Megan writes:
We’ve got a baby girl name question for you. I’m due this fall. We have one older child, a boy (Jackson). In that pregnancy, our top girl name was Katelyn. Loved it and 100% would have used it if he had been a girl.
Now, it’s time to pick a girl name. We still like Katelyn. But… we found another name that we LOVE. It’s a French name – Maelynn. We love the way it sounds (and that it’s unique), but here are our issues/questions that we’re ruminating on:
1. It always shows up as a misspelling (in a Word document, an email, etc.). Will that be annoying for the rest of her life?
2. It looks made up. It’s a real French name, spelled Maelynn. Sometimes we think Maelyn LOOKS less made up – but we really don’t like the idea of made-up names, and to pick a made-up version of a name so it doesn’t look made-up is just crazy! The meager results of internet searches have demonstrated that A LOT of people think Maelynn is made-up… and that the parents just smushed Mae and Lynn together. Side note: we’ve also read that some people think it’s a made-up American spelling of a Chinese name.
3. Related to the point above, if we use it, we think it would be wise to spread the word that it’s a lovely French name, not a made-up name. I’m thinking something along the lines of sending the birth announcement with pronunciation and meaning underneath the name (I can picture it… hopefully it’s coming across in an email). It gets the information out there without having to tell people explicitly. And maybe it can be pulled off like a cute birth announcement and not “oh-my-word, we’ve been worrying about this for 5 months!”?
4. Is it too unique? Will she have too hard of a time with it as she grows up? I keep saying it’s a “real French name,” but in truth it’s a unique name, even in France.
A few final thoughts – both Maelynn and Katelyn have the same “sound” to them, and they both go well with Jackson and with our last name. No issues there to pick between them. We’ll use the same middle name for either – my maiden name – and because they’re both the same sound, that also doesn’t help us pick between them.
So – what’s your advice on the name Maelynn?
My fingers are crossed you pick this question to answer. There is almost NOTHING online about Maelynn. It would be great to get some honest advice! In return for advice, I’ll send you baby girl’s name when the final decision is made and she makes her debut. :)
Let me deal first with the question about whether you should take into account that the name shows up as a misspelling in computer programs: No.
Here’s a screen shot of a section of the Social Security Administration document I use to find out how many times a name is used each year:
Katelyn is in the same red-underlined boat, as are Kaitlyn and Mya and Jordyn and Brooklynn and Lyla. It is very common for spell-checkers not to recognize proper nouns. It is also very common for spell-checking programs to have an “Add to dictionary” function, so that you can stop seeing the red underline on a particular word. While I know that different people have different priorities, and so you would find me completely willing to work with a “Must show up in spell-checking dictionary” preference if you had one, I’d say that if you find you have a choice whether to care about this or not, I’d strongly urge you to come down on the “not” side. I would go so far as to say that to me it’s a complete non-issue.
I vote no on the birth-announcement name explanation idea. Well, or I could see it being done in the style of the name bookmarks/magnets sold at greeting card stores (big fancy script first name, with meaning in quotes underneath), as part of the decoration. Like this:
But I don’t think that does anything at all to explain that it’s a real French name and not made-up (Maelynn / “Real French name, not made up”), and I don’t think I’d try to use the birth announcement to explain the pronunciation or origin. Here’s how I’d gradually do that instead, at every single opportunity:
You: “Her name is Maelynn.”
Person: *expression or exclamation of some sort*
You, demurely: “It’s French.”
Person: *adjusting perception of name accordingly*
Here is why you’re running into issues with people thinking it’s an American spelling of a Chinese name, or people thinking it’s Mae + Lynn: because it IS. It is both those things, as well as being a French name (where it ALSO might be Mae + Lynn) and probably a name in other countries as well. It’s the same with Katelyn, which is both an American respelling/repronunciation of an Irish name AND Kate + Lynn. Sound-pieces such as Mae/May and Lyn/Lynn/Lin are used in many parts of the world to form many sorts of names. This might annoy you if you want people to think of it ONLY as a French name—but in its favor, it means the name is not going to be as unusual or startling as you fear. May and Lynn are both perfectly familiar names in the United States, and I don’t think anyone is going to blink at seeing them combined. Similar names such as Kaelyn and Braelyn and Jaelyn make it feel even more familiar.
