Dear Swistle
My name is Amanda Dale and my husband’s name is Niall Aidan. Our last name is Beg-lee. My husband is Irish and I am culturally Jewish. Although we are not currently expecting, I love name searching! Boy’s names come pretty easily to me, and for now my favorites include: Connor, Theo, Brenner (my mom’s maiden name), Miller, Owen, and Declan. Despite my ease at finding suitable boys names, I have found a lot of anxiety in my search for a wonderful girl’s name. A lot of this anxiety seems to stem from what expectations I am placing on my future daughter with the name I choose- let me explain:
The names that I am most drawn to seem to be unisex names, and the reason, I believe, is what I call the “cool” factor. Growing up, I knew girl’s named Brett and Sloane, and they just seemed so ridiculously cool to me! I was never a particularly cool kid, and having a very common name didn’t add to my confidence level. Those names always stood out and have continued to draw me in.
On my “cool” name list include:
Emerson, Brett, Sutton, Logan, Piper, Tristan, Spencer, Wren, Leighton, Rowan,
Despite my obvious preference, I have serious hesitations about using these names. Given that neither I nor my husband were cool kids, I worry that giving my daughter a cool kid name will set expectations she simply won’t meet. I feel that kids with slightly off beat names really need the confidence to own those names, and while we can definitely harbor those feelings in her through parenting, I still worry that it may be too much of a weight to bear. I worry that years of people not knowing her gender will cause her undue grief..
Given these concerns, I find myself searching through and enjoying some old fashioned and more feminine name choices as well, which I feel are more “cute”. Some “cute” names that I have considered include:
Evelyn, Penelope, Madeleine, Eloise, Fiona, Lena, Lila
Despite liking these, I’m not sure I love these choices. Moreover, I’m not sure being “cute” is better than being “cool”! Are there any names you can think of that can help me bridge the gap- the perfect blend of unisex cool with a feminine touch so my daughter can enjoy being whatever she wants to be?
Thanks!
Amanda
Something I notice when I think back on the cool girls in high school is that their names were not necessarily cool: Stephanie, Monica, Lisa. Having a cool name might have further improved their coolness, it’s true—but their coolness seemed quite separate from their names. In some cases, a cool girl made her ordinary name cool by being cool herself: one example is Lynn, who had a Mom Name but forever changed the image of that name for me and probably many others at our school.
I remember some of them were given Cool Nicknames, based on in-jokes or surnames. One cool girl was called Shock (her actual name was Jennifer). A couple others were called by their surnames, which gave them the unisex/boyish/preppy sound. A girl whose name isn’t cool enough can increase the coolness if needed.
To look at the other side, I’m trying to think of the non-cool girls I knew who had cool names. I remember the first Mikayla I met: a new girl who came to the school mid-year. Her “weird name” (it’s hard to imagine it that way now!) was one more strike against her, and my guess is that she would have paid cash money to blend in a little more as a Melissa or a Nicole. The naming climate has changed considerably since then, though, and I wonder if that has considerably changed the way kids feel about other kids’ names. I do know my kids still report to me the “weird names” of other kids, and we’ve had to have discussions about that (“Kids don’t choose their own names; we don’t make fun of people’s names,” “That name is fairly common, it’s just the first time you’ve encountered someone with it,” etc.). It still seems based mostly on exposure: if they know someone with that name, they feel like it’s a normal name.
Another naming-climate issue is that unisex names are more common now. When I was a child, there was Erin/Aaron, some Jamie/Jaime and Cory/Corey; Tracy and Shannon were supposedly unisex but I knew only girls with those names (except for one male Tracy we felt sorry for). Girls who wanted something more unisex generally went the Andrea/Andy route: the feminine name with the boyish nickname. The recent naming situation is quite different: Jaden, Jordan, Avery, Cameron, Taylor, Riley—lots of names where I have to ask my kids if a particular classmate is male or female. A name that would have been startling on someone of the parent’s generation might be perfectly ordinary and non-expectation-setting on someone of the child’s generation.
