Dear Swistle,

We are expecting a baby boy early in 2015. He will be our second and last child. Our daughter is named Jewel, after my grandmother. Her middle name is Bird. I love her name! It’s a family name, unusual but not made up, it’s classic, it’s ideal for us. Boy names, MEH! I just do not love boy names the way I love girl names. If we were having a girl we would probably name her Rose with some kind of family honor name for the middle name.

For a boy, my husband is REALLY stuck on the name Noel (pronounced Knoll or NOH-ell). I like the name, but I see some problems, e.g. being called Noelle all the time and people calling him Joel or Noah or something just because Noel is a little unusual. I love the way it looks on the page but it’s not a pretty word to say. Also, we live in a mix of Spanish and English speakers, and I feel like the Spanish pronunciation will be Noelle no matter what I do, and that will drive me (and the kid) crazy. My first name is a little tricky and I have really hated dealing with it in my life, and I hate to burden a kid with that! The Mr. has an easy name and has no idea how annoying it is to always be called by other names and have people misspell your name (except it took months to get his parents to say my name right! He kind of got it then).

A name that we both like is my late father’s name, which is Brendan. It’s just a LOT to have two kids named after recent generations of my family, so I’d rather not use his name in the first name spot–maybe as a middle name. But it’s a rare example of a name we agree on!

Some of the names that we both like but have been rejected for various reasons are Henry, Oliver, and Felix.

Names on our “maybe” list that I love but husband is lukewarm on are Ian and Malcolm.

The names I like that the Mr. has vetoed are Leland, Oscar, Alec, Larkin, Edmund, Ewan, George.

The names the Mr. has liked that I have vetoed are Roy and Nolan.

So, should I learn to love Noel? Keep lobbying for something else? The baby’s last name will be Romlin with a T.

Thank you!

It sounds to me as if you have a lot of reasons you don’t feel comfortable using the name Noel. I would add a reason: it’s very similar to the name Jewel. They’re spelled differently, but the endings sound the same.

Could you learn to like Nolan? It sounds very similar to Noel, while eliminating most of your objections. It also reminds me of Leland, Ewan, and Ian from your list. Although, when I say it with your surname, my tongue does get a little tangled; and I’m not crazy about the repeating -lan/-lin sounds.

If you two agree on Brendan, I wouldn’t cross it off the list just because it’s another family name; in fact, for me that’s a point in its favor. Perhaps you could find a name from your husband’s side (his dad’s name?) to use as the middle name—or perhaps Noel would work there, since then your husband can have the name he loves without any of the everyday hassles of using it as a first name. Brendan Noel Romlin; Jewel and Brendan.

I was planning to suggest Leo: it’s similar in sound to Noel and Leland, and similar in style to Henry and Oliver. But when I paired it with your surname, it instantly sounded very familiar; it took me a few moments, but I realized it was reminding me of the actress Lily with your surname. I don’t THINK that would bother me, but I’d want to consider it ahead of time.

This may be a long shot, but I was thinking about names that sound like Noel, and then I saw Roy on your husband’s list, and that made me think of the name Loyal. (I also thought of Royal, but Royal and Jewel seem like an amusing combination.)

Ewan on your list made me think of Owen: it has the N, the O, and the W-sound of Noel.

Or Rowan or Rohan or Ronan or Roman or Bowen if you want something less popular.

(All these -an/-en endings bother me just a little with the ending of your surname, but that’s only a matter of personal preference, and you have Nolan and Ewan and Larkin and Ian on your lists, so I’m including them anyway.)

I feel like the two of you are dancing right around the same sounds. He likes Noel and Nolan, you like Ewan and Malcolm. Would you like something like Logan or Landon or Hudson or Holden or Wilson? Lincoln or Roland or Conrad or Lionel or Moses or Leroy? Carlo or Nico or Bo or Otto or Mateo or Hugo or Milo or Arlo or Theo? Brody or Colby or Oakley or Jacoby or Crosby? Elliot or Louis or Tobias or Hayes? Orion? Troy or Royce or Bryce?

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

I am pleased to introduce Ian Riley Romlin-with-a-T! His middle name (spelled differently) is my last name, to honor my dad. My husband gradually learned to love the name Ian and let go of Noel, and I am very grateful.  We had some discussion at the hospital of naming him Rory on account of the red hair, but stuck with Ian!  Thanks so much for your ideas and input, and thanks to those who commented.

Hi Swistle,

I’ve been reading and responding to posts for several years now and am hoping that yourself, and the others, can help me choose a name for Baby Dum0nt #3. We had two, almost devastating, emergency c-sections resulting in concerns whether either child would survive rather than caring about the gender so this go around we have a planned c-section in January and are hoping that we will finally get our happy “SURPRISE, it’s a _____!!!” So, we have decided to keep the gender unknown again.

For some background, our last name is pronounced du-mont, english rather than the french pronunciation. We have a 3 year old girl named Juliet, a 1 year old boy named Oliver, and we hope to have four children altogether. Our naming style is very much classic/traditional names and we prefer names that are either male or female (don’t particularly care for unisex names). Both our kids have family names for their middle name and we plan on continuing this tradition with our remaining children so we don’t have to worry about choosing those. If this baby is a boy, we plan on naming him Charles. It’s finding the perfect girl name that we are struggling with.

The name we currently like best is Rose. We feel that it fits in well with the sibling set and that it has that classic but not overly used (at least for a first name) style that we like but I find myself continuing to search for “THE” name despite liking this one; I feel as though the right name is still out there.

To give you an idea of other names we like, but for one reason or another they just aren’t right:
Ruby – seems like it has almost has fallen out of the old, classic style and into the hipster-ish category. Husband has kinda thrown it out
Lucy – husband not keen. Too short? Doesn’t really fit in with sibling names.
Violet – too similar to Juliet ??
Isabel – I don’t know if I could get around the Izzy nn that is bound to occur
Vivienne – feel like the spelling is too fussy with Juliet and for whatever reason, I don’t like the Vivian spelling. Also, there is a 2 year old that lives right beside us with this name….so that pretty much is off the table.

