Wendy writes:

I’m hoping you can please help tilt our value scales one way or the other and provide some late trimester peace! Our dilemma is whether to pick the name I like best, with a little funny meaning, or his favorite, a more common choice with a really nice meaning.

We’re due this Memorial Day, about 4 weeks, with our 3rd girl and last child. We have an Adrienne Elizabeth (6), Valerie Grace (4), and Joshua Jeremiah (2). I like classic names, but as a teacher also wanted less common names, so the girls’ names are less common with classic middle names. (Josh was and is the right choice for this kid, regardless of popularity, his middle is a family name). Our last name is pronounced Pa-Donny, which to me, rules out most girl names ending in a long e to avoid rhyming. Their names follow a 3-4-3 or 3-1-3 syllable pattern. We like Rose for a middle name. It’s 1 syllable, is classic (goes with Elizabeth and Grace) and I just like it.

We finally landed more or less on Meredith a few months ago. I like it a LOT, it tops everything else, but I don’t quite LOVE it yet. It’s uncommon but not out there, 3 syllables and I think, goes well style wise with Adrienne (richly blessed) and Valerie (strong and gracious). We got a 3D picture of her from our ultrasound and that’s what I think when I look at her. BUT the name means “Sea Lord” or maybe “Great Leader or Lord.” Plus, it was originally a boy’s name, which I know most people don’t know, and which doesn’t bother me too much. But we met a lot of Adrian boys after choosing Adrienne for a girl, so it’s a teeny tiny factor. I’ve been sooo close to settling on it, but the meaning and background nag at me just a little.

Recently my husband suggested and now loves Lydia. It’s 3 syllables, a little uncommon and doesn’t rhyme with our last name. Better, it means “noble, beloved, beauty” and sometimes “seller of purple cloth” depending on the source. A Lydia Rose could have purple roses associated with her name, which I think is pretty, but also with a strong character reference.

I’d love to know what you recommend in this type of dilemma. And your thoughts on our choices as they fit with her sibling’s names?

Meredith Rose Padonny (nn Em, M, Mere) Meaning: Great leader, rose
Lydia Rose Padonny (nn Lyddie or Liddie) Meaning: Noble, beautiful rose

Adrienne, Valerie, Josh and Meredith
Adrienne, Valerie, Josh and Lydia

We’re open to other name suggestions that fit our patterns as well. We sometimes use A and V, and J as nicknames, so we avoid names beginning with A, V or J.

Thanks! I really appreciate your help if you get to our letter!

Although I did know Meredith used to be a boy name, I know it the same way I know Vivian and Ashley used to be boy names and that pink used to be a boy color: i.e., it doesn’t matter to me, now that they’re used for girls. The terms “boy name” and “girl name” and “boy color” and “girl color” refer only to usage, not to something inherent or unchangeable about the name or color.

As for the meaning, it depends on how you feel about name meanings. Do you, for lack of a better phrase, “believe in them”? I am pretty far on the “no” end of the spectrum: too many baby name books make up meanings, or come up with them based on very loose connections to words or to other names. Many name meanings come from characters in Bible stories—but what did did the name mean before that story was written? And even when a name has what I’d consider a “genuine” meaning, I still don’t think that means anything about the name or the person bearing the name. Cameron means “crooked nose”; Rachel means “ewe”—but what does the word “means” mean in this context? Most names are series of sounds we’ve decided make up a name; they may have connections to words or stories, but the name’s real meaning is “a name.”

Even way over at this end of the spectrum, I would pause if a name had a really terrible meaning. But Meredith, according to The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, is from the Old Welsh name Meredudd, which is “from an unexplained first element + iudd ‘lord’.” So it means “[something unknown] lord.” That doesn’t qualify as terrible. In fact, to me this moves it securely into the “doesn’t really have a meaning, it’s just a series of sounds we use as a name” category.