In fact, we’re hindered in some ways by being The Parents: it’s hard to know which of the names we consider cool (or cute, or professional) will be considered cool by the children and their peers. It can help to imagine our own parents, and whether we think they’d be capable of choosing a name for us that our peers would consider cool.
One good solution might be to choose a name that is cool but also relatively common. Avery, for example, is unisex and strikes me as falling into the Cool category, but it was #12 for girls in 2013. This makes it familiar enough not to stand out in an uncomfortable way, and the number of Averys helps to dilute the associations people have with the name: if you know one cool Avery and one sporty Avery and one academic Avery, it’s harder to have expectations of other holders of the name. More possibilities of this sort: Harper, Taylor, Riley.
Another good solution might be to choose a name that’s cool and unisex but has a common and girlish nickname. Emerson from your list is a perfect example of this: she could easily go by Emmie or Emma if she preferred. Miller from your boy-name list would work well for this too, if you wanted something more daring: Milly/Millie is sweet.
Or you could do the opposite: give her a familiar/traditional girl name, but with a cool/unisex nickname. I recently encountered a Nicole my age who is going by Cole, which is a big change from all the Nickys. A Katherine could go by Kit; a Caroline could go by Rory; a Charlotte could go by Charlie or Chaz or Chip; a Juliette could go by Jet or Jules; an Alexandra could go by Al or Zan. I think this works particularly well with girl names that have boy versions, such as Charlotte/Charles and Alexandra/Alexander: it seems like any of the “boy” nicknames would be available for the girl version.
Another possibility is to use a very cool name, but use it as the middle name and then deliberately put it into rotation as one of her nicknames as she grows up. This gives her the option of using it if she wants to and/or it suits her, or hiding it if she doesn’t and/or it doesn’t.
Or I think it can be easier to pull off an unusual or cool name if there’s a good quick explanation for it. For example, if you used Brenner for a girl, she’d have “It was my grandmother’s maiden name.”
It may also reduce your concerns if you choose a unisex name that is used more often for girls: Emerson is now used mostly for girls, but Spencer and Tristan are used mostly for boys. Piper is used almost exclusively for girls. She’ll need to correct people less often with a name like Wren (48 new baby boys and 332 new baby girls in 2013) than with a name like Logan (12,270 new baby boys and 704 new baby girls in 2013).
When I think of names that seem “too cute,” I think of the ones that seem too lightweight: names chosen for a cute little baby girl that will feel silly or diminishing when she’s a grown woman. I feel nervous about giving examples for a category I just described so negatively, but perhaps it would help if I used one from my own generation: I know a Chrissy who would prefer to have something a little more solid to use now that she’s an adult, and I find it difficult to even use her name: it feels like I’m using an inappropriately affectionate nickname, and it also feels too babyish for her serious nature. Another of my peers has the given name Jenni: that’s another that seems too cute to me.
The names on your cute list don’t seem cute to me at all. Evelyn, Madeleine, Eloise, Lena—these are good solid traditional choices, nice vintage revivals. Penelope and Eloise and Fiona have a little more whimsy to them, but they’re still serious choices with good long histories. If your list were Maddi, Ellie, Evie, Fifi, and Pip, that would fit better with what I think of as “Maybe these might be too cute” list.
The big question here, though, is whether a cool name puts too much pressure on the child to be cool. I’ve been thinking about that since you wrote, and I find I can go either way on that. My first answer is yes: I do think it’s possible to burden a child with an overly cool name. I think a child can feel pressure from her name, and I think parents can inadvertently or deliberately put their own issues and expectations into a name. But if the parents like cool names, does that mean they shouldn’t use those names, just because it could be an issue? That’s where I start to come down on the other side of things.
I think my main advice is to see if you can figure out what style of name is your favorite, separate from the image of the names. That could be a nearly impossible task, since the image of a name is a huge part of whether it’s to our tastes or not. But what I mean is, see if you can separate “a cool name” from an image of “a cool high school girl.” See if it helps to do the same exercise I did: think of the cool girls you knew, and see if all of them had cool names or only some; think of the girls you knew with cool names, and see if all of them were cool or just some. Or when you’re out and about, mentally try the names on people of all ages and types to see how well you like the names with those people attached to them instead of to the cool girls from your memory. Picture various types of kids with various types of names; picture people your own age and your parents’ age with various types of names. Sit at the mall and watch people go by, and try the names on for size. Break the name from your image of the name as much as you can, and see if you still like the name.
