Occasionally I have a dream in which I suddenly have a new baby and realize I haven’t even THOUGHT about names yet. This is similar to the dream in which you suddenly need to take a final exam and realize you haven’t attended class all semester: it’s an “Oh no, I didn’t prepare!” dream. Except that when I wake up from an exam/class dream, I don’t feel the urge to start studying the subject of that dream class, whereas when I wake up from a baby/name dream, I DO.

And so this morning I am wondering: If you suddenly had a new baby, what would you name it? If it’s too stressful to imagine needing to choosing THE ACTUAL NAME, RIGHT NOW, then feel free to play the game in whatever way would be fun rather than stressful (I don’t think any of us need any more stress right now). You can, for example, list a few finalist boy names and a few finalist girl names that come to mind, without choosing the actual winning names. Or you could say where you’d START: like, would you start by browsing a particular section of The Baby Name Wizard? Or you could say some of the general things you’d be looking for, like that you’d want to use a family/honor name this time, or WOULDN’T want a family/honor name this time. If it doesn’t feel fun to work on the first names but does feel fun to think about the middle names, that is a perfectly fine way to answer the question. And you can choose to answer either what you would choose if it were entirely up to you, or what you think you’d choose with another parent.

When I tried to answer the question myself, I realized I must have switched out of the mode of casually working on my mental lists of favorite baby names, which I used to do pretty often while folding laundry or doing some other chore that didn’t need much mental attention. I still have pretty much the same names as I did 10 years ago when I thought we might have one more child after Henry. My boy-name list, especially, has remained where it was, probably because I have never found boy names as fun to think about (or as stressful to choose) as girl names. My girl-name list has shifted a little, but it’s basically the same list as before but with the names shifted around: some old favorites shifted down, some other old favorites shifted up. I would still want to use a family/honor name as a middle name, if possible.

How about you? What sorts of things would you be thinking about if you suddenly and unexpectedly needed to name a new baby?

Update (and photo) on Baby Girl or Boy R0ss S@m@@n

Update on Baby Girl-Boy Twins Sounds-Like-Schooled: Josephine and ?

Hello Swistle,

I’m about 14 weeks away from my first baby’s due date. At this point, my husband and I have a general plan for first and middle names (we do not know what the sex of the baby is). My question is about last names.

My husband and I both decided not to change our last names when we got married. Interestingly, we both have rather uncommon last names. I’m an only child and do not have any first or second cousins that share my last name (though distant cousins do exist). My husband has a sister but like me, they do not have any cousins or 2nd cousins with their last name.

I’m really excited to give one baby his last name and another baby my last name. While I don’t think my husband would have come up with this idea on his own, he is warming up to the idea.

I’m curious to hear how other families have done this. If life goes as we’ve planned up to this moment, we’ll have two children (one at a time) and the first will share a name with their dad and a second will share a name with their mom. What happens if there are twins with a second pregnancy? Or if parents decide to have an uneven number of children? Or if a second pregnancy isn’t possible? We could expand it even further to families who welcome older children.

Thanks for your insight,

Molly

Oh, this is so fun to think about. I think I can tell you how I would have done it if Paul and I had gone this route:

• The first baby would have had my surname, because if we ended up having only one baby, I would NOT have been pleased to have it look as if our plan was to give kids their dad’s surname. And also because I would want to counteract any feeling that the dad’s surname was more important and should be used first. And also because I would want to make sure the plan went ahead as planned—as opposed to getting pregnant with the second child and having my husband argue that at this point it would be easier/simpler/better to just keep giving children his surname. I wouldn’t want to have been counting on getting my turn, and have my husband change his mind.

• While not specifically locking down what we’d do if we had twins (unless fertility treatments made multiples highly likely, I’d consider that a bridge to be crossed when we came to it), I’d want to at least touch on the topic ahead of time to make sure we were thinking similarly. I find that while my first impulse is to name them just as if they’d been born singletons, so that one would have my surname and one would have Paul’s, my heart wants twins to have the same surname. I don’t know what I’d do about that.

• The possibility of an uneven number of children is another reason I would want to use my own surname first; I would keep that reason close to my chest, but would think of it as putting the teeniest tiniest weight on the mothers’ side of the balance scale, for all the vast number of children who have been given their fathers’ surnames. I think if the couple KNEW ahead of time that they would have, say, three children, they might want to compensate for it in some way with honor names: that is, if the mother’s surname would be used more often, use more honor firsts/middles from the dad’s side. Since even careful/certain plans are uncertain when it comes to having children, I think my plan would be to try to balance things as we went along: when we used my surname, we’d err on the side Paul’s preferences and Paul’s side of the family for first/middles, and vice versa. That way, even if we had three children or, say, five, things should end up roughly balanced.

