Hello!

I was directed to your blog by a dear friend after expressing to her our difficulty with girl names. Our last name sounds like Sailor with a “T”. Though, I never changed mine and it’s the surname of the first man on the moon.

I am due 10/2 with a girl. I had previously toyed with the idea of using my surname for our child’s middle name (potentially multiple children) to carry on the name since my generation is all females and to avoid issues with hyphenation in the future. However, my grandmother who helped raise me, passed around the time we conceived and her name was Nancy Rita so I’d love to honor her in some way. Rita Rae was also the name of my husband’s maternal grandmother so Rita is an honor name on both sides, but I don’t love it as a first name.

We struggled with infertility and we know at this juncture that any future children will likely be males. We have a male name picked out: “Mackey Thomas” which is my husband’s middle name / his mother’s maiden name, plus the name of my father. Nickname Mac or Mack (or Tom / Tommy if he hates Mackey).

For girl names, we have a difficult time agreeing and my husband prefers traditional names and I tend to like preppy names, boy names for girls, and last names as first names.

I love:
Sadie
Harper
Riley (though we have a niece with this name and I don’t want to duplicate)
Sienna

He loves:
Eleanor
Evelyn

Names we agree on:
Maeve
Charlotte, nickname “Charlie”
Isabelle
Kennedy

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

Along with toying with the idea of using your surname for a child’s middle name, I wonder if you would like to toy with the idea of using it as the child’s surname. You have kept your own surname, which makes it even easier to imagine using that surname for the child. Or perhaps hyphenating, so that choosing to keep your own surnames doesn’t end up forcing either of you into a situation where the whole household shares the same surname except for one parent. And the surnames in question sound very nice together, which is a pleasing bonus. Maybe hyphenating would create a problem later, maybe not, but I do think it’s fine to let the next generation figure out for themselves what they’d like to do about it if it happens; giving up the mother’s name pre-emptively, just in case the child might want to do that at some point in the future, seems unnecessary.

If using your surname or hyphenating is not an option for whatever reasons, but also you want to honor your grandmother as part of the middle name, then I suggest at least taking the crumbs of having your surname as a second middle name. I am unhappy that when naming my own children I thought those crumbs were a big slice of cake, but I am at least glad for crumbs rather than nothing. So this is where I’d suggest starting:

_______ Rita [YourSurname], or
_______ Rita [Hyphenated Surname], or
_______ Rita [Your Surname] [Patriarchy]

Except actually, in this case: if you use only your husband’s surname for the child, and/or if your surname is relegated to second-middle-name status (AND your boy-name choice honors your husband’s side of the family in the first-name position as well as in the surname position), then I instead suggest more directly honoring your grandmother by using her first name. It’s such a nice coincidence that the name Rita would honor both sides, and so hard to resist that kind of coincidence—but it is a much larger honor for your husband’s grandmother and a much smaller honor for your grandmother, and it sounds as if your grandmother was much more important in your life than is the usual. So I would instead suggest starting with:

_______ Nancy [Your Surname] [Husband’s Surname], or
_______ Nancy [Husband’s Surname]

But even with that adjustment, this situation continues to cry out for balance. [Father’s Mother’s Maiden Name & His Middle Name] [Mother’s Father’s Name] [Father’s Surname] as a boy name choice and [First Name] [Father’s Grandmother’s First Name / Mother’s Grandmother’s Middle Name] [Father’s Surname] as a girl name choice is a very father-heavy selection of names, ESPECIALLY WHEN the mother has kept her own family name and has only women in her generation. Is there any room here for a compromise, where for example boys are given their mother’s surname, and girls are given their father’s? Or where the first child’s surname is chosen based on which surname sounds better (or by flipping a coin if both sound good), and after that the surnames alternate? Or perhaps each child’s surname could be chosen to balance the first/middle honor names, so that for example a child with a first name from their father’s side would have a surname from their mother’s side, and vice versa?

Let’s move to first names. Certainly if we are using names from your husband’s family as the first AND last names for a boy, and as the last and possibly also the middle for a girl, I would think it would be fair for you to get more say on the first name for a girl, and/or much more say on the first name of a second boy.

From your joint list, the name Kennedy stands out as being a different style than the others: a contemporary surname name, unisex but used much more often for girls (3,924 new baby girls and 126 new baby boys in the U.S. in 2018, according to the Social Security Administration) (the 2019 data has been delayed due to the pandemic). If you are unlikely to have more girls, the issue of sister names may never come up; and it isn’t as if you have to pick TWO names now, when it’s hard enough to pick ONE; but it can be a good idea to look ahead a little just to make sure you aren’t using a name that would rule out other names. For example, if you named this baby Kennedy, would you be able to find a second girl name that worked for both of you? Kennedy and Isabelle feels like a style clash; Kennedy and Charlotte feels like a clash, though Kennedy and Charlie works. Kennedy also works beautifully with some of the names on your list (Harper, Riley), though not as well with the names on your husband’s list.

Speaking of sibling names, let’s talk a little about what would happen if later this baby has a brother named Mackey. Do you like Maeve and Mackey/Mac together, or would using one name rule out the other for you? and/or would it make you feel cornered into using M names for all future children? What about Kennedy and Mackey: do the matched -y endings bother you, or is it a plus that they’re both surname names?

Back to the lists. From your joint list, my own personal strong favorite is Maeve, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your plans to use Mackey. I think it hits a sweet spot between your preferences and your husband’s. I like it with your surname, with your husband’s surname, and with a hyphenated surname in either order. I think it works well with either middle name option.

I also like the way Charlotte/Charlie balances his preference for a formal/traditional name with your preference for something more preppy/boyish/surnamey. And that would be a path to investigate for more options: Caroline with the nickname Rory, Eleanor with the nickname Rory or Lennie, Madeline/Adelaide with the nickname Del, Katherine with the nickname Kit, Rebecca called Bex, Beatrix called Bix, Juliette called Jet, Sarah called Sadie, Josephine called Jo, Augusta called Gus, Frances/Francesca called Frankie, Winifred called Fred/Freddie, Cordelia called Cory, and so on.

I’m interested too in the possibilities of Riley, if you don’t want to re-use it because of your niece. There are names of similar style and partly similar sound (Brinley and Everly and Delaney and Casey, for example), or names of similar sound and not very similar style (Isla and Lyla and Mila and Ivy and Cecily, for example). Something like Rory might work: not too similar to be weird at family get-togethers, but with a similar spirit. I like it with a future brother named Mackey, too: Rory and Mackey, Rory and Mac.

I’m also drawn to Delaney (potential nicknames Del and Laney), which has a smack of the sounds of Eleanor while being more your surname style—and pretty/feminine while still being surname/unisex. Delaney and Mackey, Del and Mac, Laney and Mac. I really like that.

And I like the way Ivy is feminine/traditional, but short and not frilly, and conceivably preppy. It feels like a nice bridge between Riley and Evelyn. Ivy and Mackey, Ivy and Mac.

We could play this game also with other names on your lists: choosing a name and trying to find a name of the other person’s style (or a compromise style) with those sounds—not because sounds are as relevant as style, but as an exercise in hearing names in a different way and being more open to considering them. The name Sadie might lead us to Ada, or Daisy as a nickname for Margaret, or Sally as a nickname for Sarah. Evelyn might lead us to Everly or Emlyn or Ellis or Lynn or Emerson or Ellison.