But maybe you will do these exercises and realize that you like cool names because you like cool names: you DON’T feel like they’ll change your child’s temperament and you don’t even want them to, you DON’T mind if she doesn’t end up being cool, you’re NOT trying to correct for your own childhood experience—you just like cool names because you like them and they’re your preferred naming style. In that case, I would treat them as I’d treat any other name category: it’s considerate to build in some flexibility if possible (a middle name, a nickname, etc.), but as long as you’ve taken into account the things I can see you’re taking into account already (wondering how the names will fit on a variety of people, wondering how the child might feel about the name), it’s okay to go with the ones YOU like best. That’s what we all end up doing, whether our favorites are Margaret or Spencer or Chrissy. Then our children either like their names or don’t, just as we like our names or don’t, and they modify them if they need to—but most don’t need to.
I think the reason I had trouble deciding on this issue is that I feel one way up to a point, and then I feel a different way after that. I DO think it’s important to be aware of the seriousness of naming a child, and all the issues that can go along with choosing a name. I DO think it’s important to consider how the child might feel about the name, and what the consequences of each name might be. I DO think it’s important to separate names from our images and expectations of those names, so that we don’t accidentally feel as if giving a child a willowy, pretty, confident name will make her turn out willowy and pretty and confident. I DO think it’s important to imagine the names on plump plain receptionists as well as on popular pretty high school students.
But I ALSO think that we can only take this so far. We don’t know what the child will be like, and thinking about it a lot won’t tell us more. We don’t know how ANY name might fit the child, or how those names will be perceived as the child grows up. It would be silly to throw away a name we loved “in case it doesn’t fit,” and then have the child turn out to be a PERFECT fit for that name. And I think it’s possible to worry more than we need to: it is, in the end, just a name. For MANY names on the spectrum, the name is a stretchy garment that fits a great variety of wearers.
Name update:
Hi there,
Almost 6 whole years ago I wrote to you asking if a cool name sets expectations for a child. I wanted to give you an update! Since then I have had 3 boys. The first is 3, Charles “Charlie” Nolan. The other two are 2 month old twins- Henry Ethan and Graham Brenner. Funnily enough none of the names I liked back then were names we even considered using. While I still gravitate towards what I would consider “cool” names, when I actually had to name a real child some of those names felt totally wrong for my own children. Plus my husband seemed to only like names that you would find in the English monarchy (we almost ended up with Charles, Henry and George!).Hope all is well during this crazy time
Amanda
I agree with swistle In that names can be too cute or too “cool”, but that neither of your lists is at that point at all. I ‘m imagining a “too cool” name list that’s like Stone, Brock, Nitro, Witcher, and a cutesy list of Princess, Fifi, Lolo.
Yes, this.
Funny enough, the only Brock I ever knew was decidedly un-cool by high school standards (then again so was I, despite having the stereotypical “popular girl” name). But when I met him I didn’t go “Whoah, that guy’s name is Brock? That doesn’t fit!” I think in every day interaction, we may have a reaction to a cool name, but I can’t think of a time when I didn’t easily associate a name with a person. Then again I’ve never met a Witcher or a Fifi in real life ;)
Another thought, if your daughters last name will be Aidan, a very common mostly male last name, that would affect my drcision process. When I see a name that was a very last namey name and a common first name as last name, I feel like the name feels backwards. Like McAlister James, or Williams Charles. I might wonder if a Sutton Aidan was actually a male Sutton, Aidan. Of course if that doesn’t bother you, that’s fine too!
I think Aidan is her husband’s middle name. She said their last name sounds like Beg-lee. But yes, I agree with you about last names that sound like first names.
