Hello Swistle! I love reading your blog and appreciate your and all your readers help with names! I love baby names and am about to embark on naming our fourth, and potentially final, baby!

Our name is like “Diesel” but with C at the front! We have 3 children already and come November will be so happy to have 2 boys and 2 girls! Our first son is Calvin, daughter Susanna, second son is Bennett and our last will be another daughter! We love our kids names and enjoy the comments we get on how unique but familiar and nice each of their names are!

As soon as I found out I was pregnant all I could think about were two girl names. Jane and Laurel. I have always loved both. We weren’t sure if it was a girl but I desperately wanted to use one of these names so I really hoped it WAS a girl and we had no boy names we truly loved. Once we found out it is a girl-which we are thrilled about-we are having a tough time committing to either one. Can you help?!?

A little history of our names:

Calvin love NN Cal and it was not super familiar but still a “name” which is a big preference to me bc of my slightly weird, head turning name, Jancy. All middle names are family names-his is David after his father and grandfather.

Susanna was a name we thought of and loved as soon as we found out we were pregnant with her. Middle name Joy after my sister, her aunt. I didn’t realize until after she was born how truly unpopular this name is-not been in top 1000 basically ever-but everyone comments how beautiful and sweet this name is!

For Bennett we did not find out the gender prior to delivery so in the delivery room my husband made the final call which I was on board with “boy, Bennett and girl, Jane”. His middle name is Bradley after my father!

Now another girl! We still have this sweet name Jane but also this unique and never used name Laurel. One of my children don’t love Laurel because they have a hard time saying it which made us realize that most children wouldn’t be able to say it until at least 5! Is that something we are okay with?!

I also realized recently every single one of us has an N in our name name unintentionally. I don’t feel pressure to keep this going but all of the children’s names do come from some sort of historical figure who we have been encouraged by in our life. Jane would fit both of those catergories and Laurel would fit neither. Her middle name will be a name we are very excited about-Holland, after his grandparents who we are very close with and are very dear to each of our children.

Other names we like but for some reason are not jumping out to us as much this time in no particular order:

Helen
Ellen
Lucy
Katherine
Rachel
Caroline
Alice

Sometimes I wonder if I am missing something great because my mind and heart can’t get away from Jane or Laurel. What are your thoughts?! I don’t know how we will choose! My husband could probably like 80% of names he hears and I am only in a small 5% of liking names so he is held up by me on that end! We have 3 months left to figure this out!

Thanks for your consideration!

Jancy and Nathan

My own personal opinion, apart from other considerations and looking at this only as a naming exercise, is that Laurel fits slightly better in the sibling set. Calvin, Susanna, Bennett, Laurel. I think the name Laurel will get you more of the “unique but familiar and nice” reactions you like with your other kids’ names, and it gives everyone their own initial. If you’re pretty sure she’ll be your last child, I might suggest naming her Laurel Jane, giving you the option of using Jane whenever you please, and coordinating beautifully with her sister’s name Susanna Joy. [Edited to add: Multiple commenters mentioned the matching -el endings of Laurel with the surname, and I hadn’t noticed that, and it changes my mind: I would choose Jane.]

But what matters isn’t which name I personally think is slightly better in the set, or even which name IS better in the set (I love sibling names to coordinate, but coordination is only one of many preferences), but instead which name you want more to use, and to me every line of your letter is singing out that you’d rather use Jane. It sounds to me as if you think you ought to prefer Laurel, so you’re finding as many reasons as you can to argue for Jane instead—including the “We all have an unintentional N in our names” concept, which you’re not really arguing for but even the mention of it sends my eyebrows straight up: it is such a bafflingly slim reason to favor a name that it immediately catches my attention as a possible tell.

But I want to be clear that, as I start arguing for using the name Jane, it’s because I think it’s the name you want to use, and because I think it’s a great name and great with the sibling names. It’s not, for example, because I care one single morsel if some children have trouble pronouncing the name Laurel, which is a short-term issue at absolute worst. We are not going to start restricting ourselves to names that preschoolers can easily pronounce.

Nor do I care which name the other children in the family prefer. It’s fun to consult the kids, and I loved it when my other kids had opinions about names, but in the long run they won’t care about the name decision as much as I will, and in fact later they’re unlikely to even remember having opinions, and in fact when they’re older they might have completely different opinions (if they have any opinions at all about it).

And of course the unintentional-N thing is going right straight out the window. We are using that only to give us a possible peek into your inner wants. Your family had an unintentional-two-syllable thing until Susanna was born, and an unintentional-A thing until Bennett was born, and I assume no one felt the long-term impact of breaking with those. And besides, if we are going to have to start coordinating entire FAMILIES’ names (rather than just sibling sets), I’m throwing in the towel.

Use the name Jane if you like it better and want it more. It’s great with the sibling names, it’s fabulous with the middle name Holland (much better than Laurel, in my opinion), it meets all your preferences, and you love it. I love it too. I think it’s a wonderful name. And if we’re mentioning small things that don’t matter much, I like that it mixes up the syllables in the group: two names with two syllables, one name with three syllables, one name with one syllable.

At this point, you could coast for awhile without making a final decision. You ideally have several months to go, and you have two excellent names you love: you could wait and see how you feel over the next few months, and even leave the final decision until you see her.

And see how you feel as you read this post and the responses: Do you find you’re hoping people will vote for one name over the other? Do you find yourself feeling displeased as you read support for one of the names, and getting a little thrill as you read support for the other? This sort of thing can be a good way to figure out which name you prefer.

One small thing I notice is how visually similar Jane is to the name Jancy (and it repeats an initial)—but I think that could be a sweet partial namesake. I love the name Jancy, too, and it would be fun to get a family-name thing going with that. Ooo—if you do go with Laurel: Laurel Jancy?? And that would leave Jane for a just-in-case future daughter!

