Hi Swistle!

I’m an avid reader of yours, but not actually pregnant yet so I understand this question may be low priority. I send this with the hope that it will catch your interest, as I can’t find a similar discussion online, plus you and your readers are my favorite.

I have been trying to brainstorm a certain type of girls name. I’m drawn to them whenever I hear them, but they are hard to find because sometimes they are generated by a creative mind.

Basically they are medium-long, typically classic/traditional (at the very least recognizable), names that naturally (ish) shorten to a nickname that does not sound like a typical/traditional name. Obviously the categorization of typical/traditional is subjective in this case.

Examples:

Prudence –> Prue
Clementine –> Clem
Annalise –> Dise (prounounced Dees)
____ –> Len
____–> Tru

More often than not I love the nickname, and either don’t know a full form or don’t love it. Prudence/Clementine are a little more obscure than I’m looking for in the root name. I’m desperate for more names that fall into this category so I can find the perfect mix where I like both forms. Also welcome to suggestions for long form of Len and Tru.

Emily

I am not sure I yet have my finger on what we’re looking for, but I am interested to try, and I have high hopes for the comments section. Is this at all the sort of thing you mean?

Alexandria – Lex, Xan, Andy, Dearie
Adelaide – Lady, Del
Anastasia – Taze
Bernadette – Bernie/Bennie
Camilla – Mills
Charlotte – Chaz
Charlotte – Chip
Clementine – Minty
Eleanor/Eleanora – Len
Elizabeth – Bet
Elizabeth – Bo
Evangeline – Van
Felicity – Flip
Gertrude – Tru
Helena – Len
Josephine – Fee
Katherine – Kit
Lenore/Lenora – Len
Madeleine – Del, Len
Meredith – Red
Penelope – Pip
Philippa – Pip
Rebecca – Bex
Roberta – Birdie
Savannah – Van
Susanna – Zan
Temperance – Perry, Ren
Valentina – Len

One way to get a nickname that is unconventional and yet easy to explain is to use initials. Let’s say your child’s surname started with a U; then you could name her Temperance Roberta U. and call her Tru. Or if her surname will not start with U., you could name her Temperance Roberta Ursula Smith, or do some fancy footwork with Temperance Ruth.

It’s too much to hope for, but it’s even possible the surname will lend itself to something many people try to avoid, which is having a first name the merges with the surname. Let’s say the surname were Rupert, and you named your daughter Juliet: many parents would avoid this combination because of the way the -t of Juliet blends with the Ru- of Rupert, but it would be a plus for anyone looking for the nickname Tru. Again, I realize this is a very unlikely scenario. But perhaps something to consider when looking for co-parents of future children. “Pardon me, cute stuff, but before I give you my number would you mind telling me your surname? And do you have a pen and paper so I can play with some combinations?”

Another way is to brazen it out. We have seen many, many parents on this blog who would like to use a nickname but can’t find or don’t like any long forms, and while you COULD for example name her Verity and then call her Tru as a clever joke, at a certain point I think there’d be less of an issue just saying, “This is Elizabeth Smith; we call her Tru.” Follow-up questions could be answered with “It was a baby nickname that just stuck” or “It just kind of happened!” or “Oh, it’s a long and boring story!”

Another option is to use the nickname you want as a middle name, and then use the middle name as one of her nicknames. Elizabeth Tru Smith, called Tru. Margaret Len Smith, called Len. “It’s her middle name” is a nice, simple explanation.

Name update:

Hi Swistle, I was encouraged by your reply to my comment to send in an update on an old, formerly hypothetical, opposite sex baby name update!

Last year we had a beautiful baby boy who we named August Oak, and we call him Gus 99% of the time. We love his name for it’s double barrelled nature-ness, it’s soft nickname, and the Oak is in honour of his great-grandma who didn’t quite get to meet him. I love the name August so much, and am sad that we don’t use it more! If he had been a girl, he would have been Ruby Joan (NN to be used abundantly: Rue). Thank you to you and all the readers for your helpful comments that did indeed pave the way for us to zero in on a girl’s name many years later!

Emily

Hi Swistle,

I have been reading your baby name (and regular!) blog for years and am currently expecting a little girl in March (yay!). But instead of asking for your specific advice, I was wondering if you’d be willing to tackle the more general topic of “name-choosing strategies.”

I’m dealing with a situation that a lot of my friends have reported, too — the mothers-to-be come up with tons of name ideas, while the fathers veto almost all of them and seem totally unwilling to offer more than one or two suggestions.

My husband is awesome and super-involved in every other way — he’s just completely unhelpful with the naming thing, and it’s stressing me out (and him, as I get increasingly frustrated).