• If we were to later have welcomed older children into our family, I think what I would want to do is (1) add them into the pattern as they would have been named, but (2) if we welcomed a sibling group, perhaps give them the same surname as each other. So for example, let’s say we had our first baby and used my surname; then we had a second baby and used Paul’s surname; and then when those babies were 3 and 1 we brought a 5-year-old into the family: I would think we would use Paul’s surname for that child, since then their name fits into the family pattern. (I would likely want to use my surname as the 5-year-old’s middle name.) But if when the babies were 3 and 1 we brought 5-year-old and 7-year-old siblings into the family, I would be stymied as I am with twins. Maybe it makes the most sense to give the 7-year-old my surname and the 5-year-old Paul’s surname, but I feel the same reluctance as I do when considering different surnames for twins. Well, again, unless there was a strong likelihood of this possibility occurring, I think I would check in to make sure we shared basically the same feelings on it, and then put it into the Cross This Bridge If We Come To It category.

I am having a lot of fun thinking about this now. Rob would have had my surname, and so then we would have used the name William for him: Rob was an honor name from my side, used to balance the use of Paul’s surname. Well, except we were much less motivated to use the honor name William, and used it almost entirely to balance the use of the name Rob, which I VERY MUCH wanted to use. And Paul had almost no desire to honor any of his family members (except William), and I had a LOT of good people I wanted to honor, and Paul didn’t feel strongly about balance. So ACTUALLY I think Rob would have had my surname and then we still would have used Rob. And then William would have had Paul’s surname and we still would have used William. Oh but then twins!! Okay, if we had KNOWN we would later have Henry, which we did NOT know, then I would have felt perfectly happy using my surname for both twins, knowing we would use Paul’s surname later for Henry. But NOT knowing about Henry, I would have been pretty stressed: it’s one thing to have an odd number of children, it’s another thing to have three kids with my surname and only one with Paul’s!

Well! What does everyone else think THEY would have done, if they had decided to alternate surnames? And of course, those of you who DID alternate surnames (or know people who alternated surnames), we are hanging on your every word.

[Edited to add: A note to commenters: The question is how it would be done / how we would do it / how we have done it or heard of it done. The question is not whether we personally like the idea / whether we personally would do it / whether we personally think patriarchy is good, actually.]

Hello!

I was directed to your blog by a dear friend after expressing to her our difficulty with girl names. Our last name sounds like Sailor with a “T”. Though, I never changed mine and it’s the surname of the first man on the moon.

I am due 10/2 with a girl. I had previously toyed with the idea of using my surname for our child’s middle name (potentially multiple children) to carry on the name since my generation is all females and to avoid issues with hyphenation in the future. However, my grandmother who helped raise me, passed around the time we conceived and her name was Nancy Rita so I’d love to honor her in some way. Rita Rae was also the name of my husband’s maternal grandmother so Rita is an honor name on both sides, but I don’t love it as a first name.

We struggled with infertility and we know at this juncture that any future children will likely be males. We have a male name picked out: “Mackey Thomas” which is my husband’s middle name / his mother’s maiden name, plus the name of my father. Nickname Mac or Mack (or Tom / Tommy if he hates Mackey).

For girl names, we have a difficult time agreeing and my husband prefers traditional names and I tend to like preppy names, boy names for girls, and last names as first names.

I love:
Sadie
Harper
Riley (though we have a niece with this name and I don’t want to duplicate)
Sienna

He loves:
Eleanor
Evelyn

Names we agree on:
Maeve
Charlotte, nickname “Charlie”
Isabelle
Kennedy

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

Along with toying with the idea of using your surname for a child’s middle name, I wonder if you would like to toy with the idea of using it as the child’s surname. You have kept your own surname, which makes it even easier to imagine using that surname for the child. Or perhaps hyphenating, so that choosing to keep your own surnames doesn’t end up forcing either of you into a situation where the whole household shares the same surname except for one parent. And the surnames in question sound very nice together, which is a pleasing bonus. Maybe hyphenating would create a problem later, maybe not, but I do think it’s fine to let the next generation figure out for themselves what they’d like to do about it if it happens; giving up the mother’s name pre-emptively, just in case the child might want to do that at some point in the future, seems unnecessary.

