Hi Swistle,
Very long time listener, first time caller. I thought I would never need your help considering both my children are named and we are done having children. However, I have a conundrum that I accept is absolutely all my fault but of course that does not stop me wanting to fix it.
I have two lovely children, a three year old son, George, and a three month old daughter, Nell. It is Nell’s name that has caused my problem.
I have been a big fan of baby names for years and years and have always firmly believed that names should give you Options if possible. It always frustrated me that my cousin just had a diminutive as her first name (like Katie for Katherine) as I think it has the potential to look unprofessional on important documents i.e. someone may think you are putting your nickname on your resume.
For this reason, and others, we named Nell Eleanor with the intention that she would be Nell day to day and have Eleanor, or any one of its many nicknames, as another option when she was old enough to choose for herself.
Of course intentions and what comes to pass in the real world are not always the same thing. As you have likely guessed there are many people who call her Eleanor. Now obviously I like the name Eleanor but for some reason it really grates me when people address Nell as Eleanor. To me she is Nell through and through and Eleanor is just there as a legal formality.
I have tried my best to address this in a indirect way. For example, when my mother in law asks how Eleanor is I respond that Nell is doing well. I only use Nell when talking about her although will explain that Nell is short for Eleanor if people ask (it doesn’t seem to be an intuitive nickname for many people). Her birth announcement has a giant “NELL” in the corner with her full legal name in smaller letters.
None of this seems to change anything. I do get the feeling that some people prefer Eleanor to Nell but as she is not their child I don’t really take much notice of that.
I suggested changing her legal name to Nell to my partner but he shot that down immediately. Is there anything else I can do?
Help me Swistle, you’re my only hope.
Clare
I think everything is going to be fine. I think we can figure this out, and that it’s going to be fine.
I think we need to go into it with the full realization that it can be a little delicate to find the wording for “Please don’t call our baby by the name we gave her.” You have a perfect right to make the request; you have a perfect right to prefer the nickname. But from what I remember of when my first child was a toddler and my second child was a few months old, there are some hills there is not enough sleep for—and time is going to take care of a lot of this for us anyway.
For one thing, right now the baby is New! and her name is New! and everyone is getting used to her as a person and a presence. I remember especially with my firstborn, how weird it felt in the beginning to use his name at all; we kept calling him “the baby.” With all my babies, their names were something to adjust to; it took time for the names to feel familiar and natural. As time goes on and you consistently and persistently call the baby/toddler/child “Nell,” I believe that name is going to Sink In, and the incidences of people calling her Eleanor will be much less frequent. But right now some people are having a lot of fun saying it: pairing a formal professional grown-up name with a squeezy cranky newborn is one of the great joys in life. I believe that thrill will gradually cede to the increasing feeling that the child IS Nell, and people won’t even feel the urge to call her Eleanor anymore.
In the meantime, if you have the energy for it, you can use Miss Manners’s technique of repeating the same hint in the same cheery way until everyone does what you want out of sheer boredom at the repetition. The subtlety of responding to “How is Eleanor?” with “Nell is doing great” is not getting the job done, and so we level up: “How is Eleanor?” “Oh, we’re calling her Nell. She’s doing great!” The next day: “I’m sending the cutest little jammies for Eleanor!” “Oh, remember, we’re calling her Nell. I can’t wait to see the jammies!” The next level up from that is “Please call her Nell. I can’t wait to see the jammies!” The next level up from there is “Mom, we’ve been clear that we want her to be called Nell. What’s going on here?” Or you might decide instead to not level up at all, knowing that time will take care of most of them and soon almost everyone will use Nell whether they meant to or not, and you won’t have had to do all that work.
The answer to “But Eleanor is her NAME!” is “Oh, I know! But we’re not using it right now; we’re calling her Nell.” The answer to “But I LOVE the name Eleanor!” is “Oh, I know! But we’re not using it right now; we’re calling her Nell.” And/or you might decide to allow people to attempt to continue to call her Eleanor (I think most of them won’t succeed long-term), because it can be nice for everyone involved when someone has multiple options for their name. My own name is Kristen, NEVER called Kris—except by one set of grandparents and one aunt. I didn’t want to be called Kris in general, but I liked my grandparents and my aunt calling me Kris.
If it were me in your shoes, I would feel comfortable saying to my mom with affectionate exasperation “MOM!! JUST CALL HER NELL!! I am not getting enough sleep for this!!” But I would not have been able to pull that off with my in-laws, and would have wanted Paul to handle them. I can picture him saying “Nell” “Nell” “Nell” as a little auto-correction every time his parents said Eleanor.
“We’re sending Eleanor…”
“Nell.”
“…the cutest little pajamas! Is Eleanor…”
“Nell.”
“…sleeping any better these days?”
And so on. Paul is good at taking something like that and making it cute and funny, so pretty soon everyone would have been laughing at each correction, and multiple people would start chiming in on each correction (chorus: “NELL!!”), and then he’d post pictures of the baby on Facebook with captions like “Call me IshmaeNELL.” Is your partner by any chance a good-natured Paul-type who can take some of this on?
But really, I do think you can let time fix most of this. I could be absolutely wrong about that, and of course the baby herself might choose to be called Eleanor (or Ellie or Nora) later on; but I think for now, consistently calling her Nell is going to take care of most of this, and I am in favor of sparing yourself as many stressful add-on activities as possible during this impossible stage of parenthood. (The first four months of the second baby was the hardest stage of my entire life, and I include the stage of bringing home twin babies four years later, and the stage of bringing home a newborn when the twins weren’t quite two years old.)
(Related post: We Want Our Son Called By a Nickname, But Someone Keeps Using His Given Name.)
Yes to all this good advice! I remember having a lot of nicknames pop up for my daughter (Elizabeth): Liz, Lizzie, Beth. But they all eventually followed my lead in calling her Elizabeth. It’s sort of the inverse problem, but I do think that they’ll call her Nell eventually. :) Congratulations and great name!
I know a person whose mother wanted to name her Elizabeth, but did not like any of the nicknames. She chose Elvira instead!! But then she named her second child Elizabeth. *shrug emoji*
As Swistle said, time will mend many things, apparently.
This won’t help for a while, but if you’ve called Nell by her nickname her whole life, it’s likely that shortly after she learns to speak that she’ll take over all corrections.
I STILL get reminded, 30+ years later, of the time when I was almost two years old and my grandmother called me Debbie. I gave my very best toddler glare and stamped as I shouted “I…NOT… DEBBIE!” at her face.
Grandma never called me Debbie again.
I was coming here to say just this. We have a Robert, who my father-in-law kept calling Bobbie, which always made him cranky. When he was about 2 he finally broke, started bawling and screaming I AM ROBERT, I AM NOT BOBBIE. It took almost an hour to calm him down. It was clearly something my baby had thought about for awhile. Once Nell is old enough, she will correct her grandma and it will be over.
That is freaking awesome, lol :)
I agree that time will take care of this. We named our third daughter Magnolia. My mom loves the nickname Maggie (as do I ) but my husband and I agreed that she would not be Maggie but Magnolia or Nolie because my mom’s dogs name was Maggie. My mom kept bugging me that people would still call her Maggie. She tried a couple times and quickly got shot down. I think only one of our friends tried calling her Maggie but stopped as well when my husband told her she’s not Maggie. Now she’s almost exclusively Nolie and it just fits her. No one even tries Maggie anymore. In fact, we moved to South Africa earlier this year and one day a friend of ours told me that she called her Magnolia one day when my daughter was playing nearby and another friend said, “Who’s Magnolia?” And she said, “Nolie!”
It will all work out.
Agree with Swistle and the posters above—there will be other hills to die on. You are asking people to ignore the name you put on the baby’s birth certificate, treating it as a forbidden word—which makes sense in the context you’ve laid out, but not much otherwise. You had the option of naming her Nell, and didn’t; it’s (sort of) reasonable for people who like Eleanor better to believe it’s one of the available options, or struggle to understand why it isn’t. You certainly don’t want to send the message that you saddled your daughter with a legal name you don’t like!
(My bias is that generally I am not a fan of parents insisting on a non-intuitive nickname to replace a name they chose freely, especially when they’ve planned it in advance—although I always obey when asked to.)
Now, on the other hand—moms. I feel you. But she is using a name you chose, and not one she came up with herself to passive-aggressively negate your choice altogether. Or as my mom does, being the only person to use the child’s second middle name, since it’s a family name and the only portion she personally likes. If you can hang on, it will be worth it the day Nell informs everyone of the variant she prefers!
