Amanda writes:

My husband and I are expecting our first child in September – a little boy. My name is Amanda Lee and my husband’s name is Patrick Blake (he goes by Blake). Last name sounds like Kershmen.

We have narrowed our choices down to two names but I feel like there are so many options we haven’t considered. This is where you come in (hopefully!). The two names we like right now are Brady and Carter. We will probably use Mills (my maiden name) for a middle name. My husband’s middle name, Blake, is his mom’s maiden name, so we thought that might be a cool tradition to carry on. I’m not married to that, though, and if the name we choose doesn’t go with Mills as a middle name then we can change the middle name.

My husband likes Carter because it is a family name. His grandfather’s name was Anderson Carter. We also considered Anderson as a first name, which I absolutely love, but Anderson Kershmen sounds too long. Plus I don’t want him to be called Andy. I also like Carter but for some reason I just don’t love it. As of now, I’m leaning towards Brady. My biggest concern right now is that it doesn’t sound masculine enough… I guess because of the –y ending. Should that be a concern or is that my pregnancy hormones talking?

If we had a girl we would have named her Mila Blake (pronounced Myla). We plan on having 1 or 2 more kids after our son is born so hopefully we will eventually be able to use this name.

Do you have any name suggestions that have a similar style to the ones we are considering (other than Grady or Brody)?

Thank you!

With Kershmen, my favorite is Brady: Carter Kershmen feels like a lot of C/K and R sounds.

Brady is currently used almost exclusively for boys. In 2012, there were 2,849 new baby boys and only 41 new baby girls named Brady (for comparison, 243 new baby girls were named Carter). I like the idea of Brady Mills Kershmen, and maybe Carter for a future child’s middle name.

Other names that seem similar to Brady to me are Brayden and Aiden and Carson, but those all seem a little choppy with Kershmen. Maybe Davis? Davis Kershmen.

Let’s have a poll for the two finalists!

[yop_poll id=”22″]

Name update! Amanda writes:

Thanks so much to you and your readers for posting my question and for the great comments. Our son was born September 22 and my husband and I went back and forth on several name options until we finally decided on Brady Mills Kershmen.  I think we knew that was his name all along, and we are so happy we chose it!  Thank you again!

Linda writes:

I am hoping that you can help me with a naming problem. How do you name a second baby when the first baby’s name was very much a compromise name and not at all in the style that you wanted?

When we were naming our daughter 6 years ago, my husband suffered from the belief that we could only use names that were common when we were children. Since we were both born in the 1970s, that means he was thinking along the lines of Heather or Michelle. Those are very nice names, but not what I had in mind. After much debate we finally settled on Shannon Elizabeth “Denny”. I don’t love the name, but it is my daughter’s name and I can’t imagine her with a different one. At the time we were only planning on one child so the issue of sibling names never came up.

Now we are expecting again. I am not due until the end of February, but I really want to start looking at names. After 6 years of seeing names like Sofia and Olivia in my daughter’s classes, my husband has admitted that he had the wrong idea and this time is willing to basically let me choose the name. If it is a boy, I don’t think we will have much trouble as boys names haven’t changed as much over time. However, I am really stumped on girl names and don’t even know where to start looking.

I can’t really think of a naming category for Shannon except for “names that were popular in the 1970s” or possibly “sort of Irish names”. It seems like I would need to avoid anything ultra-feminine since Shannon used to be a unisex name and when talking about my children it might sound like I have a girl and a boy instead of two girls. Other than that, I really don’t know where to start and I was hoping you might be able to help. This will definitely be our last child, so I won’t need to try and co-ordinate a third name. Thank you so much!

I think one idea is to just choose the second girl name without taking the first name very much into consideration. This might not be the advice you’d expect to hear, considering how keen I am on sibling-name coordination. But I think if this time you choose a name YOU love, and the naming story became “Dad chose Shannon’s name, and I chose yours,” that that makes a very nice story and goes a long way to patch two quite different names together.

On the other hand, I always feel a little unhappy about the names of the Bush twins Barbara and Jenna: both names are good names, but the name Barbara is from the 1930s-1950s and so is not yet due for revival, while the name Jenna got popular right around the time the twins were born. Because the name Shannon is currently more often found on mothers than children (though it IS still being used for children, as is the name Barbara), I do think I’d look first for names that bridged the gap: there are girls my age and my daughter’s age named Elizabeth, Katherine, Anna, and Emily. That route appeals to me more than going with, say, Shannon and Isabella.

