Hello Swistle!

I am sure you hear this all the time, but as someone obsessed with names for years I never thought I would be in the position of not being able to figure out a name! But here we, most very definitely, are.

My husband and I are expecting our first baby, a boy, in early April. Getting pregnant was difficult, and we hope to have another baby or two but definitely no guarantee. We are a bilingual Spanish/English family, and baby will have two last names. Both last names start with M, and sound something like Molina Maplepines (except the second last name is actually Portuguese and looks more like a name like Guimaraes, but Maplepines has the same sound and flow). I know you normally don’t weigh in on non-English names, but we live in the Midwest US and baby will spend so much of his time in an English environment that that is my greatest concern. Plus all the names we are considering are familiar to exclusive English-speakers.

If the baby had been a girl we only had Alma and Liana on our list, two favorites of mine that my husband seemed to be okay with as well.

Our preferences: my husband prefers biblical, old fashioned Spanish names. I like somewhat more international, more timely (or trendy), short names (given the really long last names). I would also prefer to avoid M names, alliteration is cute, but alliteration x3 is a lot (I think? Or no?).

My husband’s list (short version, also suggested names like Roberto and Ezequiel):
Mateo
Abram
Tomas
Diego

My list:
Felix
Gael
Tiago

Possible compromise names:
Emilio
Elias

Essentially neither of us seems willing to go with the other’s names. I find Abram and Tomas too old fashioned, Mateo too popular plus the M issue (and a newborn cousin named Matias), Diego is okay. My husband doesn’t like Felix because of Felix the Cat, Tiago because it sounds like “te hago” in Spanish, and Gael he just doesn’t love (and does make the fair point that it has some of the greatest potential to be mispronounced).

Emilio feels long to me, and we actually both probably like Emiliano more, but 5 syllables is just so much (the last names are each 3 syllables). We also have Amelias on both sides of our family, and I worry that Emilio is too close. We could possibly call him Milo or Lio if it ends up being confusing, but we both prefer names without nicknames.

As for Elias my husband strongly prefers the Spanish pronunciation (eh-LEE-as vs ee-LIE-as), I am okay with either/both. Elias was the name of my husband’s grandfather, which in some ways is sweet (my husband was close to him before he passed away unfortunately very young) but also we are not considering ANY family names otherwise for any other boy in the future or a girl. I don’t love using one family name from my husband’s side and never using another family name, but there are none I want to use either.

Help! Please! Either with opinions on the name options we have, or other suggestions, or sage wisdom on choosing a name in general. My mother-in-law, who generally is a sweet and helpful person, constantly asks if we have chosen a name and the pressure is rising (just today she said we “need” to have picked a name by our baby shower, to which I said I made no promises!)

Thank you!!

For STARTERS, we (and by “we” I mean “your husband”) are going to lovingly inform your sweet and helpful mother-in-law that the name will not be chosen in time for the baby shower. Maybe it WILL be chosen by then! But let’s all assume it won’t be, and/or that you would prefer to time the baby-name announcement differently. Maybe you were not even planning to share the name until after the baby was born, which would be a pretty normal plan! Maybe you don’t feel like locking down the name for SURE-sure until it is time to fill out the birth certificate, which is ALSO a pretty normal plan!

No doubt she is thinking of people who want to personalize gifts with the baby’s name, and that is delightful, but those people will need to make other plans, as they would need to do for MANY baby showers at which the name has not yet been chosen/announced and/or the sex of the baby is not known/announced. They can give you a wrapped letter at the shower, telling you what they will be giving you after the baby is born/named; they can give you an unpersonalized version of something and add the personalization later; they can give you something different at the shower and give you the personalized item as a baby gift after the baby is born; they can scrap their entire plan for a personalized gift and do something else; etc. They have options that do not involve you rushing to commit to a name before you need to / are ready to.