While we’re still here, let’s do an aside about name popularity. According to the Social Security Administration, the name Susanna has been in the Top 1000 for 77 of the 98 years from 1900 to 1997—and even went as high as the 500s/600s. However, that IS still quite uncommon; and it’s been out of the Top 1000 since 1997. The name Laurel is of ballpark-similar popularity: it was in the Top 1000 for 105 of the 118 years from 1901 to 2018, and in 2018 was #623. To see that in real-baby numbers, in 2018 there were approximately 382 new baby girls named Susanna variants (154 new baby girls named Susanna, 114 named Susana, 62 named Susannah, 52 named Suzanna), and 480 named Laurel. There were 1,123 new baby girls named Jane that same year: more common, but still nice and unusual. For comparison, there were 18,688 new baby girls named Emma. If we look ahead to when this batch of babies is in school: for every 18 Emmas in their grade, there will be an average of 1 Jane, 1/2 Laurel, and 1/3 Susanna.

Name update:

Hello Swistle! We have a name update for you.

Our sweet little Jane was born November 6th and while we held her and ponderered what this little ones name should be we kept coming back to Jane. I still have my qualms and doubts that will, I am sure, subside as she grows and we get to know her better. Her namesakes were completely surprised and thrilled we chose their surname, Holland, as a middle name. Thank you to everyone for all the help-naming a child is the most difficult business!

Hello Swistle!

I just recently discovered your site and am amazed by what you do! I’d love to hear your thoughts on our current situation. We are expecting our second son at the very end of August and are having a terrible time agreeing on names this time around. Our first boy is Casen (Kay-sin) Parker and was such an easy name for us to agree on. Our surname is Roan (rhymes with bone). For the longest time, I had the name Grady picked out for another son, with no middle name in particular. My husband eventually agreed, but I think that’s because we hadn’t really found anything better. We also considered Callen and Nolan in the process, but they just weren’t “it.” Now that it’s getting closer to his arrival, my heart just isn’t into the name and I’m having trouble committing.

Someone recently suggested the name Barrett to us, which I melted – instantly fell in love. I love the potential nicknames (Bear, or Rett) and I was excited to use the middle name Henry (a family name) with it. BUT… after the high of the discovery, I remember my brother’s dog’s name is also Barrett. After discussing this with my mom whom I’m very close to, she is trying to talk me out of it and thinks it’s a bad idea. She knows I have a preference for uncommon names, and rattled off someone else who has used the name in the past 5 years. I’m also extremely worried that this will make my brother or his wife upset (I am more worried about the wife as she has a very… unique personality) and I am not the type of person to make waves. My husband also really likes the name, more so than any other we’ve discussed so far, which makes it really hard to turn away from.

So, my question is this: do I move forward with the new name we love, stick with the one we had already picked, or start from scratch? I appreciate any advice you have!

These are my thoughts:

1. I am very in favor of taking into account other people’s feelings about baby names, especially if someone else has already used the name you want to use. And, simultaneously, I am a “names are not one-time-use items and the other people weren’t the first ones to use it either” person.

2. I care very much less about using someone else’s PET’S name. That is, I don’t think pet names fall into the same sort of “be careful, be kind, take feelings into account” category I’d use for someone else’s child’s name. I had a cat named Oliver and so I chose not to use that name for Henry even though I wanted to (Paul said his mother would never have let it go, and did a credible imitation of her “joking” about “the boy who was named for a cat!” and it killed it for me), but if a friend had a cat/dog/rabbit/hamster named Oliver, I wouldn’t hesitate to use the name for a baby if I wanted to. Well, okay, I would hesitate, but I tend to be over-anxious about things; I think in the end the hesitation/anxiety would not kill the name for me.

3. You know better than we do how much of an issue this is likely to be for your sister-in-law. It’s easy for us to say ignore her or that she shouldn’t care, when we’re not the ones who have to deal with the possible fall-out. My hope is that even if your brother/sister-in-law didn’t like that you used the name, that it would not be a big deal and in time it would be no deal at all. But if you suspect they’re the sort of people who would never let it go, that may be a factor as it was for me when I thought about my mother-in-law never letting go of the cat’s name.

4. I think your mom didn’t immediately love the name Barrett and that’s why she’s mentioning the one other person she’s heard of with the name. According to the Social Security Administration, the name Barrett was the #213th most popular boy name in the U.S. in 2018, which is not very common at all. I wanted to reassure you here by comparing its popularity to the popularity of the name Casen, but that turned out to be challenging because of all the possible spellings: there were only 380 new baby boys named Casen in 2018, but another 500 named Cason, another 785 named Kason, another 693 named Kasen, another 420 named Kaysen, another 961 named Kayson, another 424 named Cayson, another 153 named Caysen, and so on. But with only those first eight spellings I thought of (and I don’t even know if those are the most common), we’re up to 4,316 Casen variants born in 2018; for comparison, there were only 1,802 new baby boys named Barrett that same year.

In summary, I’m in favor of you going ahead and planning to use this name that made your heart melt. I’d leave yourself open to finding other names you like better still, just in case such a name exists, but I wouldn’t let either your brother’s dog’s name or your mom’s tepid initial reaction put you off.

Name update:

Thank you so much for your thoughtful advice! I ended up chatting with my brother and his wife, and they were totally supportive of our name choice. But in the end, we found another family middle name that gave us a total change of heart.

We welcomed Grady Haze into our family on September 4th and had absolutely no reservations about our decision! Funny how things work out.

Long time reader here hoping to get some last minute advice. I am having a c-section on Friday and having cold feet about our daughter’s middle name. Our first daughter’s name was much easier because my husband and I had only one name in common on our favorites lists – Georgia. We call her Georgia, Georgia Kate, and GK. Deciding our second’s name was not as easy because we did not have any overlapping choices this time, so in the end I picked my top choice from his list. The name chosen around 24 weeks was Scarlett Claire.