At the risk of being a tiny bit controversial, can I add that your perception of unisex names as ”cool’ might be colored by our general cultural devaluing of ‘feminine’ everything? We never ever give girls’ names to boys…that would be incredibly uncool…too bad, in my opinion.
I was thinking along similar lines, it’s a bit sad, when you look at it that way, isn’t it?
This isn’t entirely true – in the last few weeks I saw boys in birth notices with the names Blyth, Rayne and Jessy – and there are trends in boys’ naming toward modern ‘feminine’ name conventions, including diminutive forms (Archie, Charlie, Bertie), “soft” sounds (Silas, Magnus, Cassius) and nature names (Winter, Fox, Linden). I think if we look back, men and women’s fashions have always borrowed from one another, because of a drive to be different, startling, to buck expectation, rather than to be “more feminine” or “more masculine”. Perhaps I am completely wrong.
Interesting thought. I have often thought it was a shame when moms respond in horror to a boy being potentially being mistaken for a girl when traditionally male names shift to sometimes being used for girls. You rarely see panic in the opposite direction.
Now directly on the topic of the post, I think “cool” names can set unrealistic expectations, but only in the case of “extreme” cool names (e.g. the types of daring/dramatic names favored by some celebrities). I don’t think any of the names the poster lists would be problematic.
My concern with your “cool” list is that in the current climate, unisex names often appeal to parents whose concern is gender ambiguity rather than “coolness”, so even if “coolness” was predictable based on names, I don’t think those names would necessarily be the ones that would be considered “cool” by other kids.
Also, if a girl had the theoretical coolest name in school but also had interests or habits or preferences that the other kids considered undesirable or just weird, I don’t imagine her name would save her from teasing. I totally relate to your concern – I grew up with a “mom” name and through grade school was unable to make lemonade out of lemons like the Lynn in Swistle’s example – but as much as I love names and thinking about them and projecting what a person named X would be like, in practice I don’t think this is really how it works.
When you’re thinking about whether you like the names you like on their own or because of the “coolness” you associate with them, know that none of the names on your “cute” list strikes me as objectively “uncool” and in fact, I think some of them sound very strong while still being feminine (Fiona and Penelope and Lila especially). If you’re concerned about the expectations you’d be placing on your future daughter by giving her a particular name, I would say that giving her a name because you think it increases her chances of being considered “cool” may have the effect of passing on your anxiety about her coolness – as if you don’t expect she could be cool on her own with a perfectly nice but feminine-sounding name.
Finally, as to your concern about a child with a more off-beat name needing the confidence to carry it off, know that the most popular names today are less popular than the most popular names were when we were growing up. I don’t know the exact numbers (Swistle has made this point in previous posts so a search through the archives may help if you’re interested), but many, many more girls were being named Jennifer in the 1970s-80s than are being named Sophia today. Children growing up now are thus more likely to be introduced to a wider variety of names than we were, which leads me to think that this concern of yours will be less problematic than you might think.
Names can be too cool or too cute. But I honestly don’t think any of your names are either. All of your “cool” names are likely to seem pretty standard to kids these days. With the exceptions of Rowan & Leighton, I know kids with every name on your cool list, many of them are girls. I wouldn’t even describe those names as cool, but more surname style or unisex or boy-name-on-a-girl–and again, this is not as unusual as it used to be. If this is the type of name you love best, use it & don’t worry about it.
I also don’t find the names on your cute list “too cute.” For me, too cute names tend to run more towards nicknames. Think things like Ellie or Gigi as given names. All of the names on your list read as feminine (some are perhaps a little vintage) names that will age well. Cute on a little one, but not too cute for her to be taken seriously as an adult.
Perhaps it would help if you looked at your boy & girl names together. For example, if I saw Brenner & Logan on siblings, I would assume 2 boys. However, with Brenner & Piper, I would know Piper was the girl. SSA data could help give you an idea of when a surname or unisex style name would still read “girl enough” when compared to your boy names. If one of your concerns is avoiding having your future daughter mistaken for a boy, this exercise could help you eliminate some names.