In your (vast!) name-helping experience, you must have come across strategies for dealing with these or similar situations. An shared spreadsheet with a points system? A baby-name-generating drinking game? (ok, maybe not the best idea for pregnant women) I would love to hear your general advice and I think it would be helpful for a lot of people.

This is a question I thought would be a great one for general discussion: different things work well for different people, and making a reference section in the comments section appeals to me.

Paul and I had a few things that worked for us. Since I was very interested in names and liked making lists, and he wasn’t and didn’t, one exercise we’d do is I’d have him look at my list and put stars next to the ones he liked best. We chose our second son’s name that way, almost disappointingly quickly and easily, because his clear favorite was also my clear favorite (and one he’d VETOED for our first son! I didn’t point that out to him).

With our last son, we got down to seven names and had trouble narrowing it further—not because we were fighting, but because we both liked all seven names. The exercise we found most useful that time was to rank the names—not in 1-7 order, which was too hard, but in tiers. I had two that were my top choices, so I ranked those both 1; then I had several that were my next choices, so I ranked all of those 2; and then everything else was a 3. Paul did the same, and this let us quickly eliminate all the tier-3 names we had in common (because those were never going to get chosen over the other names), and notice which names were highest for both of us. We got down to two names this way.

I don’t know if this counts as a strategy, but I tried to get Paul into the right mindset. For example, I’d say, “Don’t say yes or no to this name right away: I just want you to think about it.” I’d do the exposure method: saying a name to him over and over again in different contexts (“Baby Milo! 3rd place in the spelling bee: Milo Thistle! Milo, come to dinner! Milo, did you do your homework? Can you pick up Milo after school?”) until he got used to it. And I did the spinning-it method, where if possible I’d think of people I knew he’d like (scientists, authors, book/show/movie characters) with the same name as the one I wanted him to consider seriously.

I had some luck too with setting up TIMES to discuss it. That is, instead of discussing it continually, as I’d have preferred, Paul seemed to do better if we’d arranged to sit down and talk about it over a dinner out, or during a particular evening. It also worked better to wait until later in the pregnancy: he had trouble even thinking about it until we were at least past the halfway point.

One thing I liked about The Baby Name Wizard book is that it let the less-interested-in-names parent work with smaller, more manageable lists. Paul didn’t want to look through an entire baby name book, but he found it much less painful to glance at a category and say yes to this type of name, no to this type. (Plus, it showed him that all the names on his list were 1970’s-80s names.)

Name update!

Thanks so much for posting my question awhile back — the comments were super helpful. My husband and I ended up using a two-step process, partly inspired by some of your advice.

First, we both downloaded a baby-name app onto our phones — a name pops up, and you swipe right if you like the name, left if you don’t like it. When you both swipe right, you get a match. You only see the names that you both match on. It worked well for us because (1) we could do it while watching TV and (2) it took a lot of the emotion out of the process (ie telling your partner a name you like, them hating it, and you feeling very “what?! how could you not like that name — it’s perfect!!”). Also, because you go through so many names, it reassured me that there wasn’t some Magic Name that we were missing.

We set the app to give us both boys and girls names, which I think ended up being maybe a thousand? And we matched on just 24 (!). Some of the ones we matched on (including our final choice) were ones that we’d discussed before, while others were a complete surprise. From there, each of us individually ranked each on a five point-scale:

0 – prefer not to use this name
1 – could be okay with it
2 – like it
3 – like it a lot
4 – totally love

Then we added up the scores, and used the four highest-scoring names as the finalists. For the next few weeks we practiced referring to the baby as each of those four names.

Sabine was born on March 27. We finally decided on her name about 24 hours after she was born — it was the only one in our final four that had a family connection (I actually don’t think her specific name was in the app, but “Sabina” was and we matched on that). She is the absolute best (though at this point we mostly call her Beanie).

Hello Swistle,

I am entering week 32 of pregnancy and this is our first child. We found out over fathers day we are having a BOY!! I have had a list of names in the running for awhile now, but we are just not 100% and I was hoping for a little help. It has been a little bit of a challenge because my husband is a teacher/coach and knows a lot of kids. That has ruled out a few names we like. We want something that is unique and not overly popular, but still a solid strong name that when you see this on paper, you know how to say it! No names that start with P due to our last name starting with P. Pippert is pronounced (Peepert) .The list we have started for the boys is this and has been pretty consistent for months now.

Kendrik
Maddox
Emerson
Vincent
Vance
Jackson (I know is popular)
Graham (My husbands name is Grant so may be too similar)
Ethan
Gannon
Nelson
Finley

Isaac (for a middle name)
Isaiah (for a middle name)
James (for a middle name)
Bankes (pronounced Banks, for a middle name)

The girl names we liked were:
Grayson
Laney
Blake
Grace
Finley

Thank you!!

