want to bring you a copy of The Baby Name Wizard, and then have you do a little pretend play: one of you say to the other one “Oh, honey, the baby will be here in the next couple weeks; we should really buckle down and choose his name now!” Some urgency, but not RUSH. Get out a baby name book (or a baby name website) and a notepad and pen; make lists. Take some time.

I mention The Baby Name Wizard specifically, even though it’s more than a decade old now, because it sorts names into categories, and that can be very helpful for making some big narrowing-down leaps. If the two of you go through it together, you might be able to rapidly determine that you like this category and that category, but not this other category or this one either. You can look up names you already know you like, and see if you like any of the other names in those categories. Once you have some categories you like, you can go through the lists of names in those categories similarly rapidly: okay, you like this name and this name and this name, and the other parent likes this name and this name and…oh, hey, this same name you liked! Score!

The book also contains suggested brother/sister names, which are more like “If you like _____, you might also like ______” suggestions. The listing for Kylo suggests Finnick, Dash, Neo, Axel, Arrow, Knox; the listing for Kai suggests Finn, Axel, Rowan, Luca, Rune, Taj.

Kylo was ruined for me by the Star Wars character. Kai still feels available. Milo is still available; Miles is still available; Theo and Hugo and Leo and Nico, still available. Kian, Keegan, Keane, Ian, Eli, Ty, Ike, Simon, Cade.

Speed is important, so I will get this posted. Let the commenters start work on it while you get some rest, and get out the notepad tomorrow.