Names we like but cannot use:
Brigette
Emmeline
Madelyn (or its variations such as Adeline, etc)
Henrietta
Etta and Ada we love so much but think they have too many harsh “T” and “D” sounds with our last name

There aren’t really many names that we dislike in this category/style. Margaret is one name we can’t really get on board with using as a first name but will likely be one of the middle names, after my grandmothers.

Thanks in advance for all your help!!

Kelsey D.

Rose is my favorite from the list, too. My one hesitation is that with Juliet, it immediately makes me think of the rose-by-any-other-name quote. Whenever such a connection occurs to me and leads to a hesitation, I ask myself: “But is this a PROBLEM?” In this case, I think no. There isn’t anything negative about that quote, or anything unpleasant about the connection. It helps even more than there is another sibling between the two names.

I know only a few Isabelles/Isabellas, but so far haven’t heard the nickname Izzy used (though I’m definitely familiar with it as a nickname option). Of the three who come to mind, one goes almost exclusively by Bella (at her request), one periodically goes by Bella but also uses Isabella, and the third goes only by Isabella as far as I know (she was in Elizabeth’s class last year and Elizabeth says no one calls her Bella—but Elizabeth wouldn’t know if the nickname were used outside of school). I can picture this changing, though, as they grow up, so it’s a good issue to be taking into account if you dislike the nickname. I’m remembering the Elizabeths my age who were Beths as children and switched to Liz as adults.

I do think you could use the spelling Vivienne with Juliet if you wanted to. I was about to type that I saw the objection and that it bothered me a little too but I thought that would quickly fade—but then I realized that in the amount of time it had taken me to write the first part of that sentence, it already didn’t bother me anymore. I think I even prefer Vivienne with Juliet: Vivian is more exactly parallel in a letter-by-letter way, but I think the style match is better with Vivienne.

The trouble with trying to answer a question from a fellow name-hobbyist is that it’s hard to imagine suggesting something you haven’t already thought of! I will persevere, however. As we’ve seen here before, sometimes abundant commenter approval leads parents to see a name in a new light.

If Rose ends up not being quite right, and Violet is too similar to Juliet, I wonder if other flower/plant names might work. Calla is pretty. Or I love Iris. Lillian with the nickname Lily is similar to Vivienne/Vivian but without the girl-next-door issue; if Oliver goes by Ollie, Ollie and Lily might be too similar. I’m a little nervous about the potential poison-ivy teasing (it was the first thing my kids thought of when I suggested it as a name for Henry before we knew he was a boy), but Ivy is wonderful, and I think the fast connection to poison ivy would diminish if the name would get a little more familiar. Oh, or Laurel! Or would you like Rose better as a short form of Rosemary? or, to add a little Shakespeare theme, Rosalind?

Claudia sprang to my mind. It has some of the sound of Etta or Ada, but with more syllables to downplay the repeating D-sounds. Claudia Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Claudia.

Lydia is similar: it has the D, but I think additional syllables make it even nicely tied in to the surname, rather than harsh. Lydia Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Lydia.

Or Cecily would be pretty. Cecily Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Cecily.

Or Sylvia. Sylvia Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Sylvia.

Or Beatrix. Beatrix Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Beatrix.

Bianca is a name I’d love to used more often. Bianca Dum0nt does gallop together a bit for me, I think because of the second-syllable emphasis: I get Biancadum0nt as if it were all one word. But I think it would take me about two repetitions to get in the habit of a tiny half-pause. Juliet, Oliver, and Bianca.

Sabrina has a similar emphasis, but for some reason doesn’t run together as much. I think it’s the hard-C sound of Bianca that gives me a bit of a galloping feel, and Sabrina’s N doesn’t do the same. Sabrina Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Sabrina. I love that.

Eloise is one of my own favorites. Eloise Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Eloise.

Eloise makes me think of Eliza, another of my own favorites. Eliza Dum0nt; Juliet, Oliver, and Eliza.

Name update!

Hi there!
Thank you again to you and all the other readers that provided insight into our naming dilemma if babe #3 turned out to be a girl; well, two weeks ago, we ended up having a baby girl! After reading all the comments, I was set on using Rosalie however, my husband preferred the simpler Rose. Although I felt like Rosalie was a better match stylistically to our other two kiddos names (Juliet and Oliver) I was happy to use “just” Rose.
So, introducing Rose Margaret Grace!

(Also, thanks for the suggestions/encouragement of future names should we have another girl: Lucia, Viola/Violet and Vivienne.)

Thanks!
Kelsey D.

Dear Swistle,

Our name preferences have been ALL over the place since we started looking. We have gone from wanting a very floral/pretty name, to a very masculine name, to a VERY unique name, and now we’re back to family names. The problem is, we don’t really like any family names, and most names we say we like we really mean we don’t hate them. Its becoming stressful as the pregnancy draws to a close. I feel that we will have discharge delayed due to lack of name OR we will just name her “Baby”.

Here is where we are at. I really want to love the name Esther. It was my grandmother’s name and she was an amazing woman who lived a very hard yet joyous life and I really want to honor her. However when I say the name outloud it just sounds harsh. Also I struggle with a NN, Would Essie work? Es? Este?

If we do go with Esther I feel like we would need a really feminine middle name. I also wanted to use the RaeAnn for a middle since it is the mother’s name and the middle name of the godmother.

Esther RaeAnn. Is that pretty?

Other family names we have are pretty boring. Husband’s side has a lot of Betty’s/Elizabeth’s. I had a greatgrandmother who went by the name Birdie, but I feel that is only NN worthy. Her real name was Leopoldina. Yikes!

Non family names we don’t hate are:

Faye
Rose
Clara
Ada
Alice
Adrian

I’m worried that they are all becoming very popular this year.

Any guidance you can give us we appreciate!

—
Mary Davis

As the first step, I’d recommend looking into what the time limit is for choosing a baby’s name. I do doubt an insurance company would consider “no name yet” a reason to authorize a delayed departure, but the rules will affect how much hassle you’ll have to deal with once you get home. It appears to vary by state: I did a quick and casual online search and found, for example, that in one state the birth certificate must be filed within 5 days of the birth; if the parents have not chosen a name by then, the certificate is filed as “Baby Girl/Boy Surname” and there is a fee to change the name when the parents do choose one. Another state didn’t mention a time limit for filing, but did mention that making changes to the baby’s name during the first year was a whole different kettle of fish than making changes after that. Several states emphasized how much easier it is to let the hospital file the paperwork, but they could mean it’s easier for THEM.