Fast forward and long story short, we have had a very trying third trimester — broken a/c, dryer died, multiple house leaks that will mean we cannot return home after the hospital and will have to stay with family instead. At church this past Sunday, it hit me that I think her name should be Scarlett Joy, because despite the circumstances and stress, her arrival will still be a source of Joy and should be celebrated. Claire has no significance other than I liked the sound. I still like it, but think Joy might bring more “butterflies” because of the situation. I also like how SJ sounds more than SC, if we ever call her by initials like we do with GK. My husband says he is not entirely swayed either way, so I think since I picked Scarlett from his list, I can have more swing with the middle.

So do I pull a last minute switch up based on emotion or do I stick with the choice we made ahead of time? I’d love your outside input.

Thanks!
Kelsey

I don’t see any reason you have to stick with a name just because you chose earlier in the pregnancy: the name isn’t REALLY decided until it’s on the birth certificate (and of course, sometimes not even then). It sounds like you like the new choice better AND it has significance for you. I say go ahead, and that it makes a fun naming story.

What does everyone else think?

Name update:

Our little girl was born this morning and in the operating room I asked my husband one more time if we could call her Scarlett Joy, and he said yes. She is certainly a joy during a rough season, so I think it is perfect.

Hi Swistle!

My husband and I are expecting our second baby in August and are having a terrible time coming up with a name. We have a little girl, Rae, who is 1. We knew he/she was going to either be Rae/Ray as that is my grandfather and we both love that name. We don’t know boy or girl this time so are needing to have both ready.

For a little boy, my husband loves the name Fred. My maiden name is Fredrick, so of course my family is in love with it. I am yet to be convinced.. I’m just not sure I can imagine snuggling a sweet little Fred. I don’t really know what I like, but am drawn to the more classic names such as Michael and Phillip.

Girl names we don’t have much. We are tossing around Helen or Vivian but haven’t found one yet that sounds like the “one”. I, again, like the more classic names.

Any advice for this baby that is going to be here before we know it?!?

Thanks,

A struggling Momma

Here are some things I love:

1. Family names.
2. Maiden names used as first names.
3. The name Fredrick/Frederick/Fred/Freddie.

So I am 100% on board with naming a boy Fredrick. I think there are a lot of names that seem like they’d be odd on a baby, but that’s why so many babies get silly nicknames such as Peanut and Sunshine and Lovebug: babies are ridiculous, and too cute and small for anything serious. But babies grow, and soon the baby that seemed too tiny and squooshy to be named Margaret seems absolutely right as a woman named Margaret. If you gave the baby a name that seemed just right for a baby, you’d likely find the baby outgrew it alarmingly early.

I don’t think you must continue to use family names just because you used a family name for your first, but it does make it more appealing to search out more family names. Do you have any other relatives you’d like to honor in this way?

I further think that because Rae is an honor name, it’s less important to coordinate the style of the sibling names—but I still do like the idea of coordinating where possible. Rae is an interesting challenge because the particular style doesn’t immediately spring to mind. It seems to me it goes well with a fairly wide swath of names. I don’t know if these would work with the surname, but these are the sorts of names I’d be looking at:

Alice
Anne
Bonnie
Claire
Delia
Eve
Flora
Georgia
Gwen
Iris
Ivy
Jane
Jean
Jill
Joan
Joy
Lucy
Lydia
Lynn
Marlo
Molly
Opal
Polly
Sally
Sylvie
Tess

Or would you want to do another “We use this name either way, boy or girl” name? Casey, Avery, Teagan, Lee/Leigh, Bailey, Charlie?

Name update:

Thanks Swistle and everyone for your help! My sweet Fred was born last week and is happy and healthy :)

Hi Swistle,

I have a question for you and your readers regarding hyphenated middle names.

A little background – we have four kids and are expecting our fifth, and likely last, baby in the fall. Our four kids are named Eli Michael (mn after my dad), Ezra Matthew (mn after my husband), Emmeline Kaye (mn after my mother-in-law) and Eben Jacob (mn after my grandfather). We pronounce our daughter’s full name as Em-eh-LEEN, but mostly call her Emme (pronounced like Emmie). The first names are all names that we loved and middle names all honor various family members. Now we are expecting another girl and will likely follow the pattern of choosing an E name that we like for the first name and a family name for the middle name. Our top choice right now is Eulalie, with Elisabeth and Edwina as distant alternatives. In terms of middle names, we’d like to honor my grandmother Ada. I like the sound of Eulalie Ada, but not nearly as much as that of Eulalie Ada-Rose. (Rose is not a family name, just a name we like.) Other family names we’ve considered are Bella (my other grandmother’s name) and Anna (my name), but I like Ada-Rose the most, I think.

And that brings me to my question. I know plenty of people have hyphenated last names, but what about a hyphenated middle name? My husband thinks I’m created unnecessary difficulties, but I like Eulalie Ada-Rose considerably more than Eulalie Ada Rose, and I like that a hyphen makes it clear that Ada-Rose are both part of the middle name and not part of the first name. But is it worth the trouble? What is the trouble, exactly? This is unchartered territory for us so I was curious if you or your readers had any insights.

Thank you! We really appreciate it.

I haven’t had to manage a hyphen before, so I will be very interested to hear what complications people with hyphens have had: do some forms not accept them? do some forms eliminate them? do people sometimes omit them accidentally, creating hyphenless mash-ups? etc.

But I HAVE dealt with a double middle name, so I can tell you two things that appeal to me right away about your hyphen idea:

1. It makes it clear that the two names are both middle names. We occasionally (at least, before I learned to head it off at the pass) had people thinking that the second middle name was part of a two-name surname.