Now that we have made ourselves a little breathing room, let’s look at the options. I was about to stand here and tell you that the name Mateo wasn’t particularly popular, and then I checked the Social Security Administration and I see it was #11 in 2022. I did the same thing awhile back with the name Luna: “What? It’s not THAT popular. …Oh.” This is why it is a good idea to use a good shake of salt when hearing baby-name opinions from grandparents-to-be: they tend to be OUT OF THE LOOP, baby-name-wise.

Because you’d like to have more children, I’ll mention my usual caution about making sure the name you choose this time doesn’t rule out other names on your list. Would Abram or Emilio rule out Alma for you? Would Elias rule out Liana for you? That sort of thing.

I was all set to champion Elias until I saw that your husband wants to pronounce it eh-LEE-as. This feels like an endless uphill struggle. The mispronunciations may be relentless. I am imagining if I wanted Robert’s name pronounced ro-BEAR, or Henry’s name pronounced on-REE, and immediately I feel exhausted. Plus, I agree with your reasoning about family names, particularly about family-name inequality.

I do think your husband should try to get over Felix the cat. That’s a reference that’s barely relevant to my generation (I’m vaguely culturally aware of the cartoon from 60-100 years ago depending on incarnation, but I’ve never seen it), let alone to current parents and children. And the name Felix is increasingly in use, which will increasingly dilute the association. Old people may remark on it, the way they will remark on any name they haven’t yet realized is current (“Mateo? Now THAT’S an unusual name!”), and they can be ignored until they’ve had a chance to adjust.

Though here I am one paragraph later, uncertain about Diego because of the TV shows Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go. To be fair, those shows were recent enough to have been watched at the time of broadcast by children who are still children today, and the DVDs are still regularly checked out at the library where I work.

I would encourage you to toss out “length” as a preference, if possible. One of my children has a name that is so long it gave me serious doubt (twelve syllables), and it is absolutely a non-issue. No one even says neutral things such as “Wow, that’s a lot of name!” Nothing. Not a peep. No one cares. And even if they HAD said “Wow, that’s a lot of name!,” it would have been the smallest of small deals. “Yes,” I would have said, smiling, and likely the conversation would have ended right there. The other person would not have gone home to their family that night saying “Let me tell you about the LONG NAME I encountered today!” (And if they had–because I actually DO report interesting name encounters to my family–THAT TOO would be the smallest of small deals.) Choose the name you love and REJOICE in its glorious longness! …Though if you prefer to avoid nicknames, that does seem like a reason to avoid a five-syllable name.

I have two names from the lists I’d like to champion:

1. Felix. Shortish, and easy to spell and pronounce. Felix Molina Maplepines. Felix and Liana; Felix and Alma.

2. Tomas. I think that you would get the occasional person trying to pronounce it like Thomas, but that it would be more typical for people to get it right: the spelling is a huge clue/reminder. There is a Stefan in my children’s school, and people might try STEFF-fun and stef-FAHN, but they don’t generally try STEVE-ven. Tomas Molina Maplepines. Tomas and Liana; Tomas and Alma.

Name update:

Thank you, all, for all your contributions and suggestions! I read your response, Swistle, and every comment many times. So many great suggestions, many of which would have been contenders if they weren’t taken by close family or friends (Luca! Andres! Rafael! Oscar!).

In the end Eli@s Abr@m joined us on April 8th, although technically he wasn’t named until the next day. The turning point with the name Eli@s was my husband realizing that while he was more familiar with the Spanish pronunciation he didn’t actually mind the English pronunciation, and was fine with using either. We also discussed how his own name is pronounced differently in English and Spanish, and how he has always used the standard pronunciation in each language and never minded. Diego and Emilio/Emiliano did remain options until the last minute, and while I do think Eli@s could have been an Emilio I am content with our choice. So far we normally use the Spanish pronunciation even when we are speaking English at home, but out and about (at the doctor’s office and places like that) we use the English pronunciation. We will see how things develop, but I am sure they will work out.

Thank you all so much!