If your state has nice lenient rules, it would be nice to be prepared with something light and cheerful and competent to tell any disapproving hospital staff who tried to apply pressure; something like, “Oh, it’s all right: we called City Hall beforehand and they said we have three weeks to file the paperwork.” Or, depending on your state’s rules, nice to know that you DON’T have three weeks, and that if you don’t choose something before you leave you’ll need to do a bunch of tiresome paperwork while postpartum and exhausted.

On to the names. For a first baby, I DO think it’s a good idea to discuss broad style preferences. We get many letters here from parents who inadvertently chose something outside their usual style for their first child’s name, and then felt stuck: if you name your first daughter Andrew, but the other girl names on your list are Emma and Isabella, and the only name you like for a boy is Andrew—well, it’s a tricky situation and nice to avoid it to the extent possible.

In your case, however, it sounds like trying to choose the style first is what’s tripping you up. Right now, for example, you’ve decided on family names—but you don’t like any family names. Look again at this excerpt from your letter: “Now we’re back to family names. The problem is, we don’t really like any family names.” Yes, I think you have put your finger on it.

I love the name Esther, and I think it fits beautifully with many of the other current vintage revival names, and I love the idea of you using it in honor of a family member you greatly love and admire—but not if it throws you into the conflicted position of trying to force yourself to like a name you don’t like. When a couple wants to use family names but doesn’t like any of the available names, I think one of the best solutions is to use family names as middle names. Certainly I’d recommend not setting up a policy of using family names for both first and middle, when it’s already this difficult to find family names for the first baby.

On the other hand, if you seriously can’t find ANY names you love from ANY category, then I think using a family name can be a very satisfying solution: even if you never grew to love the name itself, I think it’s likely you would find significant happiness in having used it. And I do think there are very good odds on growing to love the name and later wondering how you could ever have disliked it. These things can happen when a name is attached to a baby we love.

Furthermore, I disagree with the current cultural feeling that parents must choose a name they LOVE: I think sometimes parents have to choose a name they’re fine with, and that that works out just great too.

I wouldn’t worry at this point about a nickname, unless a good nickname is one of your dealbreaking requirements. Esther is only two syllables, and so maybe you will use something like Essie, or maybe something else will evolve naturally, or maybe you will find you always call her Esther.

If you use Esther for the first name, would it help to choose a non-family middle name, so you can get the exact balancing sound you’re looking for? It really does sound to me as if you’re backing yourselves needlessly into a corner here, and that you might find significant relief just by lifting the family-name requirement. Perhaps there’s a pretty name you like very much but it seemed too common to be the first name.

You don’t mention any non-family names you like; is that because you’ve run into this same issue with every category, and there are no names at all that you really like? If you haven’t already tried this, I would suggest having each of you leaf through a baby name book and make a list of names you like without trying to first choose the category (feminine, masculine, unique, family). Pretend that names don’t belong to style categories, and that they’re all equally common; which ones are you drawn to? It may emerge that all the names you love are in a category you were trying to avoid: popular names, for example, or names you think other people will think are boring, or names you think other people will think are weird. This can be a stressful adjustment, but one I think is worth making.

Or maybe you will find you really don’t have strong positive feelings about ANY names. In that case, I love your idea of using the name of a PERSON you have strong positive feelings for, and I think your chances of being happy with such a name in the long haul are much greater than if you chose a name you liked equally but had no strong positive association with.

Name update!

You helped me so much with this question I posted!!

I would like to thank everyone who also helped by commenting.  We settled on Esther Elizabeth (after our grandmas) and we LOVE the name.  Everyone loves the name, so many people have an Esther in their life that they love.  We have had a lot of positive feedback and I can’t think of any other name that would suit.

Dear Swistle,

I am almost 34 weeks pregnant with our second daughter. She is scheduled to arrive via c-section on 9/15/14. Our last name is Ronsen with a J, it is Norwegian.
Our first daughter is named Charlotte Mae. Mae is also my paternal grandmother’s middle name, and after we had chosen it, we found it is also the middle name of one of my mother-in-law’s grandmothers. Charlotte was not nearly as popular in 2010 when we chose it as it has become.
We did not know her sex until her arrival, so had she been a boy, her name would have been Matthew William (Father in law’s middle name is also William).

Husband wants to continue the idea of a family middle name. He thinks that this time the middle name should come from his side since it “just worked out” that last time the middle name was on both sides. I disagree because the baby has his last name, so I don’t think we automatically have to throw out middle names from my family since the last one was technically from my family.

I love:
Emeline (He pronounces with long i, I prefer with short i. I am not sure which of us is correct, or if another spelling would get the short i sound)
Annelise (He suggested Annabelle, but I don’t like Annabelle)
Caroline (He rejected last time, but I still have love in my heart for this name)
Catherine (I am not sure if I like the flow of this with our last name, but it is a long time favorite of mine)

He has suggested:
Sarah (I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either. I feel like it is too plain with Charlotte)
Susan (No, just no)
Emily (Too popular for my taste- this is his suggestion in response to Emeline)
Erica (To me, Erica is a mom name- I have a co-worker named Erica and friends from college named Erica).

Family middle names:
Kay (my middle name, my mother’s middle name)
Elaine (my grandmother’s middle name)
Jane (my grandmother’s middle name)
Elizabeth (his grandmother’s middle name)
Matilda (his grandmother’s middle name)
Louise (a name that appears on his family tree)

I come from a large family, and we have large circle of friends, so the following that could have been contenders are already in use:
Emma, Madelyn, Grace, Audrey.
I don’t care for alliterative names, so despite the fact that I love Josephine, I don’t want to use it.
We are not nickname people, so the baby will be called by her first name, so we wouldn’t name her “Elizabeth” and call her “Liz” or “Beth” for example.

Thank you!