2. It gives you ONE middle initial even though you get both names. We fairly regularly encounter forms that allow for only one middle initial, and it bothers me to have to pick one. Eulalie Ada-Rose would have the middle initial “A.”

And in your particular case, there is one more reason to favor the hyphen:

3. All the other kids have one middle name, not two; using Ada-Rose makes it feel like one middle name. It’s no big deal to suddenly break the pattern—but I say that with a deep forehead wrinkle. It would bother me a little, though I do feel that with The Last Baby you can pretty easily use the explanation “We ran out of babies but not out of names!” or “It was our one last chance to use Rose!” or whatever.

But also one reason to be against it:

1. All of the other kids have family middle names, and now this last child’s middle would be a family name combined with a non-family name. It dilutes the honor and changes the pattern. Especially if your Grandma Ada is still alive, I wouldn’t want to make her wonder why everyone else got their name honored as-is, but hers was modified. Again: it’s no big deal to break a pattern if you want to. But: deep forehead wrinkle.

Name update:

Hi Swistle,

Thank you so much to you and to your readers for posting our question regarding a hyphenated middle name for our fifth child whom we planned to call Eulalie. For nearly all of this pregnancy that was our top choice for our daughter’s name, but towards the last couple weeks my husband wanted to find something “less frilly and more solid”. We went back to the drawing board and both agreed that we liked the nickname Edie. Our baby girl was born on November 1 (just barely missing a Halloween birthday) and we were still going back and forth between Elodie and Edolie. We picked Elodie initially, but it just didn’t seem to match her spunky little personality. After spending a little more time with her, I new Edith was the right name for our little girl. For her middle name, I wanted to honor one of the women on my side of the family since our older daughter’s middle name is after my wonderful mother-in-law. Finally, we landed on Annabel as a middle name with Anna after yours truly and “Bel” after my late maternal grandmother, Bella. I am a bit sad that we didn’t incorporate my other grandmother’s name (Ada) into Edith’s name somehow, but I do love Annabel as a m.n. for our little Edith (I was also considering Adabel, but didn’t like it as much) and I know my late grandma Ada would have absolutely approved. Thank you again for all your advice. We can’t wait to take baby Edith home today and introduce her to all her big brothers and sister.

Best,
Anna

Hello Swistle,

My husband and I would greatly appreciate some help in naming our first child, a baby girl due in November. Prior to finding out the sex, we thought we had narrowed down our names: Maren Luna for a girl and Ezra Adair for a boy.
Maren: Latin for sea – my husband and I are both obsessed with the ocean and find it very therapeutic, so we loved it
Luna: After Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter. I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan and so is my husband, and Luna embodies many traits we would love to see in our daughter (quirky, true to herself and ignores the judgements of others, intelligent, very loyal)

Ezra: A beautiful Hebrew name (we are Jewish) that we love the sound of
Adair: Unique and we like the meaning. My husband has connections to Scotland and it’s has a Scottish origin which we liked

So, we found out we were having a girl and there we were: Maren Luna! However, that very same day (somehow it took over a month to notice this…) I realized that there is no way I want to name my daughter Maren because it is literally a perfect combination of my husband’s and my name: Mark and Lauren. Mark, Lauren, and Maren… I just can’t do it!

So, we are back at square one. Names we like but are way too popular for us are:
Amelia
Hazel
Olivia
Charlotte

Names I like that my husband isn’t sold on:
Reese
Micah
Navi (nah-vee)
Arielle
Juliette

Names my husband likes that I’m not sold on:
Amaya
Flora
Talia
Aviva

While we would love to keep Luna as the middle name, we are more concerned with finding the perfect first name and going from there. And while I realize that none of the names I listed above fit this theme, I loved the sound of Maren Luna with the -en ending on the first name and a more feminine sounding middle name. So clearly we are all over the board. At this point we want at least two children (three tops) and still intend to use Ezra Adair if we have a boy in the future.

Thank you so much for your insight!

I think we should start by making sure you really don’t want to use Maren. On one hand you have told us clearly that there is no way and you just can’t do it, so there’s no reason for me to be sitting here discussing something you’ve been so clear on. On the other hand, if we were in actual fact sitting in my office and having some doughnuts and coffee while talking it over, I would want to pick at it just a little more to be absolutely sure.

For one thing, I’m not sure what percentage of other people will notice, especially once more children are added to the family (“Mark, Lauren, and Maren” is more obvious than “Mark and Lauren / Maren and Ezra”) (although I admit I Really Notice It in either example)—and those who DO notice may think of it as cool/deliberate: name-combining is the sort of thing some parents go for on purpose. For another thing, sometimes a sudden realization about a name can have more force than it needs to: the surge of adrenaline from “I can’t believe we almost didn’t notice this!” can feel like a disaster averted, when really it’s just nice to have thought of it ahead of time. I’d hate to see you throwing away a name you love and agree on, if it’s the adrenaline talking.

But if there is no way and you can’t do it, then let’s see what else we can find. From the list of names you like and your husband isn’t sold on, I want to talk for a minute about Micah. Micah has somewhat unisex usage in the U.S. (3,718 new baby boys and 268 new baby girls in 2018), but is still mostly used for boys. If a future possible son is likely to be named Ezra, I wouldn’t use the name Micah for a girl: two male biblical names used together make it seem like the name Micah must be a boy in this case. (And in fact I recommend it for a future boy, if you have two: it would make a perfect little brother for an Ezra.)

I would have some similar concern with the name Reese, but at a much lower level: that spelling is used mostly for girls in the U.S., and it’s not a biblical name so it doesn’t make that fast connection with Ezra that Micah does. But I am not sure Reese works well as a sister name with the more feminine names on your lists: Talia and Reese, Juliette and Reese, Arielle and Reese, Flora and Reese.