I think it’s very important to consider the impact of a name. My personal example is my husband LOVES the name Thor. This is not my style and would be a fairly bold choice but my biggest red flag is that most likely our son would be small for his age. My brother weighed 80 lbs and was under 5′ when he was 16. My husband, although he is over 6′ now, did the majority of his growing AFTER high school. We ruled out Thor because it could have caused unnecessary heartache for a smaller than average guy and it wasn’t worth the gamble for us.
This of course had me thinking of the popular girls in Jr High… their names were Courtney, Jenna, Erin, and Emily, so nothing that really screams “this girl is for sure so awesome!” when I look back at it now.
I also think our own issues with our own names weigh into this. I would have given my eyeteeth for a name people could pronounce at first glance (it’s ha-LAY-na), so Jenna seemed like the best name ever at the time.
I am not into cool names, but I think you’re basically safe with everything listed here! Ironically, right below this post in my RSS feed was a post about how someone had just named their baby “Vox”.
Now “Vox” is an overly-cool name, in my opinion, kind of thing a parent comes up with because it would be awesome on a main character in a graphic novel – and then maybe doesn’t think through using on a kid who might turn out to be awkward and plain instead of swashbuckling and attractive.
This closing line is just awesome: “…the name is a stretchy garment that fits a great variety of wearers.” That’s seriously the perfect metaphorical description, Swistle :)
I think the coolness issue can’t, as Swistle explains eloquently, be neatly pinned down or isolated.
But as far as unisex names go… They have never, ever been my style– and my SO is opposed to them on principle– but recently I’ve been rethinking them along pragmatic lines. My SO is in a line of work where it is quite hard for women to pull ahead. I did a little poll of the most prominent women in his field who are around our age (late 20s-mid-30s) and found a disproportionate number had very unisex, boyish, or indeterminate names. Sam, Avery (we know her & she is constantly assumed to be male by older people), Jaime, Alex, Ayan, two who use initials… Several we know have attributed part of their success to being assumed to be male by people who haven’t met them in person; distressingly, all had examples of situations where this mistake opened doors (which then couldn’t be politely shut again!)
Ever since then I’ve been trying to warm up to unisex names as a part of me wants to give my future daughter (should I have one) the best leg up in the world– even if it doesn’t match my own internal feelings about how the world should be. But I just don’t seem to like any unisex or male names for girls, and that’s that. Even though when I think about it, I think I would have been quite happy to have grown up with a boyish name and would be happy about it even now. So most of them pass the “Would I want this name for myself?” test.
Wow, I’ve gone off on a tangent here. But I do agree that you should try to think about what names the “cool kids” in your high school had. Mine were Ashley, Katie, Nicole, Lindsay… Actually more than anything else they were named Ashley. So many Ashleys! None of them had particularly “cool” names I would say. Also neither Ashley nor Lindsay seemed in the slightest bit unisex or boyish as names. If you are truly going for that feel, I’d axe Emerson from your list as I think it will feel all-girl by the time yours is a teen. The others on your list are fresher and more daring.
Ironically both Ashley and Lindsey were at one point boy names, and then daring unisex names…and now in retrospect they just seem kind of normal. This is the biggest point of caution that I would bring up to you: unisex is a trend that has been around for a long time at this point, since at least the 80s, and it may not last forever. If the main appeal of Brett and Sutton to you is that you imagine them feeling as daring as they would have when you were in high school, I’m worried you might be disappointed. I think you should absolutely choose a name from your “cool” list if those are the names you personally like best…they’re all great names that I think would be very wearable. If you think your preferences might be mostly based on what you anticipate other peoples’ reactions to the name will be, however, I’d suggest trying a different approach.
Amanda,
You pose a really interesting question. I think the names you’ve chosen are likely to be increasingly used on girls rather than boys, so you may be participating in minting this generation’s “Ashley” or “Carol” or “Leslie” or “Frances,” which is cool, but may not read as super-cool to your daughter in 25 years.
Now, assuming some of your choices stay decidedly masculine, then it would kind of a statement. How do these women’s names strike you? Michael Learned, Glenn Close, Daryl Hannah, Brett Butler. Sassy like the Charlie perfume ads from the 80’s? Or dated?