According the The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, Lydia means “woman from Lydia, an area of Asia Minor.” The purple connection comes from the woman from Lydia in the Bible, who worked for a company that sold purple dye and/or cloth. Her name was not Lydia; she’s just called Lydia in the Bible story because she lived there. I don’t know why her actual first name isn’t used—maybe by the time the story was written down no one remembered, or maybe it wasn’t considered polite back then, or maybe it was for her own privacy and protection (a single woman letting a bunch of men sleep over would not necessarily have benefited by having that published), or maybe at the time just saying “a woman who sold purple dye in Lydia” would have immediately communicated exactly which woman they meant—but the upshot is that Lydia is a place name which, because of its use in a story, has also come to be associated with purple dye and/or cloth.

If name meanings are important to you, if you believe they’re significant, if you enjoy them, if you often use them and refer to them and buy framed plaques for your children’s rooms that list their names with their meanings, then the meaning DOES matter and you should go with a name that has a meaning you like. The meaning becomes an important element of how you feel about the name—just as important as the style and the popularity.

If, on the other hand, meaning is just one of many details you find interesting but not among your most important preferences, then I’d ignore the meanings and choose based on which name you prefer. Or perhaps I’d let the meaning be one of the many, many smaller details that add up to helping you choose, just as you might lightly consider the number of letters in the name, or the number of letters or syllables shared with the sibling names, or a celebrity with the same name, or other fun things like that.

Stepping away from the meanings and looking directly at the particular names involved, I think both are great. Both go beautifully in the sibling group and meet your other preferences. With meaning removed, the issue becomes whether to choose the name you prefer or the name your husband prefers, which is a much different issue and may require choosing a different name entirely, or going with a lovely compromise such as Lydia Meredith.

Name update! Wendy writes:

Thanks again for posting my letter a few weeks ago. We loved reading the comments and had plenty of time to consider our baby girl’s name, as she came 12 days late. I had extra non-stress tests and ultrasounds to make sure she was staying healthy. (My midwives were pushing a “just because” induction – what is it with rushing babies out these days?) It was during one of those appointments that my husband and I had some quiet moments to ourselves and landed peacefully on Meredith Rose Padonny. We love it. And it fits her. And it fits with her siblings names as well. They’ve been calling her Mere Bear, Mere and Meri.

And for extra confirmation . . . we were at Target when I (finally) felt the first contraction and our check out girl’s name was Rose. I complimented her on it and she said that she hated it as a kid but LOVES it now. Then this week my neighbor/friend told me that in junior high she’d written “Adrienne Meredith” on a piece of paper and kept it in her desk for 15 years planning to use that name for her first child (her husband didn’t love it so they didn’t). Adrienne is our oldest’s name and neither name is very common, so it was fun to hear that these names would be someone else’s top picks. We’re really pleased. Thanks again!

Barb writes:

My husband and I will have our 3rd and last baby with a planned c-section on tues, May 21. In the past, we have decided on the baby’s name in recovery (partly because we did not find out baby’s sex before their birth). But we know this will be a girl. Our surname is like Hellger.

Our 2 older kids are Samuel David and Amelia Belle (4 and 2). Both first names are traditional names that we liked, and MN are family names. We are struggling a bit to finalize our name options, it is hard for me to make a final decision. We will most likely wait to see her in recovery and decide then again. But I thought I would still seek any advice and suggestions that I can in these final weeks.

On my mother’s side, my great-gramma was Olive Belle (the Belle used as a MN already). I like Olive as an option this time. Olive’s daughter (my gramma, who passed before I was born) was Mary Elizabeth. My MN is Beth. On my father’s side, my grandpa’s mother was Elizabeth. So Elizabeth or some form of it (Elise we like) is a very high consideration for this baby’s MN. We do not have any other family girl names that are suitable, unless we simply choose something not family-related (I have always liked the name Louise). Worried I will feel guilty if we do that, since our other 2 kids have family MN’s.