I notice you have unisex names on both the boy-name and the girl-name lists. Unisex names can be a little tricky to work with, so if you are planning to have more than one child, this is the perfect time to think about such things.

There are a few ways to go with it. One is to give all the children unisex names: a sibling group of, for example, Emerson, Grayson, Blake, and Finley. You could even do the fun thing one of my cousins did: she and her husband agreed on a particular unisex name for each child before they knew the sex, using that name either way.

Another is to use unisex names for all the girls OR for all the boys, and non-unisex names for the others. A sibling group of, for example, boys named Vincent and Maddox, and girls named Finley and Gracen; or boys named Emerson and Finley, and girls named Grace and Laney.

Another is to choose your favorite name each time and not worry about it too much: a sibling group of, for example, boys named Emerson and Maddox, girls named Finley and Grace.

My own preference is for HINTS. That is, if I used unisex names for my sons, I’d want to use specifically girl-only names for my daughters to help people remember who was who. I also like to use specific middle names with unisex first names: Emerson James, for example, or Finley Grace.

To help you narrow down your list, I suggest playing games. One game I particularly like is Name the Sibling Group. Imagine how many children you think you’re likely to have; let’s say that number is three. Imagine yourselves gathered around the table for dinner, or imagine the children hanging around in the living room, or imagine introducing your whole family at an event. Pick some sibling name groups, and see which ones seem like Your Family. If you imagine Kendrick, Finley, and Vance arguing about Monopoly, does that feel RIGHT? Does it feel more or less right to imagine them as Jackson, Grace, and Ethan? More or less right to imagine them as Emerson, Blake, and Finley? More or less right to imagine them as Gannon, Grayson, and Graham?

Not only can that game help you find your naming style, it can help you find issues that might not have come up until you were naming a second child. For example, you might find you don’t want to repeat any initials, in which case with this very first child you may want to decide which G name (or which E name, or which V name) you like best of all the names for both sexes. Or perhaps you don’t want to duplicate endings, in which case this would be the moment to pick your favorite among Emerson, Jackson, Nelson, and Grayson.

Another exercise I find helpful is to start pairing up firsts and middles. Sometimes a particular first-and-middle combination will rise above the crowd, even if the names individually didn’t stand out. Also, I find it shows me which names I feel most drawn to: if I find myself WANTING to make a name work, or reaching for it again and again, or AVOIDING a particular name, that’s all useful information.

It can also alert you to issues with initials: if, like me, you prefer initials not to spell anything, you’d know to avoid Vincent Isaac Pippert; or perhaps you have the opposite preference and the fun initials will help you make the decision.

Another exercise is for each of you to assign rankings to all the names in the list. Names can share the same rankings, so that for example you could have Ethan, Jackson, and Vance all marked 1, and Maddox marked 2, and Gannon and Nelson both marked 3, and so on. When you and your husband compare your lists, perhaps you will see that both of you have the same couple of names marked very low on the list, too low to have any chance of being used over names higher on the list, and so it’s safe to take those out of the running. Or maybe both of you will have the same couple of names marked very high on the list. Or maybe your lists will be absolutely opposite, and you’ll know the choice might need to be from the overlap in the middle.

When Paul and I were naming Henry, I remember us finding it useful to say, “Is there any chance we’d use THIS name over these other names?” There were a ton of names we liked and COULD have used, but it helped to realize the name Alan wasn’t going to win over the names Henry and Charlie, and the name Daniel wasn’t going to win over the names Oliver and Milo. Before then, we kept getting caught up in thinking we didn’t want to remove any names from the list because we LIKED those names and there was no REASON to remove them; this let us take names off the list without feeling like it had to be because we didn’t like them anymore.

Another exercise is to start striking names off the list for various non-deal-breaker reasons, and then see what’s left at the end and how you feel about it. If it were my list, I think I would take Ethan off. Not only is it very popular (Top 10 since 2002, according to the Social Security Administration), but the repeating long-E sound draws attention to the “pee” sound in your surname. Then I might take off Kendrick because Kendrick Pippert is difficult for me to say—something about the repeating K’s and then the repeating P’s, I think. Then I might take off Jackson for being too popular, Graham for being too similar to your husband’s name, and Emerson and Finley for being currently more popular for girls.

Again, none of these are ACTUAL reasons a name SHOULD be removed from the list: the idea of the exercise is to see what’s left on the list, and how you feel about what’s left, and how you feel about losing some of the names. You might find, for example, that as soon as you remove Ethan and Jackson for popularity, you realize you don’t care about popularity as much as you care about those names. Or maybe you find you’re disappointed there’s no reason to cross off a particular name, and that will tell you it’s not a name you still want on the list.

