Update (and photo!) on Baby Boy ______ Dennis Cao Flegal, Brother to Eloise and Annie!

K. writes:

My husband and I are expecting our second boy in June. Our first son is Simon Albert (last name is three syllables and starts with an H). We love the name Simon because it’s a “normal” name, but not incredibly popular. His middle name, Albert, is a family name. We are not fond of names that are super trendy or sound made up, and we tend to lean towards classic names.

Now, the problem…we cannot seem to find the “perfect” name for baby boy #2. We know his middle name will be Scott (family name). My husband loves Sebastian, but I can’t get on board with having sibling names starting with the same letter. Is it too cutesy? I like Jude, but my husband isn’t a fan. We like Isaac, Owen, and James, but all three seem to be pretty high on the popularity lists these days. We also like Oliver, but good friends just used the name for their dog. The names Ian, August, and Ezra have also been some that we have liked but not loved. Theodore is one of our absolute favorites, with the nickname Theo. So here’s the question…if we have a Simon and a Theodore, will everyone automatically think of the chipmunks (you know–Alvin, Simon, and Theodore)? Since we plan on calling the new baby by the nickname Theo, we would probably introduce them as Simon and Theo, which I hope wouldn’t trigger the chipmunks association.

So I’m torn. I want to use Theodore, but I don’t want to spend my whole life answering the question, “Like the chipmunks?” Should I use it anyway? Or toss it out and go with one of our “like but not love” names? Or start from scratch completely?

I’d appreciate an outsider’s perspective!

Oh, dear, I’m afraid I did immediately think of the chipmunks—though not, if it helps, with the kind of “No no no” feeling I’d have if you were considering, say, Romeo and Juliet: The Chipmunks just came to my mind in a rather neutral way. The nickname does help considerably: I don’t think “Simon and Theo” contains any chipmunks for me. The Chipmunks is not a negative association, so I think the thing to consider is how many “What, no Alvin? hur hur hur” jokes you can stand to put up with. Maybe just a few people would say it right after the birth announcements, and then after that the incidents would be few and far between. We got “Like  ______?” a few times after one of our kids was born, but we said “No” a few times and it hasn’t come up since then. And I don’t know how well-known The Chipmunks will be among your children’s peers; perhaps it will not be a problem there, especially since children often don’t know their classmates’ siblings’ names.

You say Theodore is one of your absolute favorites, but then you ask if you should give up the name you love for a name you just like. If Theodore is one of several absolute favorites, then I guess my inclination would be to go with one of the other absolute favorites. If Theodore is the only name you both love, and all the rest are names you only like, then I could go either way: I do think the name would come with The Chipmunks association, but whether that’s a problem or not depends on your own personal tolerances: every name is going to come with a downside or two, so the trick is to choose the ones that bother you less. I doubt it would be a daily hassle, and I’d suspect it would be fairly infrequent—especially if you introduce them as Theo and Simon.

One useful exercise is to pretend that the name Theodore is off the table, or that you’re definitely willing to use it, and then look again at the other name possibilities. A “want but can’t have” name can sometimes make parents feel as if they don’t even WANT to consider other names. It may still turn out that Theodore is the only name you love, but it could also happen that when you take it off the list or decide to go ahead and use it, other names will rise to your attention. I don’t think you should use a name you just like instead of one you love, but I do think you should look for more names you love.

Are you planning to have more children? One possibility is to gamble on having another boy later. Simon, Sebastian, and Theo completely eliminates chipmunks for me. This option depends on how much you think you will regret not using the name if there isn’t in fact another chance to use it, and that can be hard to predict: sometimes by the time we’re naming the next baby our favorites have changed, and sometimes not.

If you’re mostly planning to call him Theo, I wonder if you would like Milo or Leo or Hugo or Matteo? Or you could name him Theo: it’s a stand-alone name as well as a nickname for Theodore.

While three or more siblings with matching initials does seem to fall into the Cute category, just two matched siblings doesn’t for me. The other day I mentioned how I only noticed the name issues of my friends’ children when I actively turned my mind to it—and one of the issues I noticed was a two-child family where both names started with the same letter. It hadn’t even caught my attention before then, let alone seemed overly cute. The main issue, I think, is whether it would make you feel like you had to keep going with the same initial: we’ve had so many letters from parents who have used the same first initial twice and now feel that pressure when naming a third.