If using your surname or hyphenating is not an option for whatever reasons, but also you want to honor your grandmother as part of the middle name, then I suggest at least taking the crumbs of having your surname as a second middle name. I am unhappy that when naming my own children I thought those crumbs were a big slice of cake, but I am at least glad for crumbs rather than nothing. So this is where I’d suggest starting:

_______ Rita [YourSurname], or
_______ Rita [Hyphenated Surname], or
_______ Rita [Your Surname] [Patriarchy]

Except actually, in this case: if you use only your husband’s surname for the child, and/or if your surname is relegated to second-middle-name status (AND your boy-name choice honors your husband’s side of the family in the first-name position as well as in the surname position), then I instead suggest more directly honoring your grandmother by using her first name. It’s such a nice coincidence that the name Rita would honor both sides, and so hard to resist that kind of coincidence—but it is a much larger honor for your husband’s grandmother and a much smaller honor for your grandmother, and it sounds as if your grandmother was much more important in your life than is the usual. So I would instead suggest starting with:

_______ Nancy [Your Surname] [Husband’s Surname], or
_______ Nancy [Husband’s Surname]

But even with that adjustment, this situation continues to cry out for balance. [Father’s Mother’s Maiden Name & His Middle Name] [Mother’s Father’s Name] [Father’s Surname] as a boy name choice and [First Name] [Father’s Grandmother’s First Name / Mother’s Grandmother’s Middle Name] [Father’s Surname] as a girl name choice is a very father-heavy selection of names, ESPECIALLY WHEN the mother has kept her own family name and has only women in her generation. Is there any room here for a compromise, where for example boys are given their mother’s surname, and girls are given their father’s? Or where the first child’s surname is chosen based on which surname sounds better (or by flipping a coin if both sound good), and after that the surnames alternate? Or perhaps each child’s surname could be chosen to balance the first/middle honor names, so that for example a child with a first name from their father’s side would have a surname from their mother’s side, and vice versa?

Let’s move to first names. Certainly if we are using names from your husband’s family as the first AND last names for a boy, and as the last and possibly also the middle for a girl, I would think it would be fair for you to get more say on the first name for a girl, and/or much more say on the first name of a second boy.

From your joint list, the name Kennedy stands out as being a different style than the others: a contemporary surname name, unisex but used much more often for girls (3,924 new baby girls and 126 new baby boys in the U.S. in 2018, according to the Social Security Administration) (the 2019 data has been delayed due to the pandemic). If you are unlikely to have more girls, the issue of sister names may never come up; and it isn’t as if you have to pick TWO names now, when it’s hard enough to pick ONE; but it can be a good idea to look ahead a little just to make sure you aren’t using a name that would rule out other names. For example, if you named this baby Kennedy, would you be able to find a second girl name that worked for both of you? Kennedy and Isabelle feels like a style clash; Kennedy and Charlotte feels like a clash, though Kennedy and Charlie works. Kennedy also works beautifully with some of the names on your list (Harper, Riley), though not as well with the names on your husband’s list.

Speaking of sibling names, let’s talk a little about what would happen if later this baby has a brother named Mackey. Do you like Maeve and Mackey/Mac together, or would using one name rule out the other for you? and/or would it make you feel cornered into using M names for all future children? What about Kennedy and Mackey: do the matched -y endings bother you, or is it a plus that they’re both surname names?

Back to the lists. From your joint list, my own personal strong favorite is Maeve, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your plans to use Mackey. I think it hits a sweet spot between your preferences and your husband’s. I like it with your surname, with your husband’s surname, and with a hyphenated surname in either order. I think it works well with either middle name option.

I also like the way Charlotte/Charlie balances his preference for a formal/traditional name with your preference for something more preppy/boyish/surnamey. And that would be a path to investigate for more options: Caroline with the nickname Rory, Eleanor with the nickname Rory or Lennie, Madeline/Adelaide with the nickname Del, Katherine with the nickname Kit, Rebecca called Bex, Beatrix called Bix, Juliette called Jet, Sarah called Sadie, Josephine called Jo, Augusta called Gus, Frances/Francesca called Frankie, Winifred called Fred/Freddie, Cordelia called Cory, and so on.

I’m interested too in the possibilities of Riley, if you don’t want to re-use it because of your niece. There are names of similar style and partly similar sound (Brinley and Everly and Delaney and Casey, for example), or names of similar sound and not very similar style (Isla and Lyla and Mila and Ivy and Cecily, for example). Something like Rory might work: not too similar to be weird at family get-togethers, but with a similar spirit. I like it with a future brother named Mackey, too: Rory and Mackey, Rory and Mac.

I’m also drawn to Delaney (potential nicknames Del and Laney), which has a smack of the sounds of Eleanor while being more your surname style—and pretty/feminine while still being surname/unisex. Delaney and Mackey, Del and Mac, Laney and Mac. I really like that.

And I like the way Ivy is feminine/traditional, but short and not frilly, and conceivably preppy. It feels like a nice bridge between Riley and Evelyn. Ivy and Mackey, Ivy and Mac.