When our daughter Amelia was born, we were mulling Amelia or Emerson. I find a lot of negative feedback about Emerson, and it does not flow well with Elizabeth (or Beth). So we have pretty much ruled it out. I have also in the past loved Madeline, but it runs the risk of misspelling, and the common NN Maddy, and there is a Madeline in our fam now. My husband liked Sophia, but I do not want Top 10 names, too common. He also liked Natalie, but I am not fond of it. We have also mulled Lillian, Abigail, Evangeline, and Olivia. Many other names are out, due to family members or friends’ kids (Charlotte, Lily, Hannah, Grace, anything with Belle – ie. Annabelle, Isabelle, etc, Claire, Lydia). We are avoiding the first letters A, B, D, H, J, R, S, T. I also suggested Corinne, but he had never heard it. We don’t want something too out there…

So after lots of suggestions, my husband and I have narrowed it down. Here are the names we have:
Violet Elise or Violet Elizabeth
Caroline Elise or Caroline Elizabeth
Olive Elizabeth

I don’t know if Elise is refined enough to honor the multiple Elizabeth’s in our family tree, but it does seem more unique and short and pretty. But worried that Violet Elizabeth or Caroline Elizabeth is a mouthful! MN Beth, like mine is a bit dull. Is Olive Elizabeth too many vowels, too mushy to say? We also call Samuel “Sam”, and occasionally we call Amelia “Millie” – Millie Belle is easy and fun to say. My day’s mother was Mildred, so it is a subtle honor to her. But we do not like any NN’s for Caroline – Caro, Carol, Liney, etc. maybe we shouldn’t worry about NN options.

Any help is appreciated!!!

I prefer Elizabeth to Elise, mostly for the namesake reason but also because I slightly prefer the flow of it—but I think either one works. I don’t think Elizabeth is too long or too mushy with the first name candidates, unless you plan on saying them all the time as part of your usual name for her. If you’d like to make a nickname parallel to Millie Belle, Elizabeth shortens easily to Beth or Bette or Bess.

If you decide to go with something else as the middle name, I don’t see any reason for guilt. It’s quite common for parents to run out of good family names after a child or two. And while it’s nice to have a meaningful middle name, “I’ve always liked that name” is a good meaning too.

Because I only recently learned of them myself and in case you hadn’t heard of them yet either, I’ll mention the nicknames Rory and Callie for Caroline. I love Millie Belle and Callie Bess, or Millie Belle and Rory Beth.

It doesn’t seem like a good idea to add to the name list at this point, and I like your plan of making the final decision in recovery as you did with the first two. But perhaps it would be helpful to have a poll, to see if it brings you closer to one name or another beforehand.

My own vote is for Violet. I like the way it has the same number of letters as the other two names, even though I don’t think that matters at all; and I like the way all three names have an L and an E, even though ditto. I like the sound of it with your surname, and I like Amelia and Violet as sister names. I voted for Violet Elizabeth to get the family honor name and because I prefer the sound, but I think Violet Elise is very nice too (and mirrors the number of letters in her sister’s middle name, even though that doesn’t matter at all, it’s just fun).

[yop_poll id=”12″]

Name update! Barb writes:

I wanted to give an update on our new baby and the name we chose! Your feedback and poll helped tremendously, and I appreciate all of the suggestions to help us with such a big responsibility. We were debating between Violet and Caroline for first names (and Olive – but my husband couldn’t get past Olive Oyl); and either Elizabeth or Elise for a middle name.

Our daughter was born last Thursday, May 16th at 1:09pm, weighing 9 lbs, 13 oz and 20-1/2 inches long. We decided to name her Violet Elise. We were scheduled for a C-section yesterday on May 21, but my water broke (unbeknownst to me, since that had never happened before!), so we had a crazy day of figuring out care for our other two kids (thank goodness for good neighbors!) and only 3 hours from realizing what was going to happen until her birth. But we are all healthy and adjusting well.

We truly loved the name Violet, and it seemed like the right fit to go with our other kids’ names, Samuel and Amelia. We actually didn’t decide on which MN until the following afternoon — it was still hard for me to decide. In the end, we liked the sound and shorter version Elise over Elizabeth, and we realize that Elise still honors our family members named Elizabeth, but it flows better. The poll you set up for me actually had about 40% of nearly 500 votes for Violet Elizabeth, and that weighed heavy on me. All names take time to grow on me! She’s a beautiful girl, so I hope her name does her proud. Here’s a pic or two of Violet and our family.