Another tactic I might suggest is to be slower to cross names off the list. Every name will have something non-ideal about it, so if you love a name, I’d reconsider whether it matters to you that some friends used the name for their dog, or that a name has a somewhat higher popularity ranking than another name. Some of these things will indeed be important to you, but others might fall right down as soon as you apply the “Does this ACTUALLY matter to us, or not?” question. Simon and Oliver seem like an ideal match to me, and the dog will only be an issue for a limited number of years. Simon and Isaac also seem great, and although Isaac has been in the Top 100 for nearly 20 years, I’ve only encountered a single one in any of my children’s classes/activities.

Update (and photo!) on Baby Girl Carsons-with-a-P, Sister to Sydney Paige!
Update (and photo!) on Baby Girl McFew, Sister to Levi Harper!

Andria writes:

We are in desperate need of your help! We are expecting our second and last child on July 16th. Baby girl Lutz (sounds like boots with an “L”) will be a little sister to Makenzie (Kenzie) Rose. To be honest, the name of our first child has no sentimental or familial meaning. We simply chose the name Makenzie because we liked it. For our second baby girl, we are brainstorming names we like that sound good with Kenzie or Makenzie (although not a deal-breaker if it doesn’t). We are also looking to avoid bad initials and bad first initial/ last name. For instance, we feel the need to steer clear of names beginning with “c”, “k”, or “s” in order to prevent reading “CLutz”, etc. ; ) This type of dilemma may not occur to the average person, but I am a nurse and sign my name on everything by first initial/ last name.

My husband and I do not easily agree on names, but we have come up with a few ideas that are possibilities. Girl names at the top of the list are:
Olivia (nn Livi or Liv) Grace
Olivia Marie (Marie is a family name)
Grace ____
Josie _____
Addison ____
I really like Grace and Marie as middle names. My husband loves Grace as a first name, which I also like but am unsure of how it sounds as “Grace Lutz” (a lot of “ssss”).

The name list is short and very uncertain, hence why I am seeking out your help. Any suggestions, opinions, ideas are greatly appreciated. We would be thrilled to hear from you!

The name that leaps out at me from your list is Addison. Addison Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Addison Grace; Kenzie and Addy. That would be my top choice.

My second choice is Olivia. Olivia Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Olivia Grace; Kenzie and Liv. I hesitate with this one because I’m not as fond of the sound of Liv/Livi Lutz.

Grace seems to me like a mismatch with Makenzie as a first name, but perfect as a middle name.

More possibilities:

Avery Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Avery Grace
Brinley Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Brinley Grace; Kenzie and Brin
Devany Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Devany Grace
Ellery Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Ellery Grace; Kenzie and Ellie
Emerson Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Emerson Grace; Kenzie and Emmie
Macy Lutz; Makenzie Rose and Macy Marie

(I wanted to suggest Savanna and Shelby and Sydney, but remembered the S.Lutz issue in time. I wanted to suggest Delaney, but didn’t like the sound of Laney Lutz.)

K. writes:

Our spontaneous, completely unexpected, anticipated with trepidation triplets (girls) are due in September. We have names for baby 1 and baby 2 (Claire and Norah) but not baby 3. Please help us!

We like Georgina (Ginny) as a nickname – but can we have two non-nickname Names and one different? I think she’d only really be known as Ginny.

The same goes for Evangeline (this is my first chose), also with Ginny (maybe Linney or Evie) as an all-the-time nickname. And can one have plain names like Claire and Norah, and then Evangeline? Do they go?

Other liked names don’t seem to go well (Freya with Norah, Elspeth, Clementine, Helen – but the nickname is Nell, and Norah and Nell?).

Our question is two-fold – can we have two children go by first names and one by a nickname, and does a more fancy name like Evangeline go with Claire and Norah? Our two year old son is Peter and our last name is McKinley.

Help!

While tidiness and personal preference incline me to make sets of either three nickname names or three non-nickname names, and to make three names of similar length/fanciness, I think this is the kind of issue where it matters a lot during the naming stage and not much after that. I was thinking about this the other day at a get-together: when I turned my mind to the names of the other women’s children, I could see various issues we might have discussed in the kinds of discussions we have here (sharing an initial; two siblings sharing an initial when the other siblings don’t; two siblings with -y endings and one without; one modern surname name and one name that peaked ten years before the child was born), but none of those issues seem to matter at all now that all the kids are school-aged. I didn’t even notice most of the potential name issues until I deliberately turned my mind to it, and I am likely at the uppermost end of the name-noticing spectrum.

