Hi Swistle!

My husband and I are expecting our third child, a boy, at the end of May 2021. We already have a daughter Millie Jean (middle name after my grandmother) and Howard Gorman (named after both my husband’s grandfathers).

Our last names sounds like “Boat” but with an F.

I am having a difficult time coming up with a name for this little guy. I feel like I used all the good names with my other children!

To add to the issue, my husband has rejected everything so far. The only name he has liked is “Cody” which while has the E sound like Millie and Howie feels too 90’s for what I consider the more classic/vintage names of Millie and Howard. I don’t dislike it but it feels like there are better options.

Names we’ve considered (and have been rejected by my husband):

Thomas
Robert (my husband’s middle name)
Samuel
Bennett
Wesley

I’ve ran through all the male family names and I don’t know that there is anything particularly good that we could use except possibly Gregory after my husband’s father.

Are there names similar to Cody that might work?

Help and thank you in advance!

Obviously there are no rules that sibling names must go together in any way, and there are many good reasons to do otherwise. But the name Cody is a STARTLING CLASH with Howard. If you had just Millie, it would be fine: Millie is more vintage/antique revival while Cody is 1990s Live with Regis and Kathie Lee—but it’s not uncommon for parents to have different naming styles for boys and girls, so it could work just fine. But once you went with Howard/Howie, in my opinion Cody went out of the running.

(Again, there are no rules, and we COULD make it work if the circumstances were right. Let’s say you had felt forced to use the name Howard for your first son because of a family tradition on your husband’s side of the family. And let’s say that as part of that deal, you very reasonably negotiated Full Naming Rights for the next child; and your long-time favorite name, also the name of your dear brother, was Cody, and you were writing because you were anxious now that that represented a startling style clash. Well, in that case I would say ABSOLUTELY Howie and Cody could work just GREAT together, and that it was good there was such a nice easy explanation ((“Family naming tradition!”)) for the startling clash of Howard and Cody.)

I do have one way to save Cody, if you want it, and that is for you to use it as a nickname for a name similar to Howard. I’m not really seeing any names-similar-to-Howard that would work with the nickname Cody, but on the other hand I tend to be (1) picky about what counts as a nickname for what and (2) not good at coming up with creative nicknames (others have come up with Bix for Beatrix and Jet for Juliet and Cole for Nicholas, and I would never have come up with any of those). So perhaps some commenters can use their skills here. And perhaps you have a family name with good strong C and D sounds in it that you initially passed over but it would click into place with this idea.

But I don’t actually suggest trying to save Cody, or for us to all spend a lot of time trying to find a name similar to Cody that your husband might consider accepting as a Cody substitute. Instead I suggest that the next step in this process is for you to take a break from your role of coming up with names, and your husband take a break from his role of rejecting all your ideas, and instead the two of you switch jobs for awhile: HE does the work and research involved with coming up with a list of names he likes and is willing to use for this baby, and YOU evaluate his choices. A role swap can be very clarifying for some couples.

This might also be a good moment in the process for the two of you to take a look at the balance of family names so far. There is no reason family/honor names MUST balance out, and in fact in many cases and for many good/valid reasons they DON’T balance. But I still feel it is good to check in, just to see how things are going, especially in situations where the parents are having trouble agreeing and it might help to know whose turn it is to have their wishes honored. Is your household’s surname from your husband’s family? And then your son has first and middle names after your husband’s family. And your daughter has, as her middle name, one name from your family. Okay! So I would certainly recommend a good search of YOUR side of the family tree before choosing names for this baby! But if that has already been done, and there are no names left that you want to use, then I think we should lean a little more toward your name preferences this time around—and especially if there WERE family names you liked from your side but that your husband dismissed.