Your husband’s list could indeed use a little freshening up. Erica is a Mom Name; Susan is a Grandma Name; Emily is still used but has passed its long, long peak. Sarah has potential, I think. I agree it seems a little plain with Charlotte; but on the other hand, for me it spins Charlotte from “We chose a fashionable name” to “We chose an old-fashioned classic.” If you used Sadie as a nickname for Sarah, I think you’d have a very nice pairing—but you’d prefer not to use nicknames, so I agree it sounds like this is not the right choice.

Would it help to make the name Sarah a little longer? Something like Saralyn or Sarah Grace? I wonder if Serena or Sabrina would work. I particularly like Sabrina: Charlotte and Sabrina. Serenity comes to mind, but doesn’t feel quite right to me with Charlotte.

Seraphina/Serafina is a possibility. The popularity gap displeases me a little, but it’s similar to Sarah from your husband’s list while being more up-to-date. It also reminds me of Josephine.

I pronounce Emeline with a long-I. The different ways to pronounce it is definitely part of the package deal of this name. We did a post on it awhile back, and it appears there are three ways to pronounce it: long-I, long-E, and short-I. I wish I’d done a poll back then so we could see what the percentages were, but the short version is that you’d have to be okay with regularly correcting the pronunciation and hearing it pronounced incorrectly. If you want the short-I sound, I’d recommend spelling it Emelyn or Emmalyn (3 syllables, similar to Evelyn and Madelyn), or Emlyn (2 syllables).

Evelyn would be another good option, in fact. Charlotte and Evelyn.

Because you like Annelise and he likes Susan, I wonder if Susanna/Susannah would be a good fit. I think it’s wonderful with the name Charlotte.

I might also consider going straight to Anna. You could then call her all the Anna- names (Annelise, Annabel) as fun casual pet names for her.

Caroline and Catherine both seem like good choices. It’s worth bringing up Caroline again even if he rejected it last time: I put William’s name on our second-baby name list even though Paul rejected the name the first time—and Paul picked it immediately. I think Catherine is very nice with your surname.

I agree that middle names from both sides of the family should still be in the running, though I do like the idea of leaning toward one from your husband’s side this time. I would say I agree with both of you: I agree with him that Charlotte’s middle name honors your side of the family (the connection on his side is not only coincidental but remote), but I also agree with you that using his family’s surname is part of the equation. So overall, I’d prefer to pick a name from his side, but wouldn’t say it must be from his side or that names from your side should be automatically excluded from consideration. It would be nice if an equivalent to Mae could be found: a name that was used on both sides of the family.

I like the idea of using Kay, since it’s your mother’s middle name and yours. I can’t decide if I like it or not that Mae and Kay are so similar. Are you hoping to have more children? Would Mae/Kay make you feel like you had to choose a third similar name for a third daughter?

The similar endings of your favorite names (-line, -lise, -line, -rine) seems like a good place to look for more options:

Adeline
Corrine
Elise
Evelina
Gwendolyn
Jocelyn

Because your husband likes the names Sarah and Erica and you like Caroline, I might keep my ear out for more options with that “air” sound. Wait, that makes me think of a great one: Clara. It sounds like Erica and Sarah and Caroline. It’s vintage revival like Charlotte. I love it. Charlotte and Clara.

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

The day before her arrival, we finally agreed on a name for our baby girl. Daddy couldn’t go into the delivery room without a name, so over our last dinner out we hashed it out.

Thank you to you and your readers for your suggestions.

Susannah Kay arrived on September 15, 2014 at 10:32 AM.

We couldn’t love her (or her name!) more.

Hi there!

We are expecting a new baby in January and it’s a boy! Boy names are so much harder for us. We have two girls who are almost 6 and almost 2 named Haven Bombay Oravec and Lark India Oravec. We had a baby boy in between who sadly died shortly after birth — he kept his pre birth nickname of Tusker (we were traveling in Kenya during my pregnancy and that was the local beer) and became Tusker Monsoon Oravec.

We are currently expats posted in Mumbai, India and decided to give our kids middle names to reflect their place of birth to carry with them when they return to the US. We would consider the middle name Carmichael which was the first street we lived on in Mumbai or another name reflective of the local culture or neighborhoods. We can work around any great first name choice.

For first names, I was hoping to choose a name that has a strong connotation like his sisters (Haven -safe, Lark- happy, whimsical). On another note, his dad is Brian and his grandpa is Bruce so there is a tradition of Bs. We considered naming Tusker, Beckett but he didn’t live long enough to see if it fit.

Names we’ve got on our early list(in no particular order):
Archer
Wolf
Blaze
Flash
Phoenix (my husband is not so sure, but I like the idea of rising from the ashes of our earlier loss)
Brave
Benegal/Bengal ( a family name on my side — could also be middle name)
Lucky
Danger (always thought it would be a fun middle name but not sure I have the guts to follow through with it)

If he was a girl, we might name her:
Wren
Sage
Valentine
Harbor
Harper
Aria
Pearl

We like to have 2-3 options and then live with the baby a couple of days to see what sticks. Can you help? I’m really struggling with this one!

Best,

Aisha

Looking at the first names of the surviving sibling group helped clarify things for me: it pares the question down to “Haven, Lark, and ______?” When I looked at the full names, a name like Flash seemed to fit well; when I looked only at the names that would be used in everyday life, it no longer fit.

I feel the same about Danger, Brave, and Lucky: those choices feel too bold with your daughters’ names, and are not names that pass the “Would you want to live with this name yourself?” test for me. I’ll suggest the “Starbucks test” that has been suggested here before: it can be helpful to order a coffee (or place a reservation, or anything else where you need to give them your name) and see how it feels to do so as, for example, Flash. This can also give valuable insight into the likely reactions of the public to a name.

The name Flash has the additional downside of being a euphemism for people exposing their private parts in public.

The name Danger has the additional downside of turning into a tiresome joke. “What, it’s not your middle name? Hur hur hur.”

Lucky has the additional downside of being a euphemism for sexual success. (“Honey, I’ve got my hands full here—can you get Lucky?”)

It is a little painful to consider a timid or shy person trying to carry the name Brave or Danger, or an unlucky person trying to carry the name Lucky. Your daughters’ names have pleasing meanings, but not ones that will make them look silly or awkward if their personalities/lives fail to comply.