Dear Swistle,

I have been a huge fan for years, and I’m super excited to reach out to you! My husband and I are expecting our first baby in mid-January, gender unknown. Our surname is Garrett-with-a-B, my name is Chelsea-with-a-K, and my husband is called L3wis. We’d like to avoid names beginning with K & L, and names ending in -ee and -s sounds. For a girl, we have a long list of names we like and can see ourselves using: Beatrix, Annabelle, Juliet and Adelaide top the list to name but a few. We like the idea of two middle names as well. However, if we have a boy, we are in trouble! First middle name will 100% be Peter, so that eliminates first names ending in most -r/-a sounds, as the pairings lack flow. The second middle name is not decided yet. I like Wilfred (my favourite of all time! – husband hates it!), Robin, Ernest, Quentin & Ralph. My husband likes Arthur, Julian, Axel, and names with a Roman origin – think Augustus & Aurelian. We can’t use Alfred, Rupert, George, William or Leonard. Our crossover list consists of Felix, Hector & Frank, but none of these feel like the one; my husband isn’t sure if we can carry off some of these names. I would describe our style as classic, vintage, Shakespearan – we aren’t drawn to modern names, nicknames as first names or surnames as first names. I like the idea of a name that is easy to spell, and is familiar, but neither very popular or very rare. Nothing feels perfect; and I’m finding it difficult to create a cohesive sibling set with our girl names, overall I think our boy name style is a bit more conservative than our girl choices. We would like to have at least one, if not two more children in the future. Hopefully you can help us!

I wonder if you would like Frederick for a boy. Maybe something like Frederick Peter ______ Garrett-with-a-B.

Hang on. Is Garrett-with-a-B your husband’s surname? Would your surname work as a second middle? Although, I will say that that’s what Paul and I did, and I have been increasingly unhappy over the years with the feeling that I accepted a small handful of dry crumbs. Husband gets his family’s surname for all the children, even though he is not particular close with his family, but I “get to” have my own family name as the SECOND middle name, in the throw-away, often-doesn’t-fit-on-forms position. Cool. I hear it once per school graduation, while his surname is in the open air simply constantly.

Well, what if instead you get to use one of the names your husband hates in the middle-name position? Frederick Peter Wilfred might not work because of the repeated -fred-, but let’s say we were dealing with Felix: Felix Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B.

I’d also like to ask about the origin of Peter. Is that a name from you / your side of the family / your preferences, or is it from your husband / your husband’s side of the family / your husband’s preferences? If it’s another name from your husband’s side, we need to look very seriously at creating balance with the first name and the second middle name. If it’s from your side, it’s a good start. And if, instead, Garrett-with-a-B is YOUR family surname and Peter is from your side/preferences, then we need to make the same effort to include names from your husband and his preferences: maybe his family surname as the second middle, maybe a name from his list that you dislike as the second middle, etc.

I think Franklin/Frank is a pretty great name, and I think a kid could carry it. That’s the one that stands out to me from your shared list. Franklin Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B.

I wouldn’t worry too much about finding a style match between your boy-name choices and girl-name choices: it’s so common for parents to have different styles there; and also, your lists seem compatible to me. I would keep an eye out for names that eliminate other names (for example, using Julian for a boy could rule out using Juliet for a future girl; maybe you wouldn’t want to have a Felix and a Beatrix; etc.), and I would look out for CLASHES—but, for example, a sibling group of Beatrix, Franklin, and Juliet works perfectly well, as does a sibling group of Annabelle, Felix, and Adelaide, so I think you’re starting from a good position.

Your preferences about not repeating either the beginning sounds OR the ending sounds of your own names makes me wonder how you feel about duplicating initials/endings within the sibling group. If you are strongly opposed, it is a good idea to think ahead of time about which name from each group you like best: Juliet or Julian? Annabelle or Adelaide or Arthur or Axel? Beatrix or Felix? It may seem like an obvious thing to consider, but it’s not something I myself thought through sufficiently: I realized that if I chose Robert it would rule out Russell, but I neglected to consider it would also rule out Rose and Ruth and Albert.