The whole time I was writing the above, I was ITCHING to get started on a list of names that would work with Howard. (And with Millie, too, but I am more concerned about “brother names” or “sister names,” less concerned about brother/sister names—because of the aforementioned normality of style differences.) Because Howard is a family name, I don’t think names MUST go with it, and I think everything on your name idea list works, with the possible exception of Bennett—which has more of a surname-name crisp preppy contemporary sound to me and doesn’t seem like it works as well with Howard’s warm vintage coffee-and-doughnut-in-a-diner appeal. …I lost track of that sentence somewhere. What I was saying was that because Howard is a family name, I don’t think future sibling names MUST be the same style, and I think your name list works well for names of an adjacent/compatible style. But it feels much more fun to come up with names of the same style and time period—and I think that, unlike with the name Cody, you’re going to end up feeling extremely Cutting Edge when all these names start coming back into fashion.

According to the Social Security Administration, which has online records starting in 1900 (downloadable starting in 1880), the name Howard was nicely popular in the early-to-mid 1900s: it was Top 50 when the ranked records began in 1990, and stayed there until 1943. So what I’m going to do is check in with the Top 50 in 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940, and see what little Howard’s friends and classmates would have been named back then. In addition to the ever-popular James/John/William/Charles/Thomas, we have:

Albert
Alfred
Arthur
Bernard
Carl
Clarence
Earnest
Edward (repeats ending of Howard)
Francis (Frank)
Frank
Fred
George
Lawrence
Louis
Oscar
Ralph
Roger
Stanley (repeats ending of Millie)
Warren

The way my heart flutters at a number of those, while I simultaneously think “Oh, but I don’t know, is it too…Old Man?” is what makes me think these names are NEARLY RIPE and will soon be back in our midst. Think of all the pets that people named Jack and Sam and Max right before those names stopped being Old Man and started being Extremely Preschool. NEXT UP: Alfred and Louis and Stanley!

I was going to say which names I had particular soft spots for, but it would be quicker to say which ones I don’t like as much (I am not going to do that). I will pick JUST A FEW. I have had a soft spot for Roger ever since hearing that an old-timey nickname for it was Hodge. HODGE. I have a soft spot for Warren not only for political reasons but because of a long-time family friend who was good-natured and warm and kind. George and Louis and Frederick and Franklin are all already on my own boy-name list, and Albert and Alfred are names I probably wouldn’t use in my own family’s sibling set but feel very warmly toward and would like to see used more. I have a soft spot for Clarence because of the book Life with Father by Clarence Day, which I got in a $3/bag library book sale and have read many many times since then. I gave up awhile ago trying to push people into using the name Carl/Karl, but I still think it’s a great underused name. I have a soft spot for Earnest, one of the few male names that can be considered a Virtue Name. I’ve had a soft spot for Edward ever since I started using it as a blog pseudonym for one of my kids.

I suggest taking another look in your family tree to see if you can find any of these warm, endearing names that might look a whole lot fresher on a sweet little baby with older siblings named Millie and Howie.

Name update:

Hi Swistle!

I wanted to share a name update with you. I thoroughly enjoyed your response to my question and I loved the reader suggestions in the reply.

I will say that after reading your response, I was able to get my husband to move on from the name Cody (LOL).

So, our little guy arrived a couple of weeks early. My husband and I had somewhat of a short list of names but nothing was really standing out to either of us so at the time of birth we were nameless (which was also the case with our other children so nothing new and I wasn’t stressed). I had taken a liking to Henry but felt it was more popular of a name than I wanted to use.

After he arrived and spending some time, we decided on…

Walter Gregory

He is just precious. He completes our family and our trifecta of old people baby names!

Hi Swistle,

Thank you so much for reading this letter! I’m due with my third and last child in May and am feeling utterly lost in picking a girl’s name! Our last name sounds like Crepsky. I wrote to you when I was expecting our second child and of course, you were a huge help!

My husband and I seem to want to choose names that: 1.) have significance to us (family name or notable person), 2.) are uncommon, 3.) we both like the sound of it, and 4.) can be pronounced easily in Spanish (and French if possible) because of our family backgrounds.