A similar game is to pretend you have decided on each name in turn. Say to each other, “Okay: his name is Kendrick.” Measure your reactions. Do you feel glad? Does your heart rise up happily? Or do you feel disappointed, or unsettled? Try it again with the next name: “Okay: his name is Maddox.” Measure your reactions again; compare them to your husband’s reactions. Are any reactions matching? Those might be good names to bump up the list, or to remove.

It’s a good sign, I think, that your name list has stayed stable for quite awhile. This tells me that it’s likely you’d be happy with ANY of the names on the list, and the difficulty is picking your favorite out of many excellent choices.

Name update: Nyle Kendric

Hi Swistle,

We expecting our fourth (and probably last) baby in October. My husband Ben comes from an all boy family and I figured ours would follow suit but that hasn’t been the case! Our only son, William, is 7. At the time I considered naming him Nicholas or Jacob but William Scott (nn Will) won out. Then our almost 5 year old came along and without any question we went with our family girl name from the previous pregnancy- Kate Eleanor. I opted for that instead of Catherine because I wanted her called Kate and didn’t want that to change over time. A couple of years later there was the royal wedding and now people always comment on our Will and Kate and seem to like it. I didn’t mind continuing the theme when our number three came along last year and we named her Elizabeth Anne, Elizabeth having such a beautiful meaning and being my favorite name of my childhood. When we aren’t calling her the Queen, we also call her Bitty or Beth.

Now our surprise baby (and girl number 3) is coming in the Fall and we are OUT of royal names! I have a few funny rules I’m trying to follow and can’t seem to let go. Our two syllable Dutch last name rhymes with Spike and starts with an “uh” sound. I think “uh” names sound funny with the double “uhs” (like Emma Uh-spike, Amelia Uh-spike) although I quite like them. I’d also prefer not to duplicate first letters and sounds if possible, for ease in calling children and labeling their belongs (yes I know these are some OCD problems!)

If this baby had been a boy we would have named him James Benjamin. Right now I have only a few names left on my girl list that still fit into the royal theme.
Jane
Caroline
Grace
Mary

A few I love but aren’t willing to use for the above reasons are Emma, Amelia, Alexandra, Emily. I also like Charlotte// nn Lottie but it’s ridiculously popular in our area. Despite the supposed frequency of my other children’s names, we’ve only run into one other Will and a few Katelyns but no Kates or Elizabeths at all! Maggie is a favorite of mine but we don’t love Margaret (and I’m not sure I’m creative enough to branch out to a Magnolia// nn Maggie with our other names).

My husband isn’t crazy about Grace. I love Caroline but would not want any nicknames for it, so I think it might be better in the middle name slot for Grace or Mary (it’s also a family name and that feels like a nice spot for the tribute name, as we have done with our other children). I also think Mary Caroline is beautiful but would likely be Mary in the long run and I wonder if Mary is too “old” to go with our other names. My brother and both like our old fashioned, classic names (Anne and John) that were never too popular but I don’t want to saddle her with a name that’s just too old for her generation. My reservation with Jane is that it rules out having a James just in case we had another. Also, I feel like we’ve gotten some really mixed reviews about the name and that it might be too old, too (and it’s only questionably royal as Lady Jane Grey was a contested Queen who only “reigned” a few days but we’re alright with that).

So my question is, do I need to let myself break out of our little theme? Do you think Mary is just too old for a little girl? What about Jane, does it fit comfortably with William, Kate, and Elizabeth, or is she bound to feel like the named-with-the-leftovers sister? How did I let myself get into this crazy theme? Do you have some other nice classics lying around that I’ve missed?

Thanks so much!
Anne

PS Yes we do love this theme, the kids dressed up exactly like Will and Kate for a Royal Wedding Halloween and we have a British decorated room. I just wish there were a few more British Royal names and still wish the Royal Baby had been a girl with four or five more names to choose from, although I’m sure she would have stuck with a classic like Alexandra anyways!

I think Jane is a great choice. My main hesitation is the same as yours: for me, it would rule out using James later on. My second hesitation is that it feels very similar to Kate. But I don’t see any reason anyone would think of it as a “leftover” name.

Grace seems like the perfect choice to me, so it’s unfortunate your husband doesn’t like it. Perhaps he will come around: we get many letters where a husband’s dislike of a name causes me to ignore it as an option, and then we get the name update and the name has been chosen after all.

Caroline seems excellent, too. I don’t think of it as having any natural nicknames (that is, there are nicknames people could use if they wanