Dear Swistle,

I’m due with my first at the end of this week and my husband and I are currently swirling about in a name dilemma vortex. We aren’t finding out the sex and we’re tearing our hair out trying to come up with the one as D-Day approaches (okay, it’s just me! My patient husband seems worn down and is just trying to appease me at this point.)

Our last name is the Peanuts character who plays the piano.

Girl top picks:
– Hadley, nn Haddie
– Savannah, nn Savvy
– Sadie
– Sutton

Boy top picks:
– Theodore, nn Teddy
– Charles, nn Charlie
– Wells
– Macklin or Macallister, nn Mac

I like preppy, strong, and vintage names and my husband has skewed toward more traditional names (specifically for boys) like Benjamin.

I’ll run you through the imaginary problems I have created for each of these top picks—if only so you can get a glimpse inside the prison I’ve designed for myself…

Girl top picks:
– Hadley, nn Haddie (This is my favorite, after Hemingway’s first wife but I don’t love that it sounds like the Kinsleys/Ainsleys/made-up names of the early aughts, versus a historical name with some heft)
– Savannah, nn Savvy (This is my husband’s favorite girl name, but I am slightly hung up on the frilliness of it—although I love the alliteration. We are also not from the South and I worry people are going to think we’re cosplaying or something? Also, is it too 90s?)
– Sadie (This is another one of my all-time favorites. A couple on the outer tier of my husband’s friend circle recently named their baby girl this six months ago, so it feels slightly taken to me, but I keep telling myself that’s so silly. We see these friends less than once per year!)
– Sutton (Love the alliteration and the preppy, androgynous nature—but hung up on the unfortunate nickname of Sut that I feel like could pave the way for middle school and high school teasing due to its awful and misogynistic rhyme.)

Boy top picks:
– Theodore, nn Teddy (So darling, some good heft to it, but is it becoming too popular?!)
– Wells (I love how daring and bold this is—very preppy/presidential to my ear. My husband has come around on it a fair amount but thinks it’s still pretty out there.)
– Charles, nn Charlie (Just worried about it being way too popular!)
– Macklin or Macallister, nn Mac (We both love the shortened nickname Mac, and plan to use this for some child in our future—provided we have a boy—but it doesn’t feel like the first child name to us! We keep picturing a spunky second or third child with this name.)

Thank you so much for your input!

 

I hope we are not too late.

I love very much that you want to use Hadley for Hemingway’s first wife, but I think you are completely right that no one is going to think “Ah, after the first Mrs. Hemingway!” and instead they will think of the contemporary surname names such as Emerson/Kinsley/Everly/Addison. That may be the style you end up going for (many preppy/unisex names are in that category), but it feels like it misses the mark for literary/historical heft. On the other hand, if you might have a Hadley, an Emerson, and an Eliot, it starts to paint a clearer picture. Well, except I still would not have known that Hadley was the name of Hemingway’s first wife.

I’m also with you on Sutton. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel natural to shorten it to Sut, so maybe that wouldn’t be an issue? But perhaps someone who knows a Sutton could give us more information.

Savannah does have a ’90s sound to it: that’s when it hit the Top 100, and it’s been there ever since. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was “TOO ’90s.” To me it goes with Samantha and Courtney and Gabrielle: names that are still being used now, but after several decades of popularity they’ve lost that smack of freshness.

I like Sadie, but not with your boy name options (thinking ahead to future possible brothers): it’s great with Charlie and Teddy and Mac, but then I want her to have a full name too. Sarah is the traditional given name for the nickname Sadie, but is it too difficult to say with the surname? It can also be a nickname for Mercedes.

On to boy names. The name Theodore hit the Top 50 in 2018 (the 2019 Social Security data, which normally would have come out in May 2020, has been delayed because of Covid-19), and my guess is that it is still there. Charles is at the same level of popularity, but holding steady rather than rising: #52 in 2018, #48 in 2017, #51 in 2016, #50 in 2015, #51 in 2014. In fact, I see Charles has been fairly steady for decades. Theodore, on the other hand, spent a few decades in the 200s and 300s, then shot up over the last five years. And Charlotte/Charlie for girls has increased dramatically in recent years.

I notice that Theodore almost repeats the ending of your surname.

Wells with the surname has an institutional/financial/business sound to me. It definitely sounds preppy to me, but not presidential: I’m not seeing many preppy names among the presidents. If you want presidential, I’d go with Theodore, Charles, or maybe something like John, George, Franklin, Warren.

I’m leaving Mac and its long forms for now, because I know what you mean about a name seeming like it’s for a later child.

Okay! So I think the next step is to start looking at some sibling sets. It can feel very odd to try to pick MULTIPLE names when it’s hard enough to name ONE baby, and we’re not going to try to actually do that: we’re just going to PLAY a little. And the reason we’re going to do that is that I see a bunch of repeated sounds in your lists, and I am also seeing some different styles. Widening the view a little (as you’re doing when you think you may want Mac for a future child, or as I did a few paragraphs back when thinking about Sadie with the boy-name list) can actually make it easier to narrow back down. It can also help reduce the possibility of using a name without noticing that it rules out using other names in the future.

For example! You love the alliteration of S- names, and you have several on your list: Savannah, Sadie, Sutton. How do you feel about siblings with the same initial? Some people don’t mind at all; others try very hard to avoid it; some wouldn’t mind two matching initials but not in a row because it would make them feel like they had to continue the pattern; and so on. If you want to avoid it, it’s good to think ahead of time about which S-name is your favorite.

Also! I see several D-sounds, which especially catch my eye because of the D-sound in the surname: Hadley, Sadie, Theodore. If you used one of those names, would a second seem like Too Much? Imagine Hadley [Surname] and Theodore [Surname]. Too much or just right?

If you used Hadley, would it later bother you to have a Charlie? Some people don’t mind a repeated end-sound, especially when one is a nickname; other people try very hard to avoid it. What about Sadie and Teddy? Sutton and Macklin? Wells and Charles? Sadie and Savvy? If using one name rules out using another name, it is good to think ahead of time to make sure you use your favorite.

If you used one of the more common/traditional boy names from your list (Theodore, Charles), does that make you feel at all odd using Wells or Macklin later? Or the other way around: if you use Wells for the first baby, does it make Theodore/Charles feel too traditional for future babies? If you use a unisex preppy name such as Hadley or Sutton for a girl, does that rule out the frillier Savannah for a future girl? if you use Savannah, does it rule out Hadley/Sutton? Some parents want the styles/popularities to be similar, and some care less about that.

Savannah and Sadie go well together; Hadley and Sutton go well together. Which pairing of sisters feels more like Your Kids, the ones you call to dinner and tell to do their homework?

I don’t feel like I should add a bunch of names for consideration when you are so close to delivery. On the other hand, I think I owe the girl-name list some work, after I was not very encouraging about any of the options. I tried to find an assortment of names: some a little prettier, like Savannah; some a little preppier, like Hadley and Sutton; and aiming for a Full Name sound like Theodore and Charles. I admit I went a little overboard, but I was having so much fun:

Arden
Beckett
Bianca
Brighton
Cassidy
Claudia
Cordelia
Darby
Darcy
Delia
Emlyn
Fiona
Flannery
Gwendolyn
Haven
Hillary
Holling
Imogen
Judith/Jude
Keaton
Landry
Lane
Langston
Linden
Lydia
Malone
Marigold
Matilda
Meredith
Merritt
Nadia
Selby
Simone
Sloane
Theodora/Teddy
Waverly
Winifred
Winslow

People feel differently about initials so I didn’t take those into account when making the list, but just to note that some people avoid the initials B.S.

I considered Ellis, but thought with your surname it would be mistaken for Ella.

Do you have any good family surnames you could use? It seems like the names with the best prep cred are the ones that are actual family surnames. And/or the John/Charles/Katherine/Elizabeth names that have been passed down through generations and so have nicknames such as Skip and Chip and Kit and Bitsy.

 

 

 

Name update:

Hi!

Your timing could not have been more perfect. I delivered a healthy baby girl on the morning of Sunday, June 7, and we took the entirety of our hospital visit to deliberate about names. I read your post and all the thoughtful comments aloud to my husband in the hospital room while snuggling our newest addition! It’s a fun memory from her birth.

We ended up choosing the name Savannah. I loved your advice about playing around with sibset names, and that’s exactly what steered us in the direction of Savannah. We thought about the names we’d like to bestow on the rest of our family and how to ensure they’ll all fit together (and which ones we’d be sad if we never got to use). Savannah just felt like a good, strong start—one that left a few different pathways open for future siblings! :)

Thanks again to you and all the commenters for your very thoughtful replies! You pointed out several angles we hadn’t considered, and we are so grateful.

Cheers!