I would personally cross out Navi: at my house where the Legend of Zelda video games have been played for years, Navi is an object of mockery. “Hey!,” we say in her piping fairy voice when we want to draw someone’s attention to something they already know about. “Hey! Listen! Hey!” But I am not sure how widespread that association would be.

From your list, my favorite is Juliette. I like that it’s familiar but underused, and I like its similarity to Amelia and Charlotte from your joint list.

From your husband’s list that you’re not sold on, I am particularly drawn to Flora. That seems to me to be a name that goes very well with the names that are too popular for you, such as Hazel, Charlotte, and Amelia: Flora is appealingly old-timey, and contains the same sounds as more popular names, but seems to have missed the Cora/Nora/Theodore/Eleanor popularity. Her name would mesh well with her peers’ names, while still standing out as a fresh surprise. And I find it charming with a possible future brother named Ezra. Flora is my top favorite for you and I am feeling the impulse to try to force you to love it, so let’s take a break and think of some more possibilities:

Athena
Bianca
Cecily
Claudia
Constance
Cordelia
Corinne
Dalia
Delphine
Fern
Fiona
Freya
Georgia
Isadora
Linnea
Liviana
Lyra
Margot
Mariel/Meriel/Miriel
Mariella
Maris/Meris
Meredith
Minerva
Mirren
Philomena
Polly
Rosemary
Sabrina
Simone
Sylvia
Willa
Winifred

From this list, my favorite is Meredith. Underused; keeps the sea meaning, loses the similarity to your own names. Meredith Luna Gilbert. Maybe one day Meredith and Ezra.

Name update:

Our daughter’s name is Maren Luna.

Dear Swistle,

I’ve been following you for years, figuring I would never have a reason to write to you–but here I am! Our third girl (and last baby) is due in early August, and I am super resentful to be writing this letter because until two weeks ago we HAD a name for her, but it was stolen!

My kids have my husband’s last name, sounds like M@rcus but with a k instead of a c. My husband is Nathan and I am Shannon. I kept my maiden name, which is not usable as a first name. We love names that feel ancient, storied, and European, though we aren’t particularly strict about that. More than anything, we like unique names.

Our daughters are Clio Evangeline (6) and Melusine Rose (4). Since my second daughter was born, I feel like people really react to both of their names with great interest. They want to know who the girls are named after, and I am always excited to talk about Kleio the Greek muse of history and Melusine from French mythology. That said, I don’t care so much about having a big cultural rationale for my third daughter’s name; I happened on both of these names by accident while idly reading up on other names.

So now here’s the problem. We’ve known this baby was a girl since shortly after the pregnancy was confirmed (routine genetic testing). The same day we got the news of her sex, I happened on the name Saskia and FELL IN LOVE. I love that it has strength and sass. I love that there aren’t already 12 of them in my kids’ elementary school. I love that, like Clio and Melusine, it’s outside the top 1000 for girls born in recent years. I love that this would mean we had one Greek name, one French, and one Germanic/Slavic. I LOVE THIS NAME.

Stupidly, I mentioned it to my brother’s wife, who is also expecting a baby due a few weeks from now. She has three other children whose names are all in the top 20, so I felt that it was safe to talk about it–there is just not much overlap between her style and mine. Of course, you can guess what happened next. She came to me two weeks ago and confessed that she too has fallen in love with the name Saskia, and asked whether I would mind if the cousins “shared” it.

YES I MIND. We spend a lot of time with my family, and I am not comfortable with having to distinguish our kids when we call out loud for one of them. (If I wanted that, I’d name her Sophie or Caroline!) But I had no choice but to give my SIL my blessing for her to use the name if she wants to. And since she is due first, I am almost positive that she will.

So……..what do I do now? I still love the name, but there is an angry red tinge to my love now. There is a small (1%) chance my SIL will not use the name, but she has already shared her intentions with others, so I think she will. I don’t want my daughter to share it with her cousin.

It seems that we have to switch, but I am stumped. I don’t have a backup name. Do you happen to have any in your back pocket? Names you don’t recommend often because they seem too weird/esoteric for other letter writers? Please help.

Thank you so much!

Shannon

This is a heartbreaking disaster. I am wondering if there is any room here to go back to your brother and sister-in-law and say “When you asked if I minded if the cousins shared the name, I was taken off-guard and said I didn’t. But I should have clarified that the cousins wouldn’t be sharing the name: if you use it, that takes it off the table for us.” I feel like your brother and sister-in-law should have the information that this is not a matter of BOTH of you getting to use the name. It might not change their decision about what to name their baby, but if I were them I would really, really, REALLY want to know what the consequences would be of that decision, instead of thinking it’s all settled and there are going to be two same-age little Saskia cousins calling themselves The Saskia Squad and so forth, and then being shocked and dismayed a couple months later when you don’t name your baby Saskia, and then realizing it was because of them. (Unless there is some specific reason you haven’t mentioned, such as that your sister-in-law is 100% in charge of naming babies with no input from your brother, I think it’s important that we keep in mind your brother’s involvement in this and not put it all on your sister-in-law.)

Because there are two issues here: one issue is that someone else is using the name you planned to use; the other is that you’re not okay with a duplicate within the family. Your sister-in-law asked about the second thing, but you answered her as if she was asking about the first thing, and I think it could have made a significant difference in how this is going to play out. For the first issue, I say there is no such thing as “stealing” a name (though, boy, this situation puts me the closest I have ever been willing to use that verb), since a name can be used by as many people as want to use it, and you would not be the first ones to use Saskia either, and so on—and so you will get all my pained sympathy but none of my avenging anger (though, again: I’ve got to say, it’s not as if the name in question was Sophia, and the uncommonness of the name really makes a difference to me). But that brings us to the second issue: there are people who avoid duplicate names at all costs, and on the other end of the spectrum there are people who constantly recommend their own children’s names to other people because they love duplicates, and both extremes and everything in between are perfectly reasonable preferences to have. And you are someone who avoids duplicate names at all costs, and your brother and sister-in-law are apparently near the opposite end of the spectrum, and THAT is where I think we need to see if there is hope.