Phoenix seems okay, though I don’t like the idea of this child rising from “the ashes of loss”: the metaphor is too strong, and gives me shivery literal thoughts of cremation ashes—as well as giving the unfortunate misimpression that this child is meant to replace his brother, or even to be the rebirth of his brother. It would also give you two children with bird names.

My first and favorite suggestion is Felix. It sounds like Phoenix, and means lucky and happy. Felix Oravec; Haven, Lark, and Felix.

For B names, I’d suggest:

Barnaby
Baxter
Beau
Benedict
Bennett
Bernard
Blaise (sounds like Blaze)
Blaine
Blake
Bond
Boone
Bowen
Bridger
Brooks
Bryce

I especially like Bond for its noun meaning of a close connection or tie. The downside, I think, is the potential for James Bond jokes.

Bridger, too, pleases me for its feeling of a bridge or connection or tie. The main downside is that it may be mistaken for the more familiar name Bridget. I also find it a little difficult to say with the surname.

I love Barnaby, and it means “son of comfort” or “son of consolation.”

Brooks gives me a naturey feeling that goes well with your daughters’ names.

Benedict means “blessed,” and Benedict Cumberbatch is certainly doing his part to reduce the Benedict Arnold association. But because Benedict Oravec has the same rhythm as Benedict Cumberbatch, he may find himself participating in the name joke—or perhaps that will soon be a distant memory.

Bennett is a form of Benedict, and so also means “blessed.”

Boone means “good” or “blessed,” and has a Daniel Boone association that may be pleasing.

Bernard means “brave/strong as a bear.”

Bryce means “strength” according to at least one source (“speckled” or “Rice’s son” according to others).

A few more names with good meanings/associations:

Able
Everest
Hugo
Justice
Loyal
Merit
Noble
Reason
Rohan
Sealey
Sterling
True
Worth

Name update!

Hi!

Thanks for all your help thinking through names. Our son was born a little over 2 weeks early on December 22– giving Santa a real challenge to fill a stocking in time!

We finally named him Bodhi Carmichael Oravec. Bodhi for wisdom and because I felt very “zen” as I labored with him, feeling most comfortable getting through tough contractions in a butterfly position with my eyes closed in a somewhat meditative state. Carmicheal is the street where my family house was for many years in Mumbai where he was born and the place where we burried some ashes and the placenta of the baby boy we lost at birth 3.5 years before Bodhi’s arrival.  The name suits him perfectly and only came to us as we waited for his arrival at the hospital so I feel he had a part in it too. Sometimes it just happens that way.

Thanks again!

Aisha, Brian, Haven, Lark & Bodhi

Hi Swistle,

We are expecting our first baby (gender unknown) next year. Our surname is Jorge (pronounced like the Western version, or the royal baby’s name).

We have our girl’s name chosen and locked in – it was a very easy decision. It will be “Eva.” Partially because we like the sweet, classic simplicity; and partially because it is a name found in my family a handful of generations back. If we have a boy now, and our second child is a girl, the name will still be “Eva.” We are unlikely to have a third child at this stage.

Boy’s names are much more difficult for us, and we are at a standstill. I have a few names I like, but my husband isn’t really “into” any of them – and he doesn’t really have any suggestions of his own. Some contenders (at least on my end!) are:

Alistair (my absolute favourite)
Toby/Tobias
Lucas
Laurence
Rory
Blythe
Arthur
Henry
Sebastian

We are looking at middle names that begin with ‘R’, to continue an ongoing prevalence of ‘R’ names in both his and my families.

He doesn’t mind “Arthur”, and neither do I. It’s a family name; my great-grandfather, whom I knew and loved, was called Arthur, and it would be lovely to offer a tribute to him. Whilst I can see it being a cute name for a little boy, and old-fashioned names are making a come-back, I can’t decide whether it is a difficult name for a child, a teenager or a grown man to carry in this day and age. Do you think it is flexible enough to work, or still too borderline?

I also love the name “Blythe” (having been a life-long fan of Anne of Green Gables and therefore “Gilbert Blythe”) but I am told it’s more of a girl’s name now. This puzzles me, as I don’t know any girls with this name, and it sounds like a masculine name to me. Is it really a name most commonly associated with girls? Or is it still a unisex name?

Can you help us with any suggestions for our conundrum? We have trawled through baby name books and have found very few names that appeal to us.

Thank you!

I don’t think I know anyone named Arthur (other than PBS’s cartoon aardvark), which makes it hard to judge. But my immediate impression was positive. If I encountered it on a child, I think I’d find it an appealing and surprising choice, along the lines of Alan or Warren, but with a hint of the romance of King Arthur. I would definitely expect it to age well, and in fact I would think the concern would be something more like “We think this works great on a man, but does it work on a little boy?” (To which I’d say “Yes!”)

I was startled by the idea of Blythe for a boy: it was Gilbert Blythe’s surname, but as far as I knew it had only ever been used as a first name for girls—as in, not that it has come to be used mostly for girls, but that it had never been used for boys. I looked it up in The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, which says only that it’s a modern name from the word blithe; they have it listed as a girl’s name. I was not sure what a book like the Oxford Dictionary would consider “modern,” so I started looking through the Social Security Administration’s data base.

The name Blythe has never been in the Top 1000 for either boys or girls. Using their “Beyond the Top 1000” documents, I started way back at 1880 (the first year of the data bases): no Blythes, either male or female. I skipped to 1900: no Blythes. In 1904, we see it: 6 new baby girls named Blythe. But then no Blythes in the data base for 1905-1911 (which doesn’t mean there were none, just that there were fewer than 5). Now we’ve hit Gilbert Blythe territory: Anne of Green Gables was first published in 1908. In 1912, there are 5 new baby girls named Blythe; none in 1913-1914. In 1915, there were 11 new baby girls and 5 new baby boys named Blythe; none in 1916. In 1917, 10 new baby girls and 5 new baby boys. Let’s start going by five-year increments now:

1920: – F, – M
1925: – F, – M
1930: 7 F, – M
1935: 11 F, – M
1940: 8 F, – M
1945: 8 F, 5 M
1950: 22 F, – M
1955: 16 F, – M
1960: 22 F, – M
1965: 26 F, – M
1970: 50 F, – M
1975: 66 F, – M
1980: 47 F, – M
1985: 84 F, – M
1990: 73 F, 5 M
1995: 46 F, 5 M
2000: 60 F, 11 M
2005: 79 F, 8 M
2010: 85 F, 5 M

And in 2013, the most recent data: 172 F, 7 M.

