Dear Swistle,
We want to name our baby girl-to-be after my grandmothers. She’s our first child, so no siblings. She’s due this fall. We don’t know yet what her last name will be, since my husband and I have different last names, but it will be either Black or Cohen.
Together, my grandmothers’ names were: Geulah (pronounced Guh-oo-lah), Rose (nickname Ronnie), and Naomi. We would be happy with a combination of any two of the three names for the first and middle name, but want the first name to be after either Geulah or Rose. We don’t need the names to be the same as my grandmothers’ names, just similar enough to know who the baby is named after.
We don’t want to use the name Geulah, but like the idea of a name that starts with G and has an L in it. I was looking at names and found the name Geila (pronounced Guy-lah), which I think is beautiful (and my husband likes too), but we worry it might be too hard to pronounce and people might pronounce it Gay-lah (we live in the US). We don’t really like the name Gail.
We like the name Rose as a middle name, but not as a first name (similar for Naomi), but again don’t need the baby to have the exact same name as her great-grandmothers.
Generally, we want to avoid names that are too trendy or too common, but also don’t want to name our child something that no one can pronounce or understand. Our minds are spinning trying to think of good name options, and I love your advice so I was hoping you’d have suggestions for good name combinations! Thank you!
At first glance this looks like an interesting and solvable math puzzle: Here are three names A, B, and C; you want to use any two of the three; the first name must be either A or B; the middle name can be A, B, or C. We can almost picture the show-your-work area of our math worksheets, where we would have to write the equation and remember to indicate that after we choose the first name we need to remove that option for the middle name. This is going to be fun!
We begin working. Let’s see. The first name must be A or B—but A is difficult and you don’t want to use it as-is, and other versions of it are either similarly difficult or else you don’t like them. Well, okay, that’s simple enough: we will use B! …Oh, but you don’t want to use B as the first name. Hm. *scribbles and erases* *thinks* *scribbles and erases* *thinks* *raises hand to ask the teacher for help*
You want to honor your grandmothers by using their names, but you don’t actually want to use their names as first names. This is a completely understandable situation, and it happens to many, many parents. One common option is for parents to use an honor name they don’t like as the middle name, and choose a name they DO like as the first name. A second option is to use a name they don’t like as the first name, but use it with a nickname they DO like (Geulah/Lula, Rose/Ronnie, Naomi/Mimi). A third option is to give up on honoring grandparents in this way, and instead honor them in other ways. My favorite for you is the first option: choose a name you like as the first name, and use one of the three grandmother names as the middle name. If you’re planning to have more children, save the extra names for them.
Or there’s that other option you mentioned, which is to look for substitutes for the names. That’s a path I normally avoid, because I feel it dilutes the honor so much. My own name is Kristen; if a baby were named Kinsley after me, I wouldn’t feel that was any connection at all to my name, even though it starts with K and has an I, S, an E, AND an N in it just like my name. But my opinion on this is far from universal, so let’s look for some names that start with G:
Gabrielle
Gaia
Galen
Galina
Garnet
Geneva
Genevieve
Georgia
Gia
Gianna
Gillian
Gloria
Goldie
Grace
Greta
Guinevere
Gwen
Gwendolyn
Gwynne
None of these seem to me to capture the essence of Geulah; the ones that seem closest to me are Gaia, Galina, Georgia, and Gloria. I wonder if there just aren’t enough G names to find what we’re looking for. Maybe a name like Julia or Abigail or Lula or Twila or Tallulah or Eulalie would be more reminiscent. Julia Rose Cohen. Abigail Naomi Black.
If I encountered the name Geila, my first two attempts would be rhymes-with-Layla and rhymes-with-Sheila. I would not get to the Guy sound without help. Let’s see if we can think of some words/names where -ei- is pronounced like long-I; that’s usually what I need to help me across a pronunciation hurdle. I thought of Heidi and Lorelei and Eileen and Reilly—but those aren’t helping enough in the face of Reid and Ryleigh and Leighton. Geiger and Geisel should REALLY help—but I’m thwarted by geisha. My eye also skips from the Ge to the L, making me think of gel and compromising what I know must be a hard-G.
The name Geila is completely unused in the U.S. right now, and that is probably the heart of my problem: if I KNEW a Geila, it wouldn’t take me long to remember how to pronounce it. The first few times I would say to myself “Like Eileen!,” and then after that it would just seem natural, the same way I’m able to remember Lorelei and Leighton and Leigh without mnemonics. But if I were the one named Geila, who had to be the first Geila everyone met, I think I would get very tired of pronouncing and spelling my name.
For these and other reasons, my inclination has been to stick to Rose and Naomi. Naomi Rose is gorgeous—but you don’t want to use Naomi as the first name. So, Rose Naomi. But you don’t want to use Rose as the first name. So then let’s look for Rose-like names:
Azalea
Cosette
Dahlia
Flora
Hazel
Iris
Josie
Primrose
Romy
Rosa
Rosalie
Rosaline
Rosella
Rosemary
Rosie
Rowan
Ruby
Violet
Zinnia
Plus all the double-name options: Emma Rose, Ella Rose, Anna Rose, Mia Rose. Would Mia Rose or Mimi Rose or Noa Rose seem like Naomi + Rose? Would Lula Rose or Julia Rose seem like Geulah + Rose? Would Rose Noelle seem like Rose + Naomi?
Or would you want to work with Ronnie? You could go Rose —> Ronnie —> Veronica.
Or what about this option: a name you like as the first name, then pick TWO grandmother names as middle names, but use them as they are. FirstName Naomi Rose Surname. Or Firstname Geulah Rose Surname. Or whatever combination sounds best with the chosen first name and chosen surname.
Name update:
Dear Swistle,
I wanted to update you on the name we ended up choosing for our daughter: your post and the comments were all very helpful, and we ended up going with the name mentioned in the very first comment (and others!). We’re Jewish, so it’s common to have a name variation to honor someone. Our daughter’s full name is Galia Ruth Cohen Black. We were able to get the G-L and similar meaning for the first name, and an “R” for the middle name (and we gave her both of our last names!). We decided that Galia, while it isn’t common in the US, sounds like “Talia” so will be recognizable enough. For her middle name, we were going to use the name “Rose”, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg died just before she was born so in honor of her we changed our daughter’s middle name last minute (literally–we decided this in the hospital the day she was born!).
Thank you again!