The name Shannon last peaked in the United States at #17 in 1976, so I would go to the Social Security website, scroll through 1976, and see what still sounds right for a little girl born today. Here are the ones I’d pick from the Top 100 of 1976:

Rebecca
Sarah
Elizabeth
Laura
Emily
Jill
Holly
Katherine
Megan
Leslie
Veronica
Heidi
Anna
Natalie
Samantha
Victoria

Some of those work better with Shannon than others: I like Shannon and Leslie, and I like Shannon and Holly, but Shannon and Anna are too similar in sound, and Shannon and Victoria might be too different in mood.

The 1976 list could also make a good starting place for more current versions of those names. Laura could lead us to Lauren, for example, or Amy to Amelia, or Julie to Julia. Or some of the names might remind us of other names: when I saw Jill, I thought Jillian might be great with Shannon, and Laura made me think of Maura and Nora and Morgan, and Leslie makes me think of Lindsay, and when I saw Holly I wondered if Molly might be perfect—and Molly made me think of Bridget, which made me think of Bethany. Etc.

My favorites are Jillian, Bethany, Bridget, Molly, Emily, Leslie, and Holly. It’s too bad so many of those are two syllables ending in a Y sound—I suspect they might not work at all well with your surname.

Do you remember which names you were campaigning for when you were expecting Shannon? That’s where I’d start, if I were you. Next, I’d look through name books and make a list of everything you like now, and add it to that older list. THEN, hold each name up to Shannon and see if it creates a Bush Twin Feeling or if it’s fine. I think this is a situation where I wouldn’t agitate too much about the names going well together, as long as neither child seems to have a “better” name. The age gap is on your side as well: it’s easy to see how the parents’ naming style could have shifted a bit in that time, and of course six years is long enough for the overall naming style to shift a bit as well.

It might also work to have Shannon help name the baby. The whole situation falls in a new light if she’s the one who chose the modern and ultra-feminine name.

 
Name update! Linda writes:

I wrote to you last summer asking for help coming up with another girl name that would go with my daughter’s name of Shannon (you posted it on July 12). I greatly appreciated your suggestions, and those of your readers. It made me feel a lot better to not have to try and restrict possible names to those that would match her name. Of course, this meant that we had a boy. Colin Thomas “Denny” was born on March 2. We let his sister make the final decision on his name, and we love it and think that it matches his sister’s name quite well. Thank you again for your help!

B. writes:

We’re having our second baby in November, and we are looking for names. Our last names rhymes with Tower, but starts with BR, and our daughter is named Lucia (pronounced Loo-SEE-ah) although we call her Lucy at least half the time. Her middle name is my maiden name, which will probably be the same for the next one. We won’t find out if we’re having a boy or a girl, but we’re making progress on the boy name (prob will be Theodore or Maxwell). The issue right now is with a girl name. We both are leaning toward May or Mae.

My issue with this name is that I think it might be too short to hold up to Lucia. I know it’s traditionally used as a nickname for Margaret or Mary, but I don’t really like either of those names. But I do really like the idea of having a name that comes with a nickname, so that we can use both names for the child. So I’ve been playing around with other names that we might use for a full name with May as the nickname.

Some ideas:
Maeve
This is a name I would love on someone else’s baby, but I’m just not sure that I love it enough for my own.

Maelys (Maa-ay-lees)
I think this is pretty. It’s very popular in France right now, which I think makes an interesting pair with Lucia which is very popular in Spain. But is it too out there for an American baby? I’m ok with a little confusion over a name (such as the Loo-see-ah/loo-sha questions we get) but is Maelys on a totally level? Also, does Mae even work as a nickname for this?

Maelyn
Pretty, but I think this is too much like Jalen/Kaylyn for me. I know a ton of kids with these names . . .

Maisie
Cute, but it already sounds like a nickname.

Marie
I really like this name, but I don’t know that May fits it as a nickname.

We don’t like Mariam, Marianne, and other similar names that sound like a form of Mary in some way.