I wonder if you would like the name Conrad. I’ve been noticing it cropping up here and there. Conrad Peter Quentin Garrett-with-a-B.

Or Desmond. Desmond Garrett-with-a-B. Desmond Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B.

Or Crispin. It has the merry sound of Robin. Crispin Peter Earnest Garrett-with-a-B. (I’m deliberately using a different spelling of Earnest here, just for playing around.)

Aidric. I’m not sure if it’s too many snappy sounds with the surname. Aidric Garrett-with-a-B. Aidric Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B.

Edmund. Edmund Garrett-with-a-B. Edmund Peter Quentin Garrett-with-a-B.

Hugo. Hugo Garrett-with-a-B. Hugo Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B.

Warren. Warren Garrett-with-a-B. Warren Peter Ernest Garrett-with-a-B.

Victor. Victor Garrett-with-a-B. Victor Peter Quentin Garrett-with-a-B. I know you mentioned avoiding names ending in R, but I’m not sure the flow with middle names will be that much of an issue. Do you come from a family that uses them often? That is, do you have reason to think people will frequently call your child “Victor Peter”? Or will the middle names show up in the birth announcements and then not again until high school graduation?

Marcus. Marcus Garrett-with-a-B. Marcus Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B. I know we’re avoiding -s endings, but I’m slightly ignoring that preference, especially in favor of one of the few ancient-Roman names I think works beautifully today.

I’m a little surprised your husband isn’t on board with Quentin. That seems almost more like it should be on his list rather than yours. Let me just put in a word for it to see if he’ll reconsider it, because I think it hits a lot of the preferences. Quentin Garrett-with-a-B. Quentin Peter Wilfred Garrett-with-a-B. Quentin, Beatrix, and Juliet. Quentin, Annabelle, and Felix. Quentin, Adelaide, and Beatrix.

Name update:

Hi Swistle,

Hope you are well, I have a name update for you!
We ended up having a little boy, which was a shock as I was certain I was having a girl.
It took us a while to settle on the name, as we were still unsure. My husband decided to look up the feast days of the saints who are celebrated on the day our son was born. (I’d like to add we aren’t particularly religious – we were just looking for inspiration). Lo and behold, January 14th was St Felix’s day – and this was one of the few names we could agree on. This was the sign/coincidence we needed to confirm that our son was a Felix!

Here is Felix Peter Alfred:

P.S. I’m still holding out hope for Wilfred if we have another son in the future!

Dear Swistle,

I love your column and your commitment to balance between parents in naming! My partner and I feel similarly, and that’s an area where we could really use your help.

We are due with our first and almost certainly only child, a girl, in March. We were trying to conceive for a while and have developed a relatively stable shortlist, though now that this is actually happening, we’re wondering if we should open it up to new possibilities and conversely, how we will ever narrow it down. Any ideas for names to add or cut would be appreciated!

We are using my partner’s surname, which is Beach (but spelled like the tree). We decided to go with it for a variety of reasons, and I have 51% say in the first name as part of the deal. We’d also like to use a middle name from my family to help balance things out. But that’s where it gets tricky – there are “dynamics” in my family that mean many potential choices could result in hurt feelings/drama/guilt. The fact that this will be our only child increases the pressure. My last name doesn’t work well as a middle, and I never liked my middle name much. Any ideas on ways to balance the name without using a family name? Is that even possible?

One other note on honour names – a couple of names on our shortlist are family names, and if we use one of those, we’ll probably give our daughter a middle name that is hers alone.

On to the shortlist:

Mary: a family name on both sides (non-contentious). We love that it’s so recognizable but not very common, at least for babies. Only concern is that it might be too plain? We get a lot of underwhelmed reactions.

Alice: my maternal grandmother – another non-contentious honour name. So versatile. By far the most common (#11 nationwide, #44 in our province) which is the main drawback. Also, I think the name is very nice and checks a lot of boxes, but it doesn’t grab me the way some of the others do.