We could play this game also with other names on your lists: choosing a name and trying to find a name of the other person’s style (or a compromise style) with those sounds—not because sounds are as relevant as style, but as an exercise in hearing names in a different way and being more open to considering them. The name Sadie might lead us to Ada, or Daisy as a nickname for Margaret, or Sally as a nickname for Sarah. Evelyn might lead us to Everly or Emlyn or Ellis or Lynn or Emerson or Ellison.

Hello Swistle!

My husband and I are expecting our first baby this fall and we just found out it’s a girl! I thought naming a girl would be easy, but I was so wrong! We have a few names on our short list but could use some help with middle names or looking at some names we haven’t considered. I’m not super into honor names, but don’t mind a gentle nod to a loved one. Our last name is similar to Radcliffe and our short list includes: Ivy, Frisco (our favorite place to visit in Colorado), Felicity and Marigold (a nod to my grandmother, Marilyn).

I am struggling with the middle name. I always thought I would use my middle name which is Elizabeth. It has been in my family for generations and is my husband’s mother’s name. Im not sure sounds that great with any of the names on my list. I am also oddly concerned with the initials… IER doesn’t look that elegant to me. We will likely have 2 kids in total… but seeing how this first one goes before we make that decision :)

Let me know what you think!

Expectant mom Radcliffe

Especially for first-time parents who may wish to have more children, I like to advise starting the naming process by thinking bigger-picture about your overall naming style, and also looking ahead to sibling names. The story everyone here is tired of by now is that when Paul and I were expecting Rob, but didn’t yet know he was a boy, we were very keen on the name Emerson for a girl—but we hadn’t noticed/realized that Emerson is a strong outlier for our usual naming style (other girl names we like include Elizabeth, Genevieve, Margaret, Josephine, Penelope, Jane, Ivy, etc.), so if we HAD named our first child Emerson, we would have had a huge struggle coming up with sibling names that fit our tastes AND worked well with the name Emerson.

The name that stands out to me as an outlier on your list is Frisco. Ivy, Felicity, and Marigold are all traditional feminine names with a whimsical/storybook/British flair, and they would be lovely together as a little group of sisters; Frisco is a unisex place-name not currently used as a baby name in the United States, and it would sound odd as a sister name for any of the other names on the list. Other issues that stand out to me about the name Frisco: the similarity to the words Crisco and frisk/frisky, and confusion with the nickname people from San Francisco hate.

In a different situation, I might suggest Frisco as a middle name: it’s challenging as a first name, but might work great as a fun and meaningful middle name. But never mind that, because really what I want to say is USE ELIZABETH FOR SURE. It’s your own middle name! It’s been in your family for generations! In the long run I don’t think any of the concerns you mention are going to be actual concerns, and we just recently did a post where it turned out MANY of us regretted not using our own names in our children’s names. Plus, I think it sounds WONDERFUL with all the other names! Ivy Elizabeth! Felicity Elizabeth! Marigold Elizabeth! ALL FABULOUS. But even if it DIDN’T sound so great, I think that’s another concern that melts away with time: it’s so rare to say the whole name together.

(Depending on how similar your surname is to Radcliffe: if it’s VERY similar, I think if I were you I would remove Ivy from the list, because of Radcliffe’s association with Ivy League schools. If you really, really, really wanted to use Ivy, and it was the only girl name you could agree on, and the main concern you were writing to us about was the Ivy League thing, I would likely say never mind, it’s not that big a deal. But with other good options on your list, it’s an association I’d want to avoid.)

Anyway. I don’t want to help you find another middle name. I want you to use Elizabeth. I see no room for regretting using it, and I see a LOT of potential for regretting NOT using it. Let’s focus instead on finding you a few more first names to consider.

Annabel
Beatrix
Cecily
Clarissa
Cordelia
Dahlia
Eloise
Fiona
Francesca
Genevieve
Harriet
Henrietta
Imogen (Midge!)
Josephine (Posey!)
Louisa
Matilda
Millicent
Minerva
Olive
Penelope
Persephone (Percy!)
Rosemary
Winifred

Some of these have initials I thought you might not prefer, but I included them anyway because none of them seemed like deal-breakers to me, and I am generally someone who prefers to avoid awkward/word initials. Part of it is that I was reminded by those recent posts I linked to that I have not thought/cared really at all about my children’s initials since they were babies. Part of it is that NONE of the initials seem like they come even CLOSE to being important enough to be worth giving up using Elizabeth.

Name update:

Hello!

I have an exciting update! After a lot of thought and help from you and the comments, we just kept coming back to Ivy. Happy to announce that Ivy Elizabeth was born in November : ) Thank you so much for your help and making sure I kept Elizabeth as part of her name.

Thanks again!

Update on Baby Girl or Boy Peanuts-Character-Who-Plays-the-Piano