Our first two children’s names fit all four criteria. Ayrton is named after the Brazilian F1 driver and philanthropist who both my husband and I were big fans of growing up. Elia is named after my husband’s maternal grandmother in Chile. They both have two middle names that honour family or friends.

There are three frontrunner boy names at this point: Rafael (after the tennis player – we are huge fans), Matias (after my brother Matthew) and Alvaro (after my husband’s favourite uncle). These names are more common than Ayrton and Elia, but I think any would work well since they hold significance, are easily pronounced in Spanish, and I love the sound of them! Middle names will likely be Christopher and Adam after family members.

The problem is that we can’t seem to find even one girl’s name we like that fits three or four of our criteria. I’ve been reading your site long enough to pick up on the fact that as you have more children, you may need to relax on certain criteria but I’m having trouble weighing out what to let go of. For middle names we will choose my MIL’s name (Cecilia) and either Marie or my maiden name, Darby.

Two girls names we’ve considered are Matea (after my brother) or Ximena (after my husband’s aunt). But I don’t love the sound of Matea and I feel that Ximena is so very Spanish that it could be considered in bad taste giving her that name if she doesn’t indeed speak Spanish. Neither of these names feel right.

Two other names we like so far are Louisa and Alma. Luisa fits the language component but not the other criteria. Alma is uncommon and will work well with Spanish speakers. Still, I don’t love the sound of either of the two names as much as our first two children and neither have any significance or history for us which makes it feel like something big is missing.

I really like the sound of the name Marie (my mother’s middle name) but it’s neither Spanish-adjacent nor uncommon. I also can’t use the name Maria so that’s out. My husband likes Vera and Matilda but those don’t fit the significance, Spanish-sounding or uncommon criteria!

Any advice about how to think about these competing variables for a girl’s name – and what would sound best with the names Ayrton and Elia – would be so appreciated!

Sincerely,

Heather

Obviously none of us will be able to add names that would have personal significance. And while some of us will be able to evaluate whether certain names work in Spanish and French, that’s not an area where I have any knowledge. But the real question here is “How do you figure out which preferences to let go of?” And that’s a question I think all of us can help answer.

I think for me the answer is to get rid of the preferences that are (1) least important and (2) most responsible for ruling out names I love. Well, but that’s the easy answer, isn’t it? If it were that easy, you wouldn’t be writing. What tends to happen is that the MOST important preferences are the ones ruling out the most names—and that cutting the least important preferences doesn’t help bring enough names back into the running to justify the loss of the preference.

And so my secondary answer is that modifying preferences to work with naming reality can be really hard to do, and that what I’ve personally found most helpful is to realize I’m making deliberate trades/choices. That is, it can be tempting to spiral, to think “My preferences rule out all the names except the ones I don’t like!!” and feel completely stuck. It can be calming to remember that I am CHOOSING those preferences and ALLOWING them to rule out names, and that I can UNCHOOSE and UNALLOW at any time. Even if I DON’T unchoose/unallow, it helps settle me to know I COULD. And it helps me to see it as a TRADE: I am TRADING a degree of name-love, in exchange for getting an honor name; I am TRADING a degree of popularity, in exchange for getting a degree of name-love—or whatever.

It can also help to remember that it is absolutely fine and normal to have one set of preferences for some children, and change those preferences for other children, and that society at large is not noticing/caring. Think of all the families that have naming traditions for the firstborn, or for the firstborn and secondborn, but not for subsequent children. Or all the families that want to use ALL honor names, but unfortunately run out of honor names after the first few kids. Or all the families that start with matching initials, but soon run out of names they like.

Anyway, to get back to my point, what I find useful is realizing that if I want my most important preferences, I may have to TRADE other preferences to get them. (“Trading” a preference feels less dire than “giving up” a preference.) I could easily be wrong, but it sounds to me from your letter that your most important preference is that the name have personal significance to you. To get that preference, you may need to trade a less important preference—for example, that it be a name you love, or that it be a very unusual name, or that it work well in Spanish.