Multiples do tend to get more name-noticing—but although the public will enjoy as much matchiness as you’re willing to give them, there’s no reason to make it a priority. It may help to imagine the girls born one at a time: if you’d named your first daughter Claire, and a few years later had a second girl named Norah, and a few years later were expecting a third girl, I think the name/nickname issue might still be raised, but with less of a feeling of significance.

With my twins, I wanted something that tied the names together—and after many, many lists and much frustration, I ended up with one plain name and one fancy, because those were our two favorite names. I do think this led to a few slightly disappointed reactions when I was telling the names, but that lasted perhaps a few seconds (and some people won’t be pleased unless you name them Faith, Hope, and Charity, or Lily, Rose, and Violet). And now that the twins are in elementary school, their names are not the big deal they were at birth: they tend to meet people individually, and it only comes out later that they have a twin and other siblings.

It can sometimes help to rearrange the order of the names: for example, Evangeline, Norah, and Claire. This is less impressive in writing, but when said aloud it gives a nice progression from four syllables to two syllables to one. But if the one with the longest name is likely to go by a nickname, this is likely to be an issue for only the few weeks when you’re first announcing the given names.

In short, if your top favorite three names are Claire, Norah, and Georgina (Ginny), or Claire, Norah, and Evangeline (Evie), I see no reason you can’t use either of those sets. It’s hard to imagine Ginny/Evie coming to you later saying, “Mom. Dad. We need to talk. I’ve always felt like the name/nickname you gave me means you love me less.” It might not ever even be noticed. And if it is, it seems as if “We just chose our favorite three names” should take care of anyone who isn’t determined to be upset.

(However, I notice that Linney McKinley is a little bit of a tongue-tangler; if you think she’d go almost exclusively by the nickname, I’d lean toward Ginny McKinley ((a little sing-song/rhymey, but not tangley)) or Evie McKinley.)

Furthermore, it can be hard to predict what names and nicknames will end up actually being used. Perhaps Ginny will be Ginny until third grade when she decides to be Georgie, and Claire will go by Claire at school but always Claire-Bear or Eclair or Clarabelle at home, and Norah will be known as Pepper because of some childhood incident.

Another option is to give names that work with Claire and Norah as nicknames: Clara, Eleanor, and Georgina; Claire, Norah, and Ginny. Clarissa, Honora, and Evangeline; Claire, Norah, and Evie.

Or start with Georgina and Evangeline and find a third fancy name to go with them. Perhaps Clarissa or Eleanor or Honora.

Or scrap Georgina/Evangeline and find a third name to go with Claire and Norah:

Alice
Audrey
Ella
Eve
Grace
Hope
Jane
June
Ivy
Lucy
Molly
Rose
Ruby

H. writes:

I am 5 months pregnant with our second daughter and due the first of September. We have a 17 month old daughter named Ivy Frances and we are in love with her name. Plus, your blog definitely inspired us and gave me great direction when it came to naming her. Also, Ivy was one of the only names my husband and I really agreed on as we have very different tastes. Frances is a family name on my husband’s side of several generations. Overall, we had an easy time picking Ivy’s name and unfortunately, it’s not going the same way with the next one.
For our second child, we have decided to go with the middle name Lee. It honors my father who is no longer living as well as his father who is 93 and very much alive and well! There is a possibility we will have a third child but I don’t want to save Lee in the event we don’t…Now to the trickiest part of our baby naming dilemma, our surname! It is Erdlen and pronounced exactly as read. It’s German and a tough one…
So far, these are the two names that my husband and I agree:
Isabel Lee, call her “Isa” although my husband likes “Izzy”
Josephine Lee, call her “Josie” or “Poppy”
Penelope Lee, call her “Poppy”
But I of course have a few more on my list:
Nora Lee (not a fan of Eleanor)
Emory Lee
Willow Lee or Willa Lee
Talula Lee or Tallulah Lee
Esme Lee
Savannah Lee
Zoey Lee
Gemma Lee
Elise Lee
My husband isn’t too keen on the above.
I do like Annabel but “Annabel Lee” is an Edgar Alan Poe poem and I’m not keen on having the relation…
Names we’ve vetoed because of the way it sounds with our last name or popularity amongst friends / family:
Ingrid
Amelia
Sascha
Ruby
Abigail
Ava
Eden
Eve / Eva
Charlotte
Chloe
Georgia
Lily
Mabel
Phoebe
Sadie
Violet
Vivian