I want to find a way to give your brother and sister-in-law the following information about the name: that actually you DO mind if the two cousins share it; and in fact, sharing Will Not Happen. I am someone who likes duplicate names (though if I think about it, I think I like it only if I am the one who used the name first), and if I knew someone else was the same, I would feel happy about our kids sharing a name. But if I knew someone else was an avoid-duplicate-names-at-all-costs person, I wouldn’t feel happy about our kids sharing a name, because I’d know the other person was unhappy about it and possibly resenting my child for having that name. It just makes a huge difference, and I would REALLY WANT TO KNOW. And from your letter, it sounds as if your sister-in-law was going directly for this second issue with her question: she didn’t ask if you minded if she and your brother used the name for their baby, she asked if you minded if the cousins SHARED the name. And you DO mind. You mind VERY, VERY MUCH. But what you SAID is that you DON’T mind, so right now SHE THINKS you don’t. She may be like “Yay, how great that we can use the name TOO, without stealing it away from them!”

I think you were absolutely right not to try to lay exclusive claim to the name, and I admire you for it because that is SO HARD when it’s a very unusual name and they only even KNEW about the name because you mentioned it to them. But it is okay to MIND, and it is okay to SAY you mind, if you can do it in a loving tone of voice, and in a way that makes it clear you know the difference between “telling them they can’t use the name” and “minding,” and also in a way that communicates that if they go ahead and use it anyway it’s not going to create a blood feud. I don’t know if I can come up with a good way to say it (it’s so common for me to come up with something on paper, and then try to debut it with my voice and find I have failed at writing anything close to workable dialogue), but the GIST would be something that conveys to them your deep belief that they get to name their baby what they want to name their baby, and that you know the name Saskia doesn’t belong to you—but that it is your own preference to avoid duplicate names, and so if they use the name, you won’t be using it. My hope is that they are empathetic people who understand the other end of the duplicate-name spectrum, and that this will make them re-think the decision. My fear is that without this information, they may make a decision they will regret when your true preferences come to light in August, but that by then it will be too late to do anything about it, and EVERYONE will be unhappy. (And of course they might still decide to use the name even with the new information, but then at least we will all know they went into it knowing what the situation was.)

One more thing: The worst outcome here for your brother and sister-in-law would be if they were to sacrifice their favorite name because they realize how much it means to you, and then you don’t use it after all. It doesn’t sound like that’s likely here, but I am familiar with the idea of a name getting ruined by something like this, so I wanted to mention it just in case the name was one of several finalists, and/or you feel it’s now sullied for you no matter what by this upsetting situation. If you can no longer use the name, it’s a crying shame but I’d say it means don’t go any further on this with your brother and sister-in-law, and try to be glad that at least the name is still in your life via your dear little niece.

In the meantime, let’s see if we can feel a little better by thinking about other name options. The name Saskia appears only once in The Baby Name Wizard (did everyone know there was a revised 4th edition? thank you to the readers who let me know!), and it’s in the German and Dutch section, so I’ll start there:

Aleydis
Hannelore
Hildegard
Ingrid
Liesl
Liselotte
Sigrid
Valeska
Wilhelmina

More possibilities, from other sections and additional books:

Alyona
Amaryllis
Andromeda
Anezka
Araminta
Ariadne
Artemisia
Birgitta
Circe
Clotilde
Delphina
Eliska
Esmerelda (too reminiscent of Imelda Marcos?)
Eugenia
Hephzibah
Iolanthe
Leocadia
Lysandra
Myfanwy
Octavia
Ottilie
Persephone
Sophronia (the one in Five Little Peppers was nicknamed Phronsie)
Theodosia
Verica
Xanthe
Zipporah

Name update:

Sorry this update is so long overdue — the three-kid life is NO JOKE!

As I mentioned in the comments to the original post, I did text my SIL and let her know we would not be using the name if she used it first. If it’s not obvious from my original letter, she and I are very different sorts of people and she still doesn’t get what the big deal was. In her peer group, the question is not “What will we name the baby?” but “Which of the 20 most currently popular names do we like best?” and if someone already used the name you liked, well…put it this way: at her daughter’s birthday party there were two other girls who shared the birthday girl’s name, and they all went by firstname middlename. So she didn’t see why I would prefer for my Saskia to be the only Saskia in our immediate circle.

But I digress. She did not use Saskia. It turned out she was unable to talk my brother into it anyway, and they went with the name that’s currently #10 for baby girls.

The whole drama ruined my feelings about Saskia, so we have set that name aside for a future pet, though that is a discussion for another day when I find my sea legs. Both families are DONE having kids, so this will be our last time going through all of this.

And in the meantime, Isolda Susanne joined our family on August 8, four days after her due date, and she is perfect! (But now SIL has found another way to ruffle my feathers: calling her “Izzy,” a nickname we hope doesn’t stick.)

P.S. ALSO, I would be remiss if I didn’t add that we ALMOST took one commenter’s suggestion of Bellona, which I still dearly love, until Clio (7) frowned at us and said “bologna?” obviously believing we were planning to name her sister after deli meat.

Dear Swistle,

Hello! I’ve been an avid reader for years and relied on so much of your naming advice when I was pregnant with my first in 2015. We named our son Rory Joaquin last name sounds like Out-in. We are expecting our second and final child, also a surprise, very soon–June 11. We are pretty certain of our girl name, Iris Paloma. I’m really second guessing our top contender for a boy name, Luca Ezequiel.