Thank you again!

Jennifer writes:

Hi!

I am writing to find out how I can get your help!

We are due with a second baby girl in August and are really struggling finding a name that we love. Our first daughter is Charlotte Lucy Grabiner. We are working on using the nickname Lottie more regularly (shes 2.5 now). My husband is Josh and I am Jennifer.

This might be an unusual situation but we actually only have boy names that we love – lol! So I thought maybe if I shared those with you you might be able to come up with some girl names in a similar style so that we can finally find one we really and truly love. The girl’s name does not by any means need to be a feminine form of any of the boy ones, rather I am looking for one that has a similar quality or style to it. I’m not sure how you would categorize our taste (southern, classic, not popular but not too unusual, strong, prep school like – ha ha, ??? I’m having trouble putting it into words). Anyway so here’s the boy name list. Good luck and thank you!!!!

Emmett
Whittaker (our #1 choice for a boy – Whittaker Bates Grabiner, Whitt for short)
Bennett
Everett
Landon
Dexter
Fisher (middle)
Mark (middle)
Bentley
Bates (middle)
Yates
Preston
Graham
Penn
Blake
Anderson

It depends in part on whether you plan to have more children. If you might have a boy in the future, I would want to be careful not to suggest a girl name that would rule out a favorite boy name: for example, if you’re planning more children and would definitely want to use Whittaker for a boy, I wouldn’t want to try to sell you on Whitney. But if you’re definitely stopping at two, I’d be looking for ways to get you something close to the names you weren’t going to get to use. Also, if you’re planning more children and would use Whittaker, I might look for double-T names for this baby as well, just for fun.

Another issue is that it’s common to have quite a different style for girls than for boys. The name Charlotte is vintage, literary, and currently popular; I wouldn’t use those same adjectives for very many of the names on your boy-name list. If I’d seen only your boy-name list and didn’t know you had a Charlotte, I might be suggesting names such as Sloane, Carrington, Britt, Bex, Kerrigan, Presley, Lane, Darby, Padgett, Yeardley, Greer, Ellery, Waverly, Whitley, Hollis, Rowan. If I’d seen you had a daughter named Charlotte but didn’t see your boy-name list, I might be suggesting names such as Evelyn, Eleanor, Josephine, Vivian, Nora, Abigail.

When I look at names that go well with your boy-name style, I keep coming up with options that seem to clash with Charlotte: Charlotte and Peyton, Charlotte and Berkeley, Charlotte and Avery, Charlotte and Lennox. This makes me hesitate to answer your question as asked. Because your daughter’s middle name is also vintage, literary, and currently popular, I tentatively conclude that your style for girls is different than your style for boys—though there is some overlap in names such as Emmett, Everett, and Graham.

Charlotte is a name that can sound sweet or sassy. Others that seem like that to me, without clashing:

Beatrix
Camilla
Cecily
Eliza
Emeline
Esther
Eve
Fiona
Frances
Georgia
Harriet
Josephine
Katherine
Lila
Matilda
Nora
Philippa
Phoebe
Ruby
Simone
Stella
Vivian
Winifred

Name update!

I deeply apologize for this email coming so much later than I ever anticipated. I want to thank y’all and everyone else for the immense amount of help y’all provided us in naming our sweet baby girl.

August 1, 2013 we welcomed our 2nd daughter, Emmeline Rose Grabiner, sister to Charlotte Lucy Grabiner.

Swistle and many commenters suggested the name Emmaline/Emaline/Emeline. As I wrote in my interim update, I was in love with the name Emmaline. My husband, however was not.

Over much discussion we found that we wanted to avoid a nn of Emma due to its popularity (#1 name the previous year).  Also, many Google searches later I discovered the historical version of Emmaline is actually Emmeline.  I liked that that the name had a history, that it avoided a natural nickname of Emma from its spelling, and allowed for a more acceptable nickname to us of Emmie.