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

At first my response was going to be essentially this: If the only reason you’re looking for a longer form for Mae is that you feel you ought to have more syllables to go with Lucia, and you’ve looked at a whole bunch of possibilities and you don’t like any of them as much as just Mae/May, then I think at this point you can stop looking. I too find it pleasing to have sibling names similar in length, but not to the point of choosing a name I like less—and Lucia is so short in number of letters, I think it’s just fine to pair it with Mae.

Then on re-reading, I noticed that it’s also that it appeals to you to have a name/nickname set, and that Lucia goes by Lucy at least half the time. Okay, then, that sounds like a fun mission instead of an obligation mission! But if we go through and list all the Mae-nickname names we can think of and nothing seems right, then I’ll go back to my original response about it being fine to go with just Mae. I think a nickname will evolve: in my house, I think she’d be Maeberry and Mae-mae and Maybe-baby within the first hour.

I think yes, Maelys is in a different category of pronunciation difficulty than Lucia. I listened to the Forvo pronunciation about a dozen times before I felt like I could remember how it was said—and that’s with the mnemonic of “It’s like ‘My Elise’, kind of,” and remembering the Elysian fields. And then on top of that, it’s supposed to have an umlaut over the E, and the Mae part is not pronounced like May. I think pronouncing it May for the nickname would considerably increase the difficulty others would have with the full version: if I got used to a little girl nicknamed Mae-pronounced-May, and then I saw her full name was Maelys, I’d pronounce it MAY-liss—like Marlys or Arlys.

My first inclination would be to go with a double first name. Ava May, or May Ella, or something of that sort. That does seem a little too Southern United States with Lucia, though.

Or Mayella could be a single name. It’s still Southern, and yet I like it with Lucia: the way they’re both three syllables with the accent on the second syllable ties them together a bit more, especially when I say them aloud.

There’s also Meagan, pronounced like MAY-gun. But that seems dated to me with Lucia, and the Mae nickname doesn’t feel natural for it.

Or Esmé (EHZ-may). That’s pretty with Lucia, and Twilight has increased the general familiarity with the pronunciation.

Mabel/Maebel/Maebella would be pretty too. Or maybe the B sounds are a little bumpy with the surname.

Maya is a possibility, though I always think of the MY-ah pronunciation first (I think because of the Mayans, and also because we know an Amaya pronounced ah-MY-ah).

More suggestions for long forms for Mae/May?

Name update! B. writes:

Sorry this update is so late . . . Life is a little crazier with two little ones.  We had just about settled on using the name Mae for a girl.  But we had a boy and named him Maxwell.  Thanks for all the help!

Sarah writes:

Hello! My husband and I are expecting our first child, a girl, in late summer. We’ve pretty much decided on a first name, Sydney, but are having difficulty with a middle name. Our last name starts and sounds a bit like Cobalt, though it does not end in a hard t.

I really like the tradition of using a family name as the middle name. I also like more feminine names, given Sydney’s history as a boy’s name. I know it’s no longer that much of a boy’s name (and it’s certainly not Sidney), and my husband doesn’t seem to think this is a problem at all. He, therefore, likes Ryan (his middle name) as a middle name, or an alternative spelling such as Rian or Ryann. I could handle Rian but am not an alternative spelling person. I like Elizabeth, my middle name and his grandmother’s middle name, but he thinks it’s too much of a mouthful. Is it? Sydney Elizabeth? I need another set of eyes. Our other family name options are the opposite, short and sweet: Mae, Rose, and Laine. If the baby were born right now, our tentative truce option is Rose, after his other grandmother. But I’m just not sold, or maybe I’m afraid to commit. I wonder if I’m somewhat too selfish and really want her named after me/my side of the family.

Our other first name option is Cecily. This is actually still a strong contender for me, less so for my husband. Given (what I view as) the name’s femininity, I have no problem with Cecily Ryan. This makes my husband perk up a bit, but I know he likes Sydney more than Cecily. He likes cute nicknames, and he loves the thought of calling her Syd. Is there a cute nickname for Cecily, other than Cece?

The only other name that I really love love love is Madeline, but we’ve chosen not to consider it as a first name because a very close family member has a daughter named Madison. I would strongly consider Madeline as a middle (now or in the future) if it were in any way a family name. Am I holding onto that self-imposed “rule” too tightly?