We chose Rory just because we liked it, and it was important for the middle to be a Spanish name to honor my Mexican heritage. Joaquin ended up being the perfect choice because it’s got geographic importance and is a family name a few generations back. We like that Rory isn’t too popular, is a name everyone is familiar with, and falls into lots of naming categories (Western, Irish/Celtic, Androgynous). We were so happy we had a boy because we never were confident with our girl name during my first pregnancy. This time around we came up with an entirely new set of girl names, and Iris Paloma manages to honor both sides of my family in interesting ways that make me really happy.

My issue with our boy name is that there’s not really a family connection to either name. We have a positive association with the name Luca after traveling to Italy in 2013, but I also worry that it’s much more popular than Rory, and wonder if it makes an imbalanced sibling set. I like Ezequiel because I love the way it sounds in Spanish, but again, I’d be choosing it just because.

Other names that made it to our short list but have been eliminated for reasons (we know people or babies with these names, they create problematic initials, would have the repeating N sound for the first and last name, or are too popular:
Adrian
Bram
Harrison
Sebastian
Wesley

Other names still in the running:
Felix (husband has been lukewarm about the name, and could not be paired with Ezequiel because initials would be problematic)
Noel (pronounced the English way, but I’m also happy with the way it sounds in Spanish, concerned it may be too confusing for other people, would probably also need a different middle)

Ultimately, I don’t know if I like either of these names any more than Luca, though at times I’ve even questioned if Luca Out-in sounds good. Do the A and the O run into each other in an unflattering way? Is my problem that I am using a stale name list for a boy after having used my two favorites on my first child? I’ve tried to find other family names for the middle, but they pale in comparison to Joaquin. The only new name I’ve come up with is Rio. It means river in Spanish, and has geographic significance, which are pluses. The possible downside is that our recently departed cat was named River, and if used as a first name it’s a repeat R first initial which I would have preferred to avoid. I don’t know if either of these should be dealbreakers.

Is it fine to choose a first and a middle for a boy just because and skip the chance of using an honor name? Have I overthought this?

Thank you so much for your consideration,

Christina and Nick Out-in

Here is the factor I would immediately eliminate from any and all consideration: That the name Rio means River, and your recently-departed cat was named River. (I too might avoid Rory and Rio, but I think Rio makes a really good middle-name candidate, and that the cat’s name is a non-issue.)

Here is the factor I would like to reassure you about: It is absolutely common for parents to use a name of family significance for a first child and have no family names left that they want to use for subsequent children. And in this case, the first child’s middle name’s significance seems sufficiently diluted; I could be way off, but it sounds from the letter more like you chose it because you liked it and it was Spanish and it had geographical importance, and then happily it also turned out to appear in your family tree. That is, it is not as if you named your first child to honor a close and beloved family member, and now feel the second child’s name should have some similar significance—though in that case, too, I’d be attempting to convince you that it really is okay to have one honor name you want to use and not have any others. But I also do love honor/family names, and so if you DID wish for a middle name of that kind of significance, I think it would be fun to look through the family tree and see if you can find anything else you like. But you have already done that, and if you CAN’T find any family names you want to use, I absolutely think it’s fine to pick something because you love it; also, I think the fact that it is Spanish means it already DOES have family significance, in that it is chosen to honor your side of the family. Have I gone back and forth enough times on this to demonstrate how much I believe you can do exactly what you PREFER here? It IS absolutely fine to choose names because you love them and not because they have family significance.

Relatedly, it is absolutely natural and makes complete sense that you would use your favorite names on your first child, and therefore have only less-favorite names left for subsequent children. Sometimes it happens that parents use their favorite name for the first child, and by the time a second child is born a NEW favorite name has risen to the same level of love as the first child’s name; but if this doesn’t happen, of COURSE the second-favorite and third-favorite (and so forth) names are less loved than the first-favorite. This, combined with the way the first child’s name has since then become fully associated with the actual child, can make parents feel as if NO name is good enough for the second child, which is why I recommend parents not make the goal to find a name they like as much as the first child’s name.

Where was I? Oh, yes: I think Rory and Luca go beautifully together. I don’t notice the popularity gap, and I like the way both names have unisex usage in the United States. I like that both have the same number of letters and syllables, and both end in vowels—not that that matters so much, just that it’s pleasingly tidy. I like that both middle names are Spanish. Really, I think you’ve done a very nice job here and that this is most likely to be last-minute cold feet.

If you WANT to keep looking, or if the name just isn’t sitting right with you, I do also like Noel from your list—though I don’t like that it makes a “lout” sound with your surname. I know it’s off your list now, but I also love Wesley. Rory and Wesley! Felix pleases me a little less because of it’s almost exclusive usage for boys. (Wesley too is not as unisex as the name Rory, but its gentle sound and vowel-ending help compensate for that.)

More possibilities:

Blake
Brennan
Brody
Carter
Casey
Connor
Ellis
Finley
Harris
Jules
Keller
Kieran
Lane
Lyle
Niall
Quincy
Shea
Spencer

You’ll notice I left on some names that don’t meet your preferences (ending in -n, too common); I thought about taking those off, but sometimes seeing one name can lead to thinking of another name, so in the end I left them all.

Name update:

Dear Swistle,

Almost a year later, I have an update. Writing to you was on my pandemic to do list.
We had a baby girl in June 2019! We named her Iris Paloma and I’m in love with her and her name. I lucked out both times getting to use the names I was most excited about. Your advice and your readers’ was helpful in calming me down about a problem that wasn’t really there. I think the beauty of your blog and community is getting to talk over naming concerns with other people who care about names at the same obsessive level. Thank you so much!!

Christina

Hi Swistle!