Bernice: this was my favourite, and my partner wasn’t that keen, and I more or less talked myself out of it. But now suddenly it’s become my partner’s top choice and I’m not sure if I can get back on board! I love the nickname options (Bernie, Bebe). I can’t decide if it’s great or too much with the last name. And is it unpopular for a reason? Too clunky?

Sylvia: the forest is meaningful to us, and it’s a pretty name. My partner has cooled on it, feeling it might be too much in grandma (rather than great-grandma) territory.

Linnea: lovely name, and meaningful to us for the botanical connection. Concerns: might be mispronounced, is just a little outside our usual name style, and might be too pretty?

Cecily: We like that it’s light but also serious-sounding. Concerns: a little hard to say, and the meaning “blind” is not super appealing.

Agnes: one of my partner’s favourites. I like it, but I dislike the nickname Aggie, and I don’t love “chaste” as a meaning.

Considered but rejected: Dorothy, Veronica, Helena, Cora, Estelle.

Boy names we liked: Laurence nn Laurie, Alistair, Ansel, James, Norbert, Jasper.

We are in Canada, which I hope is close enough to the US in naming climate that you will feel able to help. The only significant difference I can see, for our purposes, is the higher popularity of the name Alice here. Oh, and also that Bernie probably has a milder Sanders connotation in Canada!

Thank you so much for considering this (long) letter! We promise to write with an update if chosen.

R0semarie (R0sie) and Patr1ck

Well, let’s see, you’ve already considered some of my favorite ideas for bringing more balance to a name: using your own surname, using your own middle name, using family names from your side of the family. And you have already agreed that you will have more say in the first name; 1% more of the say seems…slim, considering the 100% sacrifice of your surname and 100% use of his, but I am just going to take 51% to mean it’s up to you, and that you will actually use that edge instead of choosing the name the two of you would have agreed on anyway even without the deal, and that way we’re all happy.

I will mention some ideas that you have likely already considered, but maybe you haven’t! And even if you have, perhaps they will be useful to someone else who is going through the same situation. One idea is to use your own first name. Men do this absolutely constantly; women, much less often. And your first name gives a lot of options to fit with a variety of first names, depending on to what extent each option feels like Your Name: R0se, R0sie, R0semarie, maybe variations such as R0salie and R0semary. My favorite would be to use R0semarie, but not if that doesn’t feel like Your Name—like, if that’s your Only When I’m in Trouble name. In that case I’d be more inclined to use R0sie. But I’ll note that men named James who have always gone by Jim or Jamie still tend to name their sons James, not Jim or Jamie.

Another idea is to use names that are meaningful to you in other ways than family names. Did you love Anne of Green Gables as a child (Anne, Cordelia, Marilla)? Little Women (Josephine, Margaret, Elizabeth, Amy)? Five Children and It (Anthea, Jane)? All of a Kind Family (Ella, Henrietta, Sarah, Charlotte, Gertrude)? The Five Little Peppers (Mary/Polly, Sophronia/Phronsie)? Are there books and movies you consider your all-time favorites? Do you have favorite scientists, politicians, actors, authors, poets?

Let’s look now at the first names. The three that align most with my OWN tastes (which is not the question here) are Sylvia, Linnea, and Cecily. I went to school with a Linnea (the lynn-NAY-ah pronunciation), and found her name endlessly pleasing to say; it was on my own baby-name list for each pregnancy. I don’t think Sylvia is too grandma; I think it’s well ready to come back into style—and considering how similar it is to the very popular Olivia, I’m surprised it isn’t more common already. I think it has a lovely sound: light/silvery but grounded/solid. I agree with your assessment of Cecily, and I don’t find the meaning to be an issue.