I’m a little suspicious of the accuracy of the data, especially in the earlier years: in 1935, for example, there were 41 new baby boys named Elizabeth, 72 named Margaret, and 276 named Mary; were there really, or are these entry errors? But we can see it appears there has been some very light usage of Blythe as a boy’s name, though overall it has been used for girls; it has always been a very unusual name.

I am intrigued instead by the possibility of Gilbert. Most of the -bert names are out of fashion right now, but I would not be surprised to see them coming back in. The Anne of Green Gables association is quite a positive one, giving the name an extra boost of likeability. Gilbert Jorge.

Rory Jorge has a little too much “or” sound for my own tastes, but I like it as a middle name possibility. There are tons of other good R names, too: Robert, Russell, Ryan, Rufus, Riley, Rhys, Reid/Reed, Reuben, Roland.

I think the next step is for your husband to go through a name book and make his own list. It’s hard to make progress if he’s saying “eh” about your choices but doesn’t have any counter-offers. If he made his list and it were, for example, Cody and Rylan (or Eric and Brian, or Max and Jack, or Stanton and Hollis), we’d know what we were dealing with and could start making some middle-ground suggestions.

Name update:

We went on to have our little girl – Ev@. Thank you again for your suggestions!

Hi Swistle!

Do you think Jillian will be a mom name if I gave it to a girl in the next few years? I think it’s a beautiful name and my instinct says it’ll stand the test of time and it was never so trendy as to make it sound dated, but what if I’m wrong??

Thanks!

I like the name Jillian a lot; it was on my baby name list, too. I think one reason it doesn’t feel like a mom name to me is that I don’t know a bunch of people my age with the name—or really anyone with the name. My own name and its variants (Kristen, Kirsten, Kiersten, Krista, Kristine) feel startling to me on a new baby because I have so many peers with those names and have hardly ever heard it on anyone younger. The name Sophie would feel startling to me on someone my own age, because I know of a lot of kids with the name but have hardly ever heard it on anyone older. The name Jillian, I have much less experience with. I know of the actress Gillian Anderson, and I think that’s it. Since she’s the only Gillian/Jillian who comes to mind, I’m surprised she doesn’t skew the name older for me—but I think it’s like how Drew doesn’t seem like a mom name even now that Drew Barrymore is a mom: the name was so unusual for her age group, it didn’t register in my mind as a very weighty statistic.

I looked up Gillian and Jillian on the Social Security Administration’s baby name site to get an idea for what they’ve been doing over the years. Gillian first appeared in the Top 1000 in 1968 but stayed quite unusual over the decades: 900s, 800s, 700s, sometimes 600s. It had a brief trip to the 300s from 1997 to 2002 (very likely thanks to The X Files), and then dropped back down; in 2013, it was #835.

The name Jillian appeared in the Top 1000 in 1976 and had a fast and startling rise: #620 the first year it appeared; #236 the very next year; and #96 by 1982. Anyone looking at that chart might have predicted a new Top 10 name—but it never did get higher than #96. It messed around in the 100-200 range for decades, leaving that range only as recently as 2011, when it dropped to #221. Then it was #286 in 2012, and #341 in 2013.

That’s a lot of numbers in those two paragraphs. My interpretation of those numbers is that the name did come into our society’s awareness at around Mom Age—but as you observed, it never spiked enough to sound truly Mommish. If I were about to meet a Kristen, I would be pretty confident she’d be right around my age; if I were about to meet a Jillian, I would expect anything from about 10 years older than me all the way down to infancy: not as timeless as, say, Elizabeth, but a nice long range.

The one thing that makes me feel a little alarmed is the way it is RIGHT NOW dropping, after so many years of steadiness. If it drops into the 300-400 range and stays there, no problem: it’s just a little less popular than it was. If it drops until it goes out of the Top 1000, that’s a different story.

But it’s not such a BAD story. I know lots of women my age who have names more typical of our moms’ age, and I know plenty of kids my kids’ age who have names more typical of my age. My mom and I both have friends named Judy and Susan. My son Rob and I both have friends named Karen, Amy, and Shannon. Although I am glad to be named Kristen and not a name from my mom’s generation or my kids’ generation, I don’t think it’s at all disastrous when it happens—and it happens commonly enough not to stand out much. I guess I’m a little surprised when I meet someone my age named Patty or Carol, or someone my son’s age named Michelle or Nicole, but I don’t think “Oh, poor dear soul.” People often love names for years before they have a baby to name, or become aware of names only after the names have been popular for quite some time, or like familiar names rather than new ones, or name a baby after a peer. So for many reasons, name overlap between generations is common and not something I think of as a big deal, even though I’d personally prefer to avoid it if it comes down to two names I like equally, and to be aware of the issue ahead of time so I can make a decision that takes it into account.

One advantage to using a name that might be a mom name is that it’s been around long enough to feel pretty secure about it. We know the name Jillian didn’t spike into the Top 10 and then fall right out again, leaving a poor impression. We know it hasn’t started sounding like any of the negative categories people sometimes put names into (stripper, trashy, etc.). I know I’m not feeling tired of it and ready for something new, as is common to feel about most of the names typical of one’s own generation.

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve come to a conclusion. That conclusion is that a name doesn’t really sound like a Mom Name or a Grandpa Name unless (1) it was very popular in that generation and only in that generation (as with Judy, Susan, Karen, and Amy), and/or (2) it represents a sound very popular in that generation (as with -bert and -aden). So for example, a lot of the Kris-/Chris- names sound like Parent Names now, just as a lot of -bert names sound like Grandparent Names, and just as a lot of the -aden names are going to sound like Parent Names and then Grandparent Names when this current batch of kids grows up. Jillian doesn’t click for me with any of those. It seems to me more like the names Meredith and Claire: good on moms, good on babies.