Or perhaps it will turn out there just aren’t any more girl names of sufficient personal significance to be worth making that trade. Names of Personal Significance isn’t a very flexible category: as with honor names, we each have our own batch of them and we can’t readily add or subtract names—we’re kind of stuck with what we’ve got (and even more so when the names have to have Personal Significance for TWO people). It’s always a little sad when parents would really love to use honor names but run out of them before they run out of babies, but it’s such a very understandable situation and it might be what’s happening here. In that case you might be very sad to let go of that preference, but maybe it’s a preference that’s working against your purpose at this point: i.e., if there are only a couple of Significant Girl Names in the barrel, and both of those names require you to give up ALL your other preferences, then maybe it’s not worth it—even though it may have been your most important preference to begin with.

It is also possible to RELAX a preference rather than eliminating it. For example, your preference for Very Unusual Names. You mention that Louisa doesn’t meet that preference, but according to the Social Security Administration, it was the #683rd most popular girl name in the United States in 2019; that makes it a very uncommon name. It’s not as uncommon as Elia or Ayrton, but it’s still Really Quite Uncommon. Vera and Matilda are more common (Vera was #252 and Matilda was #447)—but still Pretty Uncommon. If you could relax that preference from Extremely Uncommon to Quite Uncommon, you could open up a whole new field of options. Or possibly that WON’T work, and the only way to get Quite Uncommon names will be to relax the preference for them to work well in Spanish. It seems likely that the subset of names that work well in English and Spanish might be names that are much more common in your circle than they are nationally.

Something you have very likely considered already and rejected: could you use your maiden name as a first name instead of as a middle? The name Darby is not currently in the Top 1000 in the United States. Its usage is right between Ayrton and Elia. I don’t know if it meets the language requirements, but perhaps that could be the preference that gets ditched for the third baby, or perhaps she could be called a nickname that works with the other languages. Darby Cecilia Marie Crepsky; Ayrton, Elia, and Darby.

I am hoping lots of others will now tell stories of how THEY decided which preferences were most important, which preferences needed to be eliminated, which preferences needed to be relaxed, which preferences were worth trading, etc.

Name update:

Hi Swistle!
Excited to send in my name update. Thank you so much to you and your commenters for all of your/their input! We had a baby girl on May 16th. Your response freed us from feeling tied to all four of our criteria. We decided to let go of the significance/family connection criteria and it opened up a new list of possibilities. So, we scanned baby name books, made new lists, and went to the hospital with four possibilities. Once she was here it seemed clear to me which of the four suits her and fits the best with her sibling’s names. Introducing: Amaya Marie Cecilia Crepsky (7lbs13oz).

Hello!

You helped name our second baby 5 years ago and now we have a (surprise) 3rd baby on the way – due in May.

Our last name is pronounced Molly-Ache-Elle.

The sibling names are:
George Lindsey – called Gil
Malcolm Joseph – called Mac

George is my father in law and Malcolm is my grandfather. The kids’ middle names are my husband (Joseph) and my own (Lindsey) names.

My husband and I have never had an easy time naming our kids – we come from VERY different naming traditions. His family is catholic and from India – where the naming traditions are very strong and quite narrow. I’m a west coast kid with total free reign on naming.

We don’t know the sex, but the boys name has pretty much sorted itself out this time – so now we are trying to negotiate girls’ names.

Last time around our name option for a girl would have been Margaret Akslen – called Greta. I still LOVE this name and have had a hard time hearing that my husband doesn’t want to just go with this name for this kid.

My husbands family traditions would have the baby be named Anne or Mary. I am ok with Anne as a middle name but don’t feel close to either name as a first name. And there have been two girls born in his family this year who were named Ann and Joanne.