Oh! I just read a post of yours in which the mom finds herself torn between Elizabeth and Elise, and believes that Elise honors her family members named Elizabeth. Is this a commonly held belief/connection? Is Sydney Elise better? I just can’t grasp someone seeing the name and thinking “oh, it must be Elise after her middle name of Elizabeth”?

If the baby were a boy, my first choice has always been Cameron, a name my husband also loves. (It would be the subject of an entirely different question, though, because of another family member, less close, who recently used this name. Back-up boy names were hard to come by before we found out the sex.) Finally, we do plan on having more children, 3 total is the current prevailing thought. I haven’t even thought about matching future sibling names, and maybe I should.

While it’s true that Sydney is used much more for girls now, I’m with you about preferring a more feminine middle name: a name formerly used for boys followed by a name currently used more for boys seems to be making a statement—and also seems like it might make you feel you needed to choose boyish names for all your daughters. If your girl name choice is Sydney, and your boy name choice is the unisex Cameron, I’d suggest you make everyone’s middle names very clearly masculine or feminine.

If Sydney is your husband’s first choice of first name, it seems like it would be fair for you to get more sway in the middle name. And if you’re planning to have more children, it seems likely that there will be other chances for him to name a child after himself. Sydney Elizabeth doesn’t seem like too much of a mouthful to me at all—and if the surname is your husband’s, I think it would be nice to bring in a name from your side of the family instead of a second name from his. That doesn’t seem selfish, it seems balanced.

Another balanced option is your idea of Cecily Ryan. Then it’s your husband’s middle name and surname, but you’d have more sway in the first name. I don’t see any reason he couldn’t still call her Syd/Sid; plenty of people use non-name-related nicknames, and it seems sweet for a dad to have his own nickname for his daughter. We know a family where the dad calls his daughter an assortment of boy names (Hank, Frank, George, Lloyd) as their own running in-joke.

If before your first child is even born, your rule about family names is already painfully ruling out names you love, I do think it would be a good idea to loosen that a little. One option would be to make your rule that one of the two names should be a name of significance; this takes away the restriction that it has to be in the middle-name position and also the restriction that the significance has to be family-based. Another option would be to set the whole thing up as a preference rather than as a rule: you’d say that you’d prefer each child to have a family middle name, but then you’d allow another preference (such as a preference for a particular name) to trump that. (We did something like that in our family: I looked first for family names, but didn’t sweat it ((much)) if it didn’t work out.)

Different people have different feelings about how far away from an honor name you can go and still be honoring the family member. Some would use just a first initial; some would use a few letters or a sound (Madelyn honoring a Lynda, for example); some use variations (Elise honoring an Elizabeth, for example); some would translate a name from another alphabet into their own (Orla to honor Irish Grandma Órlaith, for example); some would vary the spelling but not the name (Marian instead of Marion, for example); and some would be completely strict about it being the exact name. I use the “Would I feel honored?” test: I wouldn’t feel particularly honored by a child named Keegan or Crystal “after me,” but I would be by a child named Cristen or Kristin (though even more so by a child named Kristen, if anyone is currently filling out a birth certificate). To me, Sydney Elise doesn’t seem like it honors an Elizabeth, any more than Riley seems like it honors a Ryan—but what matters is whether it feels that way to the people involved. If when you think about it, you can’t imagine anyone seeing Elise and thinking it’s after your middle name, then it sounds like Elise won’t work for you.

Here’s a name that seems to me to be right between Syndey and Cecily: Cassidy. Cassidy is used only for girls, like Cecily—but it has more of the sound of Sydney, and Sid could definitely be a nickname for it along with Cassie. Cassidy Elizabeth Cobalt.

Name update!

In a shamefully long overdue update, I want to let you and your readers know that we named our baby girl (now a wonderful and willful toddler) Cecily Ryan.  I cannot tell you enough how much your perspective and the thoughts and ideas from your readers helped us!  We poured over everything.  We went into the hospital with two options, and Cecily had really grown on us and won out when we saw her.  We call her any one of a million nicknames, too, which is something that was difficult for us, first-time parents, to imagine when all I thought about was naming.  Now, it seems totally natural.  Thank you again.

p.s. – Cassidy would definitely have been on the short list–you nailed my style–were it not also the name of one my good friends.