On the other hand, I think it’s very difficult to hear datedness if one is, shall we say, on the dated side oneself. That is, I know it’s very common for grandparents-to-be to suggest names that are from the era when they were naming their own children. I think the comments section is going to be very helpful on this, especially if we can get an idea of how people of different ages see the name. If people in their late 30s and early 40s (the upper range of Parent Age) are saying Jillian is a great and perfectly usable name, but people in their 20s and early 30s (the lower range of Parent Age) are saying it sounds dated, we’ll know the impression of the name is shifting. Though even in that case I’d still say it wasn’t common enough for this to rule out using it now, as I might say if you were considering the name Kristen: I love the name Kristen, but it’s a Mom Name for current babies.

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

A while back, I asked you hypothetically about the name Jillian. Since then, I had a son, Everett, whose name seems to appear often on your site, but we luckily haven’t seen too much around us yet. If Everett had been a girl, we were also thinking about Willow, which I think bears some similarity to the sound of Jillian.

Thanks!
Lindsay

Dear Swistle,

I am an avid reader of your blog and have always fantasized about naming my children. The time is finally here, and I am due with my first in January! My name is Anne, DH is Dave, and our last name is Heal(e)d,pronounced as in what a doctor does to you. We have had our boy name picked out forever but are struggling with girl names. I have a list a mile long and DH doesn’t do much adding or subtracting to it. Some of my top girl names right now are :
Vivienne,
Charlotte,
Madeline,
Sophia,
Ariana,
Maeve, and
Margaret (I know Margaret is an outlier but it is after my mom — still trying to convince DH that Maggie Heal(e)d is an adorable name for a little girl!)
Middle name for girl will be a family name — Anne, Grace, Mary, or Rose.
However the problem now is that our boy name was #2 on nameberry’s most searched names of 2014 — Declan! Should I be worried? Is Declan about to become the next Aiden? Will my child be Declan H in class? Or am I overthinking this and we should just go with the name we loved first?
Middle name for boy will be Sullivan after DH’s middle. Other boy names we like include Nolan, Ronan, Benjamin, and Alexander.

So in short — should I be worried about Declan? Also, help with a girl name would be so much appreciated!

Thank you,
Anne

When I received your letter, I assumed I wouldn’t be answering it: I can only guess at the future popularity of a name, and Declan doesn’t seem worrisome to me, so it wouldn’t have been much of a post: “No, I don’t think it’s a problem, but of course I can’t know for sure. Love, Swistle”

However, in the last week and a half I’ve received TWO MORE letters worrying about the future popularity of the name Declan, so all right, let’s discuss it—with the caveat that I didn’t know AIDEN was going to be the next Aiden.

Here is the thing with a “most searched” list: it definitely tells us which names are generating a lot of INTEREST, but that doesn’t mean parents are going to USE them. I look up a lot of names just out of curiosity (“I wonder how popular this name is?,” “I wonder why I’m suddenly hearing this name everywhere?”), and I’ll bet a lot of other people do too.

I remember awhile back when it seemed like EVERYONE was talking about and asking about the name Juniper. I thought to myself, “Wow, there is a LOT of interest in this name! And it sounds a little like Jennifer, which was so popular! I’ll bet it’s going to go RACING up the charts!”

(screen shot from SSA.gov)

And I mean, if parents wanted to use it because it was absolutely unique and they’d never heard it before, I WOULD still point out that increased interest in the name seems to have resulted in increased usage. But we’re not talking about an overnight sensation with several Junipers per classroom: we’re talking about a formerly almost-totally-unused name that is now being used a little bit. There was a LOT of interest in it when people first started hearing it, but that didn’t lead to a LOT of people using it—just a FEW.

The name Declan is getting some attention lately, and I would not be surprised if that led to increased usage. One of the major reasons it kept getting crossed off my own baby name list was the difficulty of pronunciation, so the increased familiarity of the name would be a huge plus for me. But if you’re looking for something highly unusual, it’s true that ship has sailed:

(screen shot from SSA.gov)

That’s a nice respectable rise to fashion: 16 years from the first year it hit the Top 1000 until now, and it STILL isn’t in the Top 100. But I’d expect to see it there, maybe as early as the 2014 chart. Again, for me this would be GOOD news: I like to use names that people recognize and can pronounce, not names that result in startled or confused expressions. But if your tastes run more towards startled/confused, I don’t think Declan is the way to go.

But looking at your lists, I don’t think your tastes DO run toward startled/confused. Sophia is the #1 most popular name for baby girls right now, and Charlotte is #11. Madeline is one of those stealth names that’s challenging to even compute the popularity for, because of the many, many ways to spell it—but it’s up there. Vivienne/Vivian is similar to Declan, I’d say: TONS of attention that resulted in a nice rise to familiarity and ease of use without becoming the next Isabella.

Or perhaps Charlotte will turn out to have been a better comparison with Declan: lots of attention that looks like it will indeed result in a top-ten name. It’s very hard to know whether a name will come into fashion in the “nicely into the Top 100 but not so popular people get tired of it” way, or whether it will head right for the Top 10. I FEEL as if Declan won’t make it to #1, but I felt the same about Noah and look where we are with that.

One thing to ask yourselves is how terrible would it be if a child DID some years have to use a surname initial. I do think that would be tiresome if it were Every Single Classroom All Through School, but that doesn’t happen so much anymore: even Noah and Sophia are given to only about 1% of new babies, which gives us a national average of one Noah or one Sophia per 6 or 7 classrooms (assuming about 30 kids per classroom, about half girls and half boys). Some years a Noah or Sophia WOULD probably have to go by Noah H. or Sophia H., or perhaps they could go by their first and middle if they liked that better. But is that fate so terrible that we must avoid it at all costs, or is that the kind of thing most people can handle without undue distress? I had another Kristen in my classroom one year, and one of us just went by a nickname that year. I can see how someone whose name was used 8 times as often (that’s the approximate difference between the popularity of the name Kristen/Kristin and the popularity of the name Jennifer) would have a lingering fear of classroom duplication, but names aren’t used with that frequency now. At its peak, Jennifer was used for over 4% of baby girls—FOUR TIMES the current usage of today’s top names.