In fact, let’s do a little side-paragraph on the meaning of Cecily. I’m looking in The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, which says nothing about that meaning under Cecily. But under Cecil, it says that Cecil is a surname name, and that the Cecils were Welsh; it then adds: “In the Middle Ages Cecil was occasionally used as an English form of Latin Caecilius (an old Roman family name derived from the byname Caecus ‘blind’).” Are you following this? I had to re-read it like a dozen times, and I had to look up the word byname, which apparently means nickname and/or early surname (like from when surnames were used to distinguish between two people with the same name, like Isaac the Baker and Isaac the Bearded). But what I’m getting here is that the name Cecil is a Welsh surname that does not mean blind or have anything to do with blindness. But “in the Middle Ages,” people “occasionally” said they were using Cecil or Cecilia as a form of the Latin name Caecilius. And that Caecilius is a surname that came from some ancestor being called Isaac the blind, and the word for blind was caecus. This feels like a lot of big leaps to get to the idea that the name Cecily means blind. Nevertheless, Saint Cecilia in the Catholic tradition is considered the saint of the blind, so that perhaps locks it in for many. [Edited to add: This tidbit about Saint Cecilia is apparently not true. This is where I got the (mis)information: https://stmatthewmonroe.org/st-cecilia.]

Well. I wonder if you would like Celeste?

I’m not going to go on a similar journey for Agnes, because it’s a name your partner is more in favor of than you are, and I am glad to see those names but am not considering them strong contenders. I will say that other books list the meaning of Agnes as more like pure/holy/lamb (agnus is Latin for lamb).

I think the name Mary is similar to the name John, in that it seems so very ordinary and plain on paper, but springs to life with freshness on an actual child. There was one single Mary in school with my kids, and when I first heard her name I thought “MARY!!” with amazement, hearing it as if for the first time as a name rather than as almost a name stand-in. It feels saturated because of its many previous generations of popularity—but in this current generation of babies, it is rare and surprising. It is much higher in the Social Security Administration‘s rankings than I’d expect (#136 in 2022), and I have wondered if that is regional (i.e., in some areas of the U.S., there is a Mary per household), or if it is due to a large number of children being given the name but then going by a different name. I would be interested to hear other people’s experiences with the name in their region.

I am intrigued by the name Bernice. It has been off my radar. I remember a Bernice on the TV show Designing Women. (That used to be one of my favorite shows. I wonder if it holds up to modern re-watching?) Other than that, I’m not sure I’ve encountered any. I think Bernie or Birdy would be adorable nicknames. Bernice makes me think of the names Beatrice and Beatrix and Bernadette.

Alice, Bernice, and Agnes all merge a bit with the surname, creating a “speech” sound. This is not any sort of deal-breaker, but it’s the kind of thing I like to think about ahead of time.

Because you like Alice and Cecily, and because you like name meanings, I suggest the name Felicity. It means happy/lucky.

Because you like Laurence for a boy, I wonder if you would like Florence?

And because it came to mind while I was writing the post, I suggest the name Harriet. I feel it shares vibes with Agnes and Alice and Bernice and Sylvia.

If it were up to me, this is the list I’d be working with:

Celeste R0semarie Beach
Felicity R0semarie Beach
Florence R0semarie Beach
Harriet R0semarie Beach
Linnea R0semarie Beach
Sylvia R0semarie Beach

And the one that is currently my own frontrunner is Sylvia R0semarie Beach. It’s a first name that is on your shared shortlist and has meaning to both of you but you like it a little more than your partner does, which feels like it puts your 1% to good use; and it uses your own first name as the middle name, which gives her a uncontestable family honor name that goes a fair way to balance the weight of your partner’s family surname.

Name update:

Dear Swistle,

Thanks so much to you and your readers for the thoughts and suggestions! It gave us a lot to consider. A funny thing happened as we were testing out the names on our shortlist (we used each for a week): Alice wore so well! It went from unexciting to the top of my list. Once baby arrived on March 21, it still felt right. With my maternal grandmother’s name as first the name was satisfyingly balanced, and we chose a middle we liked for its style and meaning. Alice Esme Beach is now 3 weeks old and a true delight! Thanks again for your help.

R0sie and Patr1ck