I tried to brainstorm a list of names that have a nod to Anne or Mary that I am more drawn to like:

– Jilliann (sounds too close to Gil)
– Annalise and Annaleigh (I like these names but my husband had a negative reaction because of the word anal)
– Mariella (feels like a lot with our last name and ‘ella’ as a nickname is too close to many great kids I already know)

Names I love if I weren’t bound by traditions:
Tessa
Joelle
Evangeline
Lauryn/Laurel
And of course – the name Greta (short for Margaret) is still my absolute favorite

The middle name would likely be Anne (if the first name doesn’t nod to it) or Akslen (my grandmothers maiden name) depending…

Any ideas or cautions as my husband and I continue our wrangling? Reference to the last time you helped: Baby Boy or Girl Molly-Ache-Elle, Sibling to George (Gil)

Thanks for your help!

Last time I suggested using a traditional/family name to please your husband, on the condition that you get to choose the child’s everyday-use name (even if it is unconnected to the given name)—which is roughly how things went with your first child, where George is your husband’s father’s name, but you call him Gil. Both names start with G, if we are looking for a way to connect the given name and the nickname, but it’s not even the same kind of G, so I feel like there is some flexibility here. I know you said you’d rather not do that kind of deal again, and I am keeping that in mind—but it feels like it may be the loophole we need to make things work.

The first thing that leaps out at me is that Evangeline from your list seems like it counts as a nod to Anne from his list. This is probably where I would try to lock down the deal, if I were you. Evangeline Akslen Molly-Ache-Elle; George, Malcolm, and Evangeline; Gil, Mac, and whatever nickname you have in mind for her. I might even compromise on Evangeline Mary Molly-Ache-Elle, if that would get it done.

The second thing I notice is that Tessa can be a nickname for Therese, a saint name. George, Malcolm, and Therese; Gil, Mac, and Tessa. (She’d also have the option of going by Reese, or of course Terry.)

The third thing I notice is that the first three letters of Margaret are the same three letters as Mary. Can we not do a bit of a REACH here? “Look, if we erase the top of the -g-, it looks even more like Mary!” I’m holding out some hope that this will be one of those letters we get where the husband didn’t want to use a certain name, but then after the baby is born he changes his mind. Perhaps the baby will just LOOK like a little Margaret/Greta!

Or perhaps we could use a double or hyphen first name: Mary Margaret or Mary-Margaret, called Greta; Anne Margaret or Anne-Margaret, called Greta. If family names and traditions are of top importance to him, he may have to bend on other things.

Annabel is pretty. What could we do with a nickname there? Bella might have the same issue as Ella; Annie is sweet but it seems like if you liked it you would already have mentioned it.

Maribel is pretty, too, but again I don’t know if the nickname works out, and it is a lot with the surname.

Annika, with a nickname of Nika? Maybe a bit much with the surname. I remember this from last time: I kept thinking of names with crisp c/k sounds and a lot of L and/or M!

Would Marilla feel like it honored a Mary? But it too repeats a lot of sounds from the surname.

Or Rosemary. Nickname Rose or Rosie or Romy or Rory? George, Malcolm, and Rosemary; Gil, Mac, and Romy.

Could we do a giant double-honor first name, such as Marianna or Annamaria or Anne-Mary, in trade for Greta as the nickname? There’s no name police here. I went to school with a Michael who was called Scott because his parents couldn’t agree, and we all took that explanation in stride. On the first day of class, the teacher would say “Michael?” and he’d say “Here! But I go by Scott,” and the teacher would make a note, and we’d be done.

In fact, it’s really common for boys to go by totally different names, in part because of the commonness of boys being named after their family traditions/ancestors and needing a different daily name (and/or needing a compromise name for the other parent to agree to letting her husband’s ancestors name her baby). In my circle of friends/acquaintances/classmates I can think off the top of my head of a Howard called Scott, a Gary called Jason, a Robert called Jay, a Thomas called Adam, etc. No reason in the world we can’t do the same with girls’ names.