If we have a third child and it’s a boy, we would most likely go with a classic family name although I would push for a rock star name like Axel! Ha!
We did consider Josephine “Poppy” with our first child so as much as I love Poppy, I feel bad that it is a leftover for our second. Also, are Poppy and Ivy too similar sounding as sibsets? My concern with Isabel is one, the popularity of the name. Two, the fact that Isabel ends with an L and then there is Lee so you have back to back L’s. Three, we are starting a trend with giving our children “I” names which of course is not intentional. I’m not a fan of the spelling Isabelle and much more prefer Isabel. I noticed when picking names for my first that I was not a fan of names that ended in E because our surname started with an E but now I’m thinking how much does that really matter?
Please help! I know Ivy is categorized as an “antique charm” name and I am wondering if there are other names out there I am missing or what are your opinions on the ones we like thus far? I want something different and creative and it is driving my pregnancy brain crazy! I like that Ivy is a bit common but still stands out and would love to be able to give that to our next one.
Many thanks!

A. writes:

I have a question about proper etiquette for middle names (if in fact there is any)

My daughter just had her first born son and he is the first grandchild to both grandparents. Very early on they decided to name him after his father’s grandfather which made everyone very happy on both sides. The problem now arrises when we were at the hospital shortly after the birth, they were asked by hospital staff (for birth certificate reasons) his full name. My daughter responded with first name as mentioned the grandfather of the father and then the second name was the fathers father and then last but feeling least was my daughter’s father. I can’t explain how much hearing this has sent an emotional wave of total hurt … so much so that I had to leave the room. I would totally understand the reasoning if the first name was in no way family associated, but it was.

I have not said a word to my daughter and I won’t…having a baby is such a beautiful event but also emotional. I will not spoil it for her.

Am I being silly about this? Really need an unbiased opinion.

Thank you

P.S.

My daughters father says it doesn’t bother him and will not admit to it bothering him but I know him very well and I believe it does.

You are asking me what the proper etiquette is in this situation, and I will tell you: Stopping this whole thing right now. While our culture does not have consistent rules for middle name etiquette, it is definitely inappropriate behavior to leave the room of your newborn grandson because your daughter’s father’s name was included in what you consider to be a place of lower honor. (The correct response was gasps of joy and/or tears of happy surprise at the unexpected honor.) The only hope is that everyone else may have interpreted the behavior as something completely acceptable, such as needing to use the bathroom, making room for other visitors, giving the new family of three a little peace, or needing a moment to yourself in your overwhelming joy and relief at your daughter’s successful and safe delivery and the resulting thrill of a first grandchild.

The issue here seems to be that you are perceiving name-order as communicating rank/love/respect, as well as the lack of those things. With that interpretation, the child’s first name would indicate that the new parents feel the greatest love and respect for the baby’s paternal great-grandfather; second for the baby’s paternal grandfather; and third for the baby’s maternal grandfather. It seems to you that by using her father’s name third, your daughter is communicating that she ranks him lower than the other two men.

This, however, is not how children are named. If you have been here before, you’ve seen hundreds of letters where the parents say things such as, “We really want to use my mom’s name as the first name, but we can’t because it’s bad with the surname” or “…because we feel like we have to use another family name first” or “…because if we used it, we’d feel like we’d also have to use my mother-in-law’s name, which we don’t want to do” or “…because we think it would be confusing” or “…because my sister has dibs” or “…because we don’t want to use that initial” or “…because the name just isn’t our style” or “…because we hate the nickname” or “…because the rhythm is terrible with the chosen middle name” or “…because it’s also the name of my husband’s step-mother, who is awful and we don’t want her to feel honored.” There can be all manner of complicating issues.

Issues of rhythm and sound and style come into decisions about name order more often than issues of ranking. And patriarchal issues can be surprisingly dominant: names from the father’s side of the family can still seem like more appropriate choices for honor names, especially for a boy. Furthermore, parents often save other family names for future babies, and take that into account when naming others: if for example your daughter and her partner were planning to name a future daughter after you or another important female family member from your daughter’s side of the family, they would likely want to balance things by making sure their first son had more names from the father’s side of the family.