Another issue is that even Aiden was not the next Aiden: one reason its popularity feels so out of hand is that it belonged to a group of names that included Caden, Hayden, Jayden, Braden, etc. That GROUP got so popular, it caught the interest even of people who aren’t interested in names. Declan doesn’t belong to any such group: even if it reached #1, it wouldn’t FEEL as popular as Aiden did at its peak of #9.

And what if it didn’t even get there? Imagine if it rose to a very respectable “not too common and yet not too out-there” ranking of somewhere in the mid Top 100 and then STAYED there? It would be very sad to have given up your favorite name out of fear of future popularity and then have it end up right where you would have liked it.

In short, I think the name Declan is experiencing a coming-into-fashion that to me makes the name more useable rather than less. I don’t think it will be the next Aiden, but if it WERE to be the next Aiden I still don’t think it would be the next Aiden. I’d vote for going ahead and using your favorite.

Turning our attention to the girl-name list, my own clear favorite is Margaret. I’ve known one little girl named Margaret and she greatly increased my already considerable appreciation for the name. And I love family names.

Based on your preferences, I’d probably steer you away from Charlotte: I think of that as another name of the sort that rose unexpectedly fast and got a lot of attention for getting a lot of attention. And Sophia and Madeline are also very popular, if popularity bothers you—but when I see Alexander and Benjamin on your boy-name list, I suspect what actually bothers you is a sudden spike in popularity right at the time you use the name, rather then popularity itself.

My main issue with Madeline is that there are two ways to pronounce it and a dozen ways to spell it. We briefly had a cat named Madeline and even with a CAT I found the hassle more than I wanted to deal with.

For the middle name, I love Anne if it works with your first-name choice: a family name, and especially appropriate if a boy’s middle name would honor your husband.

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

Thanks for your help with choosing
a name for baby He@ld. I was convinced we were having a boy, and his name would have been Declan, but our baby GIRL finally arrived 8 days late on January 13. We named her Vivian Margaret, and the name fits her perfectly!
Thank you!
Anne

Hi Swistle, I just found out a few days ago that I am pregnant with child #2! Super excited, way to early to know what the gender is yet. My husband and I already have a boys name picked that we love. Rhyse Riordan (we pronounce it Rise). We would have used it as our first child’s name if she had been a he. We still love it as much today as we did then, so its a no brainer. Girl names however have always been much more difficult for me. There are just so many that are so pretty, its tough settling on one!

After much reading of sites (including this one), making lists, bouncing ideas, and falling in and out of love with various names, I ended up naming my daughter after she was born Imara Arissa. And then a month later I decided her first name didnt suit her at all, but her middle was spot on. So we are calling her Arissa May until we can get a formal name change.

Ok now with that all out of the way, onto my question. Is it ok to use a name that we love, but was earmarked for a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage? I was pregnant with my 1st husband over 10yrs ago, and sadly miscarried. The name I had picked out for a girl then remains a perfect name to me. Rinoa Seraphine, nn Noa. This husband loves it as much as I do. But I feel very hesitant to revive it just because, what if that baby would have been a girl? I don’t want to steal her name away. But there is no other name I love as much, other than our daughters name. So what do you and the other readers think? Totally taboo, or could be considered an honor name, especially if we find a different middle?

(Twins run in my family, and on the off chance that this pregnancy is twins, I love Rhyse and Rinoa together, with an M middle for Rinoa to tie her name to big sis’s. I’m matchy matchy like that!) Thanks Swistle!

Whether it’s okay to use a name you’d picked out for an earlier child depends completely on how you feel about it. Some people feel as if all the finalist names they considered for earlier children are off the table, but your choice to put Rhyse back on the finalist list for this baby shows us that this is not the situation here.

Do you feel as if the name Rinoa belongs to that baby? Do you believe that the baby, if the baby were a girl, would know and care that you used the name? If the baby were a boy, do you believe he would know and care that you used the name you would have used if he’d been a girl? Here is where I would start drawing my own lines: do you feel that you GAVE THE BABY this name, or was the name the finalist girl name but NOT yet given to the baby? That is, was the baby NAMED? was the name USED? Or do you feel that you don’t name your babies until the baby is born and the sex of the baby is known (the “after she was born” part you used when describing how you named your daughter)? When you think/talk of the baby now, do you think of this name or use the name to refer to that child? If you were to use the name, do you think it would remind you of the lost baby? Did you tell everyone your name choices at the time (or have you mentioned them since), so that using this name would remind others of the previous sadness?

I would advise against considering it an honor name. The idea fails the “Would I want this name for myself?” test: I would not want to be named after a sibling who died; it would make me feel as if I were expected to replace that child. Also, using the name as an honor name means it was indeed that baby’s name, as opposed to being a finalist on the name list that is available to use for another child; the act of calling it an honor name is the very thing that would mean to me that the name should be ruled out. And since you don’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl, it feels even more inappropriate: let’s say the baby was indeed a boy, and now there is a child named after her brother who died, but the name is the name that would have been his if he’d been a girl. No, I don’t think that works at all.

If you use the name, I would say the story as it is: that you have loved the name for years. You could, if you like, say that it would have been the name of an earlier baby if that baby had been born alive and female: it is similar to saying that your daughter Arissa would have been named Rhyse if she’d been a boy. In fact, that may be the way to think of it: you didn’t use the name Rhyse for your daughter, even though that name was picked out for her if she’d been a boy, so the name Rhyse is still available for a future child. Did you name the lost baby Rinoa, or do you think of the name the same as you think of the name Rhyse—i.e., unused, even though it was the finalist name?

If you decide to choose a different name, I think there is a very good chance you will find a name you like just as much or more, just as you did when you found Arissa’s name.

Name update!

Hi Swistle, I emailed you back last year in July. Is it Okay To Use a Name that Was Chosen for a Baby Lost to Miscarriage? Well sadly that particular pregnancy also ended in a MC shortly after I wrote to you. But a few months later I became pregnant again with a sticky baby this time. We had another daughter, and decided to give her her own name. I just felt that the other name was already claimed, and posters gave me good food for thought on it. I debated off and on what to call her, and was 99% sure I was going to name her Aubryn. Then I had her and she is not an Aubryn. Instead meet Lucy Celia Paige. Her big sister gives her kisses and makes sure she always has a blanket on. Included is a picture of her at 3wks. Thanks again!