And I am feeling not just sad but also angry that you have a list of names you would like to use if you weren’t bound by tradition—and not even bound by YOUR traditions, but by your HUSBAND’S FAMILY’S traditions. Excuse me, but how did we get to this place where one parent’s family traditions bind THE OTHER PARENT? How do we START the naming process by letting one parent’s traditions narrow it all down, as if that were a real requirement? What if BOTH parents had Strong Important Traditions? If HE wants to use HIS family’s traditions to guide/narrow HIS name list, then fine! But his name list shouldn’t outrank yours, just because his ancestors tried to call dibs on all future generations of baby naming.

I can’t tell if Anne and Mary are from his side, your side, or one of each. Another compromise I might suggest is His First Choice of Names from Your Finalist List + His First Choice of Middle Name.

Last time you mentioned your husband was also open to biblical/saint names, and I wonder if we might look that direction again, especially with babies Ann and Joanne already in the extended family.

For biblical names, I love Esther, Ruth, Claudia, Lydia, Lois, Elizabeth, Eve, Susanna (Anne!), Miriam (Mary!), Naomi.

I don’t know the saints’ stories so I am pulling these from The Baby Name Wizard‘s list without taking into consideration what each one is a saint FOR:

Ada
Antonia
Augusta (Gussie)
Beatrix
Cecily
Claire
Elodie
Felicity
Flora
Genevieve
Josephina
Josephine
Juliana (Anne!)
Louisa
Matilda (Tilly)
Philomena
Sophronia (Phronsie)
Veronica
Vivian
Winifred (Winnie/Freddie)

Several of these are such favorites of mine I have trouble not pushing them on you (Winifred!! Felicity!! Flora!! Genevieve!! Louisa!! etc.!!). I also love love love Josephine, and I wonder if it would be fun to name a girl for her father, or if we want to deliberately not do that. (It doesn’t bother me that one of her brothers has the middle name Joseph, except that it means honoring him twice, which seems unbalanced. But using an honor middle from your side would help.)

Name update:

Thank you so much for your help with this one! We had a little girl at the end of April. My goal was to go in with two name possibilities to the hospital and after many hours of conversation- we had both agreed on Margaret or Evangeline. I was still secretly hoping for Margaret since I had been advocating for that name from the beginning and really had to wade through my husband’s ambivalent feelings about it. But surprisingly- after she was born we both agreed she just wasn’t a Margaret!
We went back to the drawing board for a bit but eventually came back to Evangeline and I gave in to the middle name Marie to ensure we were honoring some of the family naming conventions. So now she is Evangeline Marie – and we have been calling her EvaMarie! Her brothers are thrilled – as are we.
Thanks for helping move that name to the front of the list!

Hi, Swistle!

I am so thankful that someone recommended your blog recently, but I sure could’ve used it sooner! We have 4 girls and are currently expecting baby #5 (likely our last) who is due in April. We were shocked to find out that this one is a boy; I was convinced that my husband and I only made girls!

So here’s the issue: my husband and I have never discussed boy names. He has always refused to talk names until we knew the gender, so we have a long list of girl names but had to start from scratch for boy names. I feel like boy names are so much harder!

My current favorite is Theodore/Theo, but then in my relatively small facebook due date group, there are three other moms who are naming their sons Theo! So now I’m worried that Theo is going to be crazy popular. We’re considering using the middle name Joseph so we could use TJ, but I don’t know if I love that. Other names we are considering: Alexander, Nathan, Benjamin, & Christopher. But none of those really feel right at the moment. I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on what would work for our family! 💙

The important details:

-Surname is McKowan with a G
-We are very big on traditional names with nicknames and would like to continue this with our son’s name
-Siblings are: Abigail Jane (Abby), Theresa Ann (Reese), Josephine Margaret (Josie), and Elizabeth Grace (Lizzie)
-Girl names from previous lists include: Rebecca (Becca), Catherine (Cate), Cassandra (Cassie), and Julianne (Julie/Jules)
-Boy names that I like but have been nixed for various reasons: Michael, Robert, Patrick, Jonathan/John, & Joshua