I am due November 16 with our second boy! Our first son’s name is Leo Iolani (pronounced e-o-lani) Pangan (sounds like penguin without the “w” sound). He shares a middle name with my husband, who is part Hawaiian. If this child were a girl, we were pretty set on using the name Eloise and calling her Ellie or Elle. However, we are pretty stumped when it comes to boy names. It is especially hard because I am a teacher and associate a lot of great names with certain students (and they’re not always positive associations!).

We have narrowed down the middle name to three possible options—all honor names. We would use Joseph after my maternal grandfather, William after my paternal grandfather, or Rey to honor my husband’s maternal grandparents whose last name was Reyes. I’m happy with all of those choices and would just choose based on what flows best with the first name.

We want a name that is semi short (or has a shorter nickname), sweet yet still strong, and unique but not too trendy. My personal favorite is Jude, but my husband has vetoed it because it’s his boss’s son’s name and he feels like he already knows Jude. I also love Henry and Will, but I feel like every kid at the park has one of those names right now. We considered Finn and Lincoln for Leo, but decided against both. The ending of Lincoln did not sound right with our last name, and Leo ended up totally being a Leo.
Below are some names with both like:
1. Arlo nn Arie/Ari (my mother responded with the puking emoji when I shared this one—she later apologized)
2. Otis (does it sound too much like a dog’s name? I’m thinking yes)
3. Kai (this is more of my husband’s choice—he likes that Leo has an Italian first name and a Hawaiian middle name and thinks it would be great if this boy was named Kai Joseph to have the opposite)
4. Xander (my husband’s new favorite)
5. Silas (I like better than my husband)
6. Ellis (my mom’s choice—if we ever did have a girl, this is a bit close to Eloise)

We are not totally sold on any of those options, but we haven’t heard anything else that pops out to us.

We may try for one more child down the road, but this could potentially be our last! We appreciate any advice or suggestions you may have! Thank you!!

1. I love the name Arlo (*reproachful look in your mother’s direction*) and wouldn’t try to get Ari out of it (though would allow it to happen naturally, if it did). Since you may have one more child, I’d think ahead of time about whether two -o endings would make you feel pressured to think of a third -o name.

2. Otis does not strike me as dog-name-ish, but I remember when I was considering the name Milo for my last child, there were a LOT of people who thought of that as a cat name, so I understand if that same segment of the population has Otis filed firmly under Dog. Still, my recurring wish is that having a name used in a movie didn’t have to rule it out for all other uses: movies often choose names that are just on the cusp of being popular again, and it’s such a shame to see good names seemingly ruined indefinitely for so many people. The movie Milo and Otis came out 33 years ago, and I feel like it shouldn’t still have dibs on those names.

3. I find Kai Pangan a little difficult to say; not enough to rule it out, but enough to think twice. I like your husband’s thinking on the symmetry, though Joseph doesn’t leap out to me as an Italian name.

4. I don’t like Xander with Pangan: it’s the repeating -an- in the first syllables, I think. But this sort of thing is extremely subjective: one person can dislike a sound for the exact reason someone else loves it.

5. I like Silas. The -s blends a little with the P- of the surname, but it doesn’t make an unpleasant or awkward sound/word. Or maybe the -s/Pangan sounds a little like “spankin’,” but on the other hand I have said it dozens of times in a row and that would not be typical usage.

6. Ellis blends quite a bit more than Silas for me, and I’m not sure why; probably it’s that the name starts with a vowel so the sounds are already softer and more blendy. I get Ella Spangan, especially since the name Ella is so much more common than the name Ellis.

From your list, then, my own clear personal favorite is Arlo, as long as it will not make you feel pressured to continue an -o theme. [Edited to add: @monabenach pointed out that Arlo and Leo are not great together. I don’t think I’d said them together; as soon as she mentioned it, I agreed. They’re tongue-tangley.]

More possibilities:

Ari (just Ari, without starting at Arlo; eliminates the repeating -o issue)
Casey
Clark
Drew
Eli
Ezra
Felix
Finley
Frank
Ford
George
Harvey
Isaac
Joel
Max
Reid
Wade

Name update:

On November 17, at 11:34pm, our sweet Silas Rey Pangan made us a family of four. Thank you so much for your wonderful comments—I read every single one! Throughout my pregnancy, we grew more and more attached to the name Silas, as our other top contender, Kai, just didn’t seem to fit the feisty little mover in my belly. When he made his grand appearance after only four pushes, we knew it was the right decision. To continue the theme of royalty, our little Leo was joined by his “King of the Forest” (Silas means “of the forest” and Rey means “king”). We couldn’t be more in love!

Hi Swistle,

I’m a lifelong name-nerd and have been reading your site for YEARS; now I can finally write in with a naming issue of my own! I am pregnant with our first child, gender unknown. However, if it’s a girl, my favorite name is Vera. Our last name is similar to “Lillibrand.” I was saying the name out loud the other day and am now worried both names will run together and sound like “virile.” Yikes. Do you think others will notice that or am I just reading into it? I just love the name so much!

I have now said “Vera Lillibrand” out loud so many times, it doesn’t sound like real words anymore. I want to wait for the kids to get home from school and have them say it aloud so I can listen and see if I hear “virile”; I’m not hearing it when I say it. The word virile has a “rull” sound that is missing from the combination of “Vera” + “Lil”—like, I can see how it ALMOST hits the right sounds, but I think it misses because “rah-lil” fails to hit the “rull” note. I think it’s a great name.

What does everyone else think?

Name update:

Hello Swistle!

As it turns out, our worries were for nothing (for this baby, anyway) as we welcomed a baby boy on December 8th, which happens to be my birthday as well! Eli George “Lillibrand” is beautiful and we are happy beyond words. Thank you everyone for your input!