Rose is a family name.

So we now have a Charlotte and an Emmeline. And although we don’t use them all that much now, we have nicknames of Lottie and Emmie. Love!

Thank you again and again for all the help!!

Jennifer

K. writes:

I’m writing to you with a dilemma that is not exactly pressing, but is a wee bit difficult. Some back story: my partner and I have been together for going on five years now. When we first got together, we were in our early twenties and he was not particularly into the idea of having kids. In fact, he was so leery of it that it took almost a year of us dating for me to feel comfortable sharing my name nerdiness with him. Eventually he warmed up to the idea of having a child, and in fact at this point, now that we are entering our late 20s and planning marriage, we’re actively talking about it. The problem: when I first mentioned my favorite names, about four years ago, he immediately latched on to one in particular from my girl list, Echo. I had it on the list as a whim more than anything else, but he took it and ran. He’d never really considered his own favorite names before, but decided immediately that Echo was IT. At the time I was so overjoyed that he showed any interest in names or babies at all that I did little to curb the Echo love. In fact, I encouraged it. Maybe too much. Nowadays when we talk about our future child he refers to it as “Little Echo” or “Baby Echo” (he thinks it is a fine name for a boy or a girl…I have put my foot down on the boy side). As the years have passed, he has become more and more attached to Echo, while I on the other hand have grown to feel just “eh” about it. I might be more able to accept it if it didn’t sound quite frankly awful with his surname, which is sounds like an adverb, even though technically it is not– it sounds like “Hawley” with an “Sm” in front. Taken together, Echo HisSurname sounds like a grammatically incorrect sentence. It just doesn’t work!

At what point do I break the news to him that Echo isn’t going to be the name of our future baby? Now…? When we are trying to conceive? When we’re pregnant? …In the delivery room? Or, considering that, although I’m the name nerd and he’s not, he is about 10,000% more times attached to Echo than I am to any one name, should I just bite my tongue and let him have Echo? How does one navigate a partner’s passion for an unsuitable name, and when is the time to discuss it?

For the record, he does like a few other names… for boys he likes the names Bear, Wave, and Linus, and for girls Sonnet, Lavender, Story (doesn’t work with surname), Poem, Judy, Beverly, and Emma-Jean. Basically his taste runs straight from very unusual/eccentric word names to out-of-fashion mid-century grandma names, with nothing in between. My own taste is more eclectic but I guess I would classify it as unusual but traditional names, like Paloma, Cosima, Vera, Pearl, Caledonia, Rosie, Sarah, Penelope, and Polly (utterly unworkable with his surname); traditional Irish/Celtic names like Sorcha, Rhiannon, and Aine (Anya); and word names. The overlap between my tastes and his is in those word names. My favorites are Blossom (problematic with surname), Spring (also problematic but better than most), Sonnet (works for surname), Garland, Sage, Yarrow, Ballad, and Sojourner. But honestly I much prefer more established names like Paloma, Penelope, and Pearl (I guess I like the letter P). For boys my favorites are Lionel, August, Moss, Sky, and Rowan. I think I have won him over to Lionel or August already.

Can you give me tips on shifting the conversation from “Baby Echo” to “Baby Something Else”? Especially when his attachment to it, though vexing and impractical, is also pretty adorable?

Thank you, Swistle!

Ah. We had something similar in the Swistle household when in our pre-baby days Paul became quite attached to the name Fenchurch and I found the name (and his enthusiasm) appealing enough to kind of go along with it. And yet, I was not going to name an actual child Fenchurch.

My tactic was to grrrrrrrrradually start making little comments every time the name came up. The gist of each comment was “No, but seriously,” though I said it in different ways.

Swistle: What do you think of Brenna?
Paul: It’s going to be FENCHURCH.
Swistle, treating it like a little in-joke: Ha ha, yeah! But DO you like Brenna? I’m not sure it works with our surname.