Nell is a very traditional, reasonably intuitive nn for all of the English -el- names (Ellen, Helen, Eleanore et. al).
It is just as common as Jim for James or Libby for Elisabeth. I’m very confident that the OP will make it stick if that’s the name her child prefers. In the meantime MIL isn’t doing any harm.
Right, this is very true. But the letter writer points out that it doesn’t seem to be intuitive for some of the people in their circle, which I think may be especially true in the case where there’s another one that leaps out–like Ellie.
With my parenthetical, I was referring to more extreme examples, like wanting a baby named Charlotte Claire referred to as Coco, etc. No judgments specifically on Nell-for-Eleanor, except that it seems not to be sinking in among her people specifically.
Great advice from Swistle. Be consistent but cheerful. It takes time.
Our third son, now 5 months old, is Jeremy but we call him Remy. Like Nell from Eleanor, Remy is not the usual go to nickname for Jeremy. I use Remy in all my Facebook posts for family, we only use Remy when talking, amd when first introducing him, I said a million amd one times: “This is Jeremy but we call him Remy. Isn’t Remy cute/big/whatever?”
People catch on quickly. Almost no one is refering to him as Jeremy.
My daughter just turned three, we live in the south, and she has a double name. (totally common. totally normal around here) And there are STILL 2 relatives that insist on only using her first name. I do the polite thing and refer to her with the double name right back. But then they continue to discuss the name.”What will you call her when she’s older?” “Isn’t that a silly name for an adult?’, etc. To which I calmly reply,”I’ll let her decide when she’s older”, but I’m fuming on the inside. SHE’S STILL A CHILD. WHY DOES IT MATTER NOW?!
People are maddening.
My father in law does this also and it’s very annoying. Our first daughter is Abigail and we called her by her full name but he Always called her Abby. When she was little she wouldn’t respond when he called her Abby, which was awesome! Now she is a teenager and goes by Abby and he calls her a different nickname (eyeroll). My other two daughters and my niece have had a similar story with him. I think he just likes having his own special name to call them. I try to frame it in a charming way and it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to but I remember it really infuriating me when they were little!
It’s all in the framing, really. If he pulled them into the decision and made it their “thing”, it’d be endearing instead of annoying,
Personally, I wouldn’t stress about it at all. Nell is a pretty nickname, but Eleanor is a beautiful name as well, so it’s not like some people are insulting your daughter by calling her that.
Obviously I don’t know how this works in your family, but in mine it’s totally normal that almost everyone has multiple nicknames – for example, my legal name is Joanna, but I’m almost always called Asia (a common Polish nn for Joanna, pronounced a bit like Ash-ya), sometimes Joasia, occasionally Aśka, Asieńka, Asiunia or even Joaś (my mom’s invention), and when I was a child my dad from time to time half-jokingly called me Zuzia (because apparently he wanted to name me Zuzanna but my mom had vetoed it).
And there’s still a possibility that your daughter may one day insinst on being actually called Eleanor rather than Nell.
Oh, and I wholeheartedly support your view that it’s good to have a more formal legal name to lean on if necessary, because we never know what future may bring.
P.S. Both George and Eleanor (Nell) are really great choices – you have a very fine taste in names. And of course huge congrats on your baby girl!
I agree that time, and Nell, will sort this out. One thing though: is there any chance that people aren’t clear that Nell is what you expect everyone to call her? Like, do her grandparents think Nell is your nickname for her, and don’t want to step on your toes, so are reverting to her legal name? If that might be the case, I’d suggest addressing that really clearly and directly once.
I wondered about this too. My husband goes by a shortened version of his given name (like Jake for Jacob), and when we were first getting to know each other, I totally did not feel comfortable calling him Jake. I have a similar issue when people in authority positions (like my boss) want to be called casual nicknames. Something about it seems presumptuous and stilted or awkward if you can’t pull it off…so I often default to the given name unless I am literally commanded (not just invited) to do otherwise.
Original poster here. We use Nell for everything. Like when she was in hospital we set up a WhatsApp group to keep everyone updated and I named that “Nell”. It’s also on her birth announcement so it’s not like we’re calling her a pet name.
I am Victoria Nicole, nn Tori from the day I was born. My mom picked my middle name after an acquaintance named Nicki and apparently shared that info with her mother. I am told that for the first 6 months of my life, my grandmother (and only my grandmother) called me Nicki. I have no recollection of this, as she eventually fell in line with everyone else and called me Tori. I don’t know how my mom handled it, as I’ve only ever been told that bit of info I shared here (It may have helped that my grandmother had a 5 year old herself when I was born and was lacking the energy to fight my mom & the rest of the family). In 3rd grade, I decided to call myself Victoria at school, that lasted about 4 months, and I went back to Tori. I half-jokingly said I was going to change my legal name to Tori when I got married and was going through the name-change process to change my last name, as “Victoria” doesn’t feel like Me, but I objectively think it is a pretty name and didn’t go through the hassle. I have an almost 9 year old named Tabitha that is called Tabitha by everyone except my dad’s mom. Tabitha doesn’t seem to mind, so even though I really don’t like the nn Tabi, I let it slide. As the years have gone by, I’ve actually grown to think it is sweet that her great-grandma has a special name for Tabitha. So there’s my $.02 cents that will hopefully help :)
I come from a very Southern family, in which everyone is named after someone so most people are called by their middle names exclusively or interchangeably with or in combination with their first name. It gets complicated. Anyway, upon meeting my baby self for the first time, my uncle, who goes by one of his middle names exclusively, called me Katie. My middle name is Kate. My mom looked him dead in the eye and said that if she had wanted me called Katie, she would have named me Katie, but she didn’t, and if he wanted to see me again, he better get it together. She reacted similarly to relatives’ attempts to call my brother and sister common nicknames of their legal names (think Janie for Jane). I realize that doesn’t exactly work in your situation, but I think the directness might. Sometimes people just need that direct feedback. Making it clear that your daughter’s name is Nell, regardless of her birth certificate or what they choose to believe about naming, will go far, in my experience/opinion.
Yes time will win the war- whatever you call her and continue to reinforce will be the name that rises to the top spot. I tried to force a specific nickname for my daughter (Coco for Corinne) but for months it just wouldn’t stick, no one else would use it. Even I didn’t love it after beating the drum for so long. In the end the baby nicknamed herself something extremely loosely related to her name sounds (Kinney)- and it was immediately a HUGE hit and everyone everywhere calls her that now. All this to say… control is fleeting! And by the time you get to the school years, you’ll be using Eleanor a lot, officially?
I think well meaning people (and family) call a child by a nickname or alternate name as a shortcut to establish a relationship. Sort of like saying: look how close we are! We have this thing where I call her (fill in the blank). My father does this to kids and even other grown ups! He’ll call a Tom Thomas for no reason or a Kate Katie. Maybe the best way to get your mother-in-law to stop calling your daughter Eleanor would be to let her know how important her relationship is with your daughter. She’s still very young, but things like “I just love how Nell looks in that sweater you gave her.” Or “Nell really seems to love that bunny you picked out.” could help you MiL not need to have that “special Eleanor connection”
Just a thought.
I have a child who is called exclusively by his middle name. There are people who like to call him by his legal first name, sometimes it seems just as a means to aggravate me?
Anyway, it dissipated significantly with time. He’s 4 now, and he only ANSWERS to his middle name, so that helps quite a bit. Calling him by his first name is not satisfying when he doesn’t even respond to it. Have hope and persevere!
We fought the good fight on this, as well.
Our daughter’s name is Fiona, but we really did not like the common nickname Fi (or Fee), or the less common Fifi. My family are big nicknamers, so avoiding the issue was not an option. I decided, before she was born, that we would call her Fae (and spell it that way, not “Fay.”)
People thought I was nuts, at first, but I’m tenacious. I used the nose-wrinkle technique: When someone tried to call her Fi, I wrinkled up my face like it confused me or grossed me out.
On the phone, I’d pause significantly (as if taken aback) before saying, “FAE is doing well.” I basically implied that they’d mis-remembered my daughter’s name.
I also used only her nickname in typed communication (texts, email, FB, ect.) for over a year, despite the fact that we call her Fiona just as often in day-to-day life.
It worked. People know it, use it, and spell it correctly.
Just consistently call her Nell, and like others mentioned, she will take care of it herself when she’s a toddler.
I picked a name for my infant son that my husband and I love, but was met with lukewarm reception by some of the members of our family, who prefer his middle name—and not just his middle name, but nicknames for his middle name. I have to remind myself that I love his middle name too—It was almost his first name! He will handle it when he’s a little older if he cares to, and if not, I love these names too—but it does kind of feel like a rejection of the moniker we carefully and lovingly chose for him and have presented to the world.
I understand why it’s infuriating in this moment. When a child is too young to have a name preference themself and voice it, it’s up to the parents. Honestly it feels down right disrespectful when someone decides to ignore the parent’s choice and opt for their preferred name variant. And it feels like they don’t even know your child. Who the heck is Eleanor? My daughter is Nell!
Like you, I prefer names that have options. My daughter is Lucille, a name that I love and I like all the nicknames for. When she was too young to talk I had in-laws that insisted on calling her Luc, the only nickname I don’t like (as it sounds like loose). I used you current method for about a year and a half and then I flat out told everyone to knock it off! (I was 2months postpartum with her baby brother and not in the mood to keep playing nice.)
Other than the one time of telling them that’s not her name though I’ve tried to stay out of it. Because to me the beauty of a name with options is, they get to make their own identity. And I didn’t want my daughter to hear me dismissing one of her options.
In case you’re wondering, she started calling herself Lulu several months before her 2nd birthday. Everyone followed suit once it was her who had a preference. Around her 5th birthday she decided she preferred Lucille. Again, most people have started calling her that. Some people still call her Lulu, which she’s fine with. Every single person she meets assumes she goes by Lucy but if they get to know her they adopt Lucille or Lulu. Funny enough, when pregnant Lucy is the name I thought she’d go by. It never felt right. And apparently she doesn’t think so either. I’ve never said anything negative about Lucy, 99% of people she needs call her that, and she relates to it in no way. Haha.
Thank you for this point. I take a similar approach to my daughter of the Extremely Nickname-able Name – when I was growing up, my full name was rarely used until I stopped providing my nickname to teachers in high school and college (because I was shy/lazy, not because I necessarily had a preference). Now I use my full name all the time when meeting new people or speaking in public. It’s never quite stopped feeling too formal, even as my nickname feels too intimate, and by the time I know someone’s going to be in my life for a while, asking them to use my nickname no longer feels right either. My name has another nickname less diminutive than the one I had growing up, but because no one ever used it, trying to make it happen feels kind of narcissistic, honestly. So I call my daughter all the names, and hope that helps her avoid my weird name trap. If she ever expresses a strong preference (or is ever against a specific nn) we will go with what she wants, but for now, I just enjoy having so many options.
Thank you everyone so much for this. I found this at 5 am after being up half of the night with Nell (thanks to bugs coming home with George). I really appreciate all your thoughts and do agree now that it will probably sort itself out.
I definitely still want Nell to have options with her name but the thing that was frustrating me was that I wanted those options for her and not for other people (if that makes sense).
One of the reasons I loved Eleanor was that it gives her so many options. She can be Eleanor in job interviews, Nora if she’s quiet and loves to read, Ellie if she’s an outgoing tomboy or Elle in her teenage years or even Nor if she wants to be a bit different.
I’ll continue working to correct people and will support her in whatever name she wants when she’s bigger. Thanks again for your support and kind words, you create the loveliest communities, Swistle.
I totally get what you mean about wanting options for the child herself, not for people who encounter the child. My son is Edward so he can be Eddie, Ed, Ned, Ward, if he wants when he’s older, but for now we exclusively call him Teddy. We don’t introduce him to new people as Edward and most people don’t know that’s his full name, unless they ask, which I think has helped cut down on unwanted full-naming. Good luck to you and Nell (which is a LOVELY name for an Eleanor, I love the old traditional nicknames!)
I think I may be the lone dissenter here. I have a Charles nn Charlie. I honestly don’t even really like the name Charles but felt very uneasy about naming our son just Charlie, so went with a formal name with the plan to call him Charlie. But I know full well that his real name is Charles. It is what is on his preschool paperwork. It is on the record at his doctor and dentist. We exclusively call him Charlie, and so do most people we encounter. But my grandma calls him “king charles” and I would never correct her. She is technically correct, that is his name. And when I teach our Charlie what his full name is he knows his first name is Charles. I have drawn the line at new nicknames, though. In his preschool class a new girl started a few weeks ago named “Charlee”. His teachers started calling my son “Chuck” or “Chuckie” to differentiate him from the little girl. We asked the teachers to kindly go back to Charlie or just start calling him Charles. This scenario seem similar to yours, but differs in my mind pretty distinctly. For one Chuck or Chuckie is not even close to a parent or child chosen name in my situation. It would be like me introducing myself as Amanda and being immediately called Mandy. Whereas the reverse seems a lot more acceptable to me: ie, I inroduce myself as Amanda but I go by Mandy, and then someone calls me Amanda anyway. I feel like when you introduce a newborn as “Full Name” but we plan to call them “Nickname” most people feel like they can choose since both names are technically correct. In the end your daughter (and my son) will decide what name they like most, and all of our careful thoughtfulness will go out the window anyway!