Parents may also be weighing things such as “Well, my side of the family is likely to have far more grandchildren, so let’s make sure to use the honor names from yours” and “I’m an only child, so this is the only chance to carry on these names” and “I think my brother has more of a right to use the men’s names from our side of the family” and “Well, we moved to live near your side of the family, so let’s make sure to use names from my side of the family to balance that out a bit.”

And many other parents don’t give it anywhere NEAR this amount of thought, and end up giving names without taking balance into account at all. Parents may love and respect both sides of the family equally, and nevertheless use names mostly from one side, or from more distant (and even less-liked) family members, because those names happen to be in their style anyway. It is not time to score the tally sheet, is what I’m saying, even if we are assuming that honor names are done on a fair point system and need to be balanced, which they are not and need not. Names are connected to the people we’re honoring, but they also stay separate.

Your daughter’s father was honored here; that is the point to keep in mind. You don’t like it that his name was put third, but it is important to remember that the decision about order could have been made with no symbolic intent at all: the new parents could be thinking, “Good, we honored Grampa as we intended to, and we ALSO found a way to honor both of the baby’s grandfathers by using their names as middle names! What a happy surprise for them both!” The choice of order was most likely based on the rhythm or sound of the names, or on some similar issue.

It is also possible that there IS symbolism in it: let’s go to the worst case scenario and assume that they chose this order deliberately in order to communicate their feelings. Let’s say they genuinely DID mean to show your daughter’s father that he was third in their joint affections. In that case, I would say several things:

1. Third is pretty great.

2. There is still only honor in the act of using the name, not insult or hurt.

3. You are right that nothing can be said or done about this (including communicative behavior such as walking out of a room, or withholding a positive comment on the use of the name).

I realize it is hard to do much about feelings: if you feel hurt, you feel hurt; if your daughter’s father feels hurt, he feels hurt. But I strongly advise you to make the effort, to whatever extent is possible: these hurt feelings may be real but they are nevertheless inappropriate, and indulging them will bring you nowhere good. Give yourself a brisk talking-to; reason with yourself; think things through until you have chipped away at the false foundation of those feelings. Give yourself some time, if you need it: as you say, the birth of a baby is a beautiful but emotional event. But by all means, don’t NURSE the feelings and grow them bigger and stronger; don’t try to plant them in your daughter’s father if he doesn’t already have them.

Concentrate on the honor, rather than on what you perceive to be the relative honor. Concentrate on your lovely new grandson, and how wonderful it is that he has so many good family names—not from “our side” or “their side” of the family: the other side of the family is your family too, the two sides permanently linked by the birth of this new baby.

I wonder if we could be of additional assistance by giving examples of honor names we used that did not accurately represent our exact ranking of family members? For example, Paul and I love our grandmothers as much as we love our grandfathers, but we used only two grandfather names—neglecting the other two grandfathers and all four grandmothers. We could have used a grandmother name for my daughter’s middle name, but we tried them out and didn’t like the combinations; also, we had another priority for her middle name (using another candidate that was almost her first name); also, one of my grandmothers had a name with a bad association for me. We could have honored the other two grandfathers with the names of our other two sons, but instead we used other names; in one case, it was because the name was too similar to a first name we were using, but overall it was because we felt we’d “done” grandfathers and were ready to honor some of the many, many other possible candidates. We used my dad’s name as the first name of one of our sons, but didn’t even use my mom’s name as a middle name; this doesn’t reflect a difference in how we feel about my dad and mom, but instead reflects the way my mom’s name sounds odd as a middle name and wrong-generation for a first name, and seemed weird to use once we’d used my dad’s name for another child; it also reflects that we had four boys and only one girl. And my dad is more important to me than my grandfather, but I honored my grandfather first because my grandfather likely had less time, and because my dad’s name didn’t work as a middle name with my first son’s name and I hadn’t yet considered using it as a first name. I gave all the children my maiden name as their second middle name, not because it matters to me less (it was crucial to me to use it) but because it reflected the order of my own name.

There are so many reasons why names are chosen or not chosen, or why they’re used where/when they’re used.