But I suspect what you’d like to do is keep people from associating the name with names like Kaelyn and Jaelyn. This is where Pop Psych 101 kicks in: you won’t be able to control what other people think of the name. You might be able to nudge/correct some of them with frequent demure repetitions of “It’s French,” but if they think you chose the name because those sounds happen to be in style right now, rather than because you have an affinity for highly unusual French names, you won’t be able to stop them. Furthermore, -lynn is not a familiar French ending (as -elle and -ette and -ine are), so it won’t SOUND French to people in the United States even if it IS French and even if you TELL them it’s French. And even if you find a way to explain the whole thing in the birth announcement, there are still all the teachers and classmates and classmates’ parents and school/doctor office staff and on and on.
So the decision comes down to this: Is what other people might think of the name important enough to you that you’d rather give up the name? That’s a question that sounds like I’m implying the right answer would be “No,” but that’s not the case: I personally care quite a bit what other people think of my children’s names, and about what impressions those names give. There were some names on my list where “People will think ____” was enough to cross the name off my list. There were other names I liked so much I thought “So what?” Or in this case, you might think, “Well, and they’re partly right. It’s just, that’s not where we got the name or how we think of it.”
I think it might be helpful to consider what it is you mean by “made-up name”—and what it is you don’t like about names you consider made-up. All names are made up at some time or another, so is it that you want a name with a long history? Is it that you think of people who invent new names as being a certain sort of person, and you don’t want to be perceived as that sort of person? Is it that you only like the name Maelynn if it contains the concept of Being French, but not if it’s May + Lynn? Is there anything that worries you about Maelynn that isn’t the same worry with Katelyn? Thinking through these issues can help you decide if other people’s impressions are important enough to rule out the name. Since Maelynn is a very uncommon name in both the United States and France, I think it will be more common for people to hear it as “Mae + Lynn” than as “French name.” (And even in France, perhaps they hear it as “Mae + Lynn.”)
I don’t think it’s too unusual to use. I do think it’s a name she will have to spell every single time. And sometimes people will say MAY-lin (like Palin) and sometimes they will say may-LYNN, and sometimes they will emphasize both syllables the same, so it’s good to think through ahead of time if this is the sort of thing that will drive you crazy. And I think it might sometimes be mistaken for Madelyn. But as a “Kristen, that’s K-r-i-s-t-E-n, no, not Kristine or Kiersten or Kirsten,” that doesn’t seem like a deal-breaker to me as long as you accept that it comes as part of the name parcel.
Here’s how people were spelling the name in the United States in 2012, to give you an idea of the spellings you’re likely to encounter:
Maylin 187
Maelyn 93
Maelynn 82
Maylen 76
Malin 65
Maylynn 28
Maylyn 17
Maelin 12
Malyn 9
Malynn 9
Maylinn 6
Mayelin 5
If you would like my personal opinion, I prefer the name Maelynn to the name Katelyn, and I prefer the spelling Maelynn to the spelling Maelyn. It doesn’t sound either made-up or French to me; I’d hear it a combination name, like Maryella or Avamarie or Lilyanna, or possibly as a surname name (Malin); it also makes me think of names like Marin. Let’s have a poll to see what everyone else thinks!
[yop_poll id=”16″]
Name update! Megan writes:
I loved that you posted my question and LOVED reading your responses and the reader votes. We read every comment – they were so spot on. Awesome advice. Thank you so much to you and your readers!
In the end, we decided we love Maelynn, and you and your readers were right to say STOP justifying (and saying it’s French – apparently it’s not as “securely” French as we thought!). Jackson and Maelynn. Jack and Mae. So great!
But… SURPRISE! It’s a boy! The ultrasound missed an important boy part… but it was discovered at a later ultrasound. That would have been VERY surprising at delivery! “It’s a… what?”
So the update on the Maelynn vs. Katelyn debate is… Dominic! Jackson and Dominic will be brothers, and maybe one day a little Maelynn will join them.
Or, more likely, maybe one day there will be another Swistle advice post: Maelynn vs. ________ (some other name we find we love).
Thank you so much for your help!