I also have a Charlie (named Charles) and he decided when he started kindergarten that his name was Charles. Full stop. It’s a challenge as I really loved the name Charlie and like you was only really lukewarm about Charles.
About the original letter, my MIL tried this with almost all of my four children. Charlie was Chaz. Henry was Hank. etc. But, it went away. I think it was too difficult for her to really press the issue and since we ignored it and did the light corrections it just kind of drifted off. As swistle says, time heals this issue, I think.
When my daughter was born we immediately started calling her by a nickname too. I didn’t mind the full version of her name, but it seemed like too much for a tiny little baby. A lot of family members seemed to use the full name at first as though they weren’t sure if they had permission to use our nickname– like they thought it might be just a pet name from her parents, and they wanted to get her name right. In this case it wasn’t a problem for me, so we just let everyone settle into their own rhythm. But in your case, I wonder if it would help to send out a friendly email to the folks who you’re having trouble with– use the bcc field so no one is on the spot, explain gently that you’re hoping everyone can be consistent with the name you’re using now, include some sort of joke to make it light hearted, and finish with a couple of the latest cute photos everyone can coo over. Even if it only sorts out half the people who bug you, hey, it’s a start, right?
This is exactly why we chose names that couldn’t have nicknames. I grew up without one & I’m perfectly fine. I don’t see the point in calling a child by a name that isn’t theirs. With all the weird noun names in this generation, I don’t think any employer with bat an eye if her full name was “Nell.”
That being said, I agree that it will all work itself out. I have a 7 month old named Claire. My father-in-law still calls her Clara. I happened to strongly dislike Clara, but I know he’s old & after 6 grandkids, he gets a little confused. No big deal. She’s only 7 months & my MIL corrects him every time anyway. I feel like special people, such as grandparents, are allowed to have a special pet name if they want. My grandfather called me Ms. Beth (Beth is my middle name). Nobody else called me that. I was never annoyed by it and thought it was super special. If they want to call her Eleanor, I see no harm in it.
We have a Francisco, nn Frankie, and he will tolerate Francisco but STRONGLY prefers Frankie and will tell you right away that his name is NOT Frank, Cisco, Chico, Franco, Paco, Pancho, etc if you try to drop any of the 10,000 other nicknames for Francisco on him. He was so indignant about his preferred name (Frankie) being called a nickname and his full name being called his “real name” that we ended up agreeing that Frankie is his REAL name and Francisco is his FANCY name.
So, yes, another vote that if you keep on calling your daughter Nell she’ll be helping you hold the line as soon as she can talk. Congrats! :)
In my experience, people figure it out. I have an Edmund, who is always Edmund. And a Louise who is 80% Lulu/Lou. At first people wanted to be respectful (I guess?) and use her full name, since that is what we did for our first, but have since (2 years later) caught on.
I have a son named Zion Charles (first and middle). I call him Charles almost exclusively, but everyone else calls him Zion. A few times his sister or an aquaintance tries to call him Charles and he says, “No thanks, Charles is mama’s special name for me”. I love that he considers my use of his middle name special, just between us, and I think that some children enjoy that “special name” connection with important people in their lives.
On the same note, my daughter chose before she was 2 that she preferred her middle name (Joanna), but there are a few days when she wakes up particularly vivacious and wants to be called by her first name which is spunkier. Having options is fun, embrace it!
Oh I am so happy to see this post and the responses as this is something that holds me up on our girl name! The one name we both agree on is Madeline but I loathe Maddy/Maddie and would want to use Emme or Milly however, I am worried people will just start calling her Maddy since that’s easiest which makes me not want to use the name! Granted, my name is Caroline nn Cara and my parents and everyone have called me Cara since birth and no one has even attempted Carrie or Carol on me! Also Nell/Eleanor is a personal fav and this post makes me love it more.