At first I thought it was going to work against you that the names on your joint list are all similar to Echo: it helped that I was able to reject Fenchurch as part of a whole category, rather than as an individual name. But with further thought, I think that makes it easier: you’re in the same situation as every parent who doesn’t like a name as much as the other parent does. Your line is something like “Oh, I do like that name—but not enough to use it.” If he feels betrayed, the follow-up line is equally casual: “Yes, it was on my list years ago, but at this point I feel kind of ‘eh’ about it, and I don’t like it with the surname. Let’s see if we can find something similar-but-fresher.”

The timing, I think, should be when you’re having a name conversation. That is, I don’t think I’d say it if he’s just referring to the future in a cute way; e.g., “Little Echo could ride her bike here!” But if you’re having a “What about ____?”/”I’m not sure I like it with the surname” talk, and the name Echo comes up, that’s when I’d say it. He says, “Well, Echo for a girl,” and you say wistfully, “Oh—I do like that name, but not enough to use it. What about your idea of Sonnet? I think that goes great with the surname. Or I still really like Pearl, and I think that’s similar to your idea of Beverly.” You deliver the bad news, and then you go right on as if it’s just one of many names you’re both considering.

It is possible it will come down to a bigger confrontation than that. Parents have written to us from the middle of situations where the other parent is insisting on a particular name and has developed an attitude of “It’s this name unless you can find me something I like better,” which is completely out of bounds. The correct mindset is “This name is off the list; now we need to work together to find something we like from all the names that remain.”

In some cases I would recommend using the much-loved name as a middle name, so that the parent who loves the name still gets to use it. If your main area of overlap is with word names, though, that might be too much word for one name: when I started combining options, I was getting perfume names and paint colors. But another area where the two of you overlap is the category of charmingly underused old-fashioned names; if you go with one of those, Echo might work beautifully in the middle.

If you’d be willing to use the name Echo if the surname weren’t a problem, this is the moment for the two of you to consider using your surname instead.

Or if you have a girl, it can be her Fetus Nickname: lots of people continue to call a child Bean or Peanut or Bear from those early days.

Has anyone else had experience with a situation like this? How did you handle it, and how did it go?

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

I thought this posting finally deserved an update.

We still haven’t had a kid, but your advice was greatly helpful and I can happily report we are now *long past Echo*. Not only Echo, but the whole category of “out there” word names. I got him to start doing the so-called “Starbucks test”, where you try giving an unusual name you’re considering to the barista, and gauge not only their reaction but your own. He got cold feet and was embarrassed every time! Echo, Bear, Wave, even Linus…he was too shy to say any of them. And frankly I had trouble with it for many of my own unusual girl favorites. So, we’ve become pragmatic. The only holdover from earlier years is Pearl, and our biggest concern now is whether Alice rules out a future Agnes, if Rosie is too sing-songy with surname…that kind of thing. And my favorite boy name, Alexander, he thinks is too common (and rules out Alice and Arthur– maybe our new issue is we like too many A names…?)

Thank you again for your generous and thoughtful reply! I will write in sometime in the future when we’re actually having a baby or after.

With gratitude,
K.

P.S. Oh also, just one more thing– among our close friends, TWO other couples also have Pearl at the top of their lists– maybe just a hiccup or local trend, or maybe indicative of the future?

Second name update!

Hi Swistle!

Back with another update. We had a baby girl earlier this month, and named her Alice. After all that back and forth years ago, the choice was extremely smooth and pretty much settled before we even conceived. Before we knew her sex we tossed around Pearl and Branwen as possibilities, but never very seriously, and as soon as we found out she was a girl, we spontaneously started calling her Alice. That was that! There are several women named Alice we admire (Coltrane, Munro, Waters, Walker, Neel) but we didn’t name her after one of them per se, or at least not in a way we’ve shared with people. We ended up using a wilder word name for her middle name. I’m leaving it off because it’s so distinctive, but think type of fruit. :) Thank you again for all your advice, and for your blogs!