Thank you so very much!
Melissa

For decades, the name Theodore has been bopping around in the 200s/300s of baby name rankings, not really going much up or down. But then recently:

(image from ssa.gov)

Meanwhile, look at what the name Theo has been up to (notice the lowest three years are from the 1940s, after which there was a big gap when the name wasn’t even in the Top 1000):

(image from ssa.gov)

My own naming style for boys is Top 50 names, so for ME, these charts would be good news: “Yay, the name is finally common enough that I feel I can use it!” But even I would feel a little trepidation at the speed of the rise: maybe it will come to a stop in the 30s! maybe it will peak and start drifting back down! but maybe not.

I do think it’s a nice level of popularity with his sisters’ names. According to the Social Security Administration, the name Abigail was in the Top Ten from 2001 to 2017, and in 2019 was #11. The name Josephine is rising in popularity, and in 2019 was #89. The name Elizabeth has been in the Top Ten or near it for decades. The name Theresa, while not currently in the Top 1000, is familiar and feels more common than it is.

It bothers me just a teensy bit that the name Theodore would repeat the first three letters of Theresa. The three letters are pronounced entirely differently, and I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. The nickname Reese makes it much less of an issue.

I too find boy names more difficult. With girl names, I look for Love, and have more than I need to choose from, and in fact get overwhelmed by all the wonderful names I won’t get to use. With boy names, I try to narrow it down to a list of Can’t Go Wrong choices (good solid names that feel like they’d work just fine for us), and then let one rise gradually to the top.

Your boy name list is in the same basic range as mine, with some overlap. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of those. Benjamin is the one that catches my eye: I feel like it has the same traditional/warm feeling as your girl names, and I find the nickname group particularly charming. Abigail, Theresa, Josephine, Elizabeth, and Benjamin; Abby, Reese, Josie, Lizzie, and Ben.

But let’s see if we can make the list of candidates a little longer: I’ll add some from my own boy-name list, plus others that seem like they might work well.

Abigail, Theresa, Josephine, Elizabeth, and:/
Abby, Reese, Josie, Lizzie, and:

August/Gus
Calvin/Cal
Charles/Charlie
Daniel/Dan
Edward/Ted/Ned
Franklin/Frank
Frederick/Fred
Henry/Hank
Isaac/Ike
James/Jamie/Jimmy (retro nicknames seem to be coming back into style)
Julian/Jules
Louis/Lou
Nicholas/Nick/Cole
Oliver/Ollie
Wesley/Wes

This sounds like something you have already considered and decided on, but just in case, I wanted to mention that it is not uncommon for parents to have different naming styles for boys than for girls. It is possible that you are stuck because you’re trying to use your girl-name style on boy names. Or maybe not: very possibly your boy-name style IS the same as your girl-name style! But if you continue to feel as if nothing is right, it could be a helpful exercise to go back to the name books and pretend for a moment that this is your very first child, and make a list of boy names you like—even if they’re not traditional and/or don’t have good nicknames. I kept finding names I wanted to suggest, and then reluctantly putting them aside because they didn’t meet one of the preferences:

Clark
Davis
Dean
Elliot (same first three letters as Elizabeth)
Everett
George
Ian
Miles
Nolan
Paul
Simon
Warren (probably not right after using Elizabeth)

(And some of those could have nicknames by the method you mentioned of using initials.)

Name update:

First of all, a huge thank you to Swistle and to everyone who shared opinions and ideas on my post! My husband and I decided to go back to the drawing board and not put any restrictions on ourselves. We decided against Theodore because although I love the nickname Theo, I just didn’t see myself ever using the whole name, and that didn’t sit well with me. We did decide, however, that we still wanted a traditional name with a nickname.

Our sweet baby was born last week, and we named him Andrew Joseph. We want to let his personality choose the nickname he’ll eventually be called (AJ, Andy, Drew??); we love all the options! Thank you again for your help!

-Melissa