Absolutely no wrong answer here, because the most important determinant of her identity is the love you provide her!
By the way, my name is semi-made up and hard to spell, so most of the young women I considered cool in school had nifty, recognizable names like Amanda. Greener grass, etc!
Your child’s DNA’s will determine what kind of person they are, not their name. I am a woman with a man’s name and I was very shy, bordering on socially phobic, as a child. My name did not make me physically or mentally stronger, and the kids that I felt were popular when I was growing up had outgoing personalities not unusual or “cool” names. All of our parents gave us names that they liked, which is what you should do, knowing that the name will not change who they were meant to be.
Ditto to this.
Here is my personal opinion on how kids are most easily determined as “cool” at school.
The child is highly involved in sports, religious, or social arenas BEFORE starting school. Their parents are friends with lots of other parents and have been having dinner/inviting others to their birthday parties/having play dates with plenty of other kids. THEN they start Kindergarten, and suddenly, they are a friend to the populous because so many people know them. They live in this state of general popularity and float along socially with the crowd until they fall from favor by doing something the masses of which the masses do not approve. Even insisting they are not cool makes them that much cooler.
There are certainly other ways to be deemed ‘cool’, but that is the simplest.
The ‘coolest’ girls I knew from school had ultra feminissa names… names no boy would DARE to wear. Of course, they wore the expensive jeans to go with their names (otherwise, they would have been an object of ridicule). Boys were interested in these femininely labeled girls before the ones labeled with ‘boyish’ names simply because of the teasing of their peers. (“What?! Matt likes Sam? Bwah-hah-hah!”) That also helped the popularity of the girls with feminine names. (But it was a bummer for Jamie who had a crush on Jaime… or Cody the girl who pined for Cody the boy). Every guy I’ve ever asked has flatly stated that he would never date a girl with his own name. (And, as a name nerd, I’ve asked this a lot). It’s something to consider.
Back on track then. There’s always the story of author Mem Fox. She and her two besties in their early teens one day decided they were finished with their ‘boring’ names and adopted ‘cool’ nicknames instead. Mem (Merrion) happened to keep her nickname, and it’s been a nice touch to her literary career. You could always choose a regular name and give her an unusual nickname to whip out when she wants the ‘cool’ factor. “My name is Madeline, but my friends call me ‘Dels’.” You know, that sort of thing.
And, one last thing, the name Brenner is just AWESOME for a boy. That’s a great one to have in the hand.
I know a girl in her 30’s named Aubrey, and now that it is popular for babies, I am in awe that her mom had the foresight to pick this name before it became a smash hit. This name by all logic should have been as popular as Brianna and Ashley and Courtney but as far as I can tell, it wasn’t popular in the ’80s. I get the sense that this is the kind of name enigma you are looking for. Something that is going to sound great but unique now before it races to the top of the SS Chart.
I think I read on the Baby Name Wizard blog that some names continually hang around the middle of the SS Chart. For boys, this would be a name like Ross. For girls, Johanna or Claudia. Familiar names that aren’t necessarily timestamped or extremely popular. You might look at the names ranked in the 300s-400s and see if any of these give you inspiration. I also think a great place to look for inspiration are the heroines of children’s chapter books. Often the names are unusual but familiar enough.
Two observations:
1. The “cool girls” I went to high school with all had pretty much the same names. Everyone was Ali S. or Jessie T. or Julia D. I can’t think of anyone who was cool BECAUSE they had a cool name.
2. Some of the coolest people I know as adults (which seems to be on a slightly different metric of cool than it is in a high school setting) happen to have cool names. Eden comes to mind. I have no idea if Eden’s parents are cool or not, but I bet that part of what makes Eden cool to me comes directly or indirectly from her parents: her name, her wildly curly hair and natural beauty, her wealthy background, the city in which she grew up. You could pass any or all of those traits to your kids, regardless of how socially adept or cool you are. Having the guts to use a cool name broadcasts a lot about you as a person that has nothing to do with which cafeteria table you sat at in high school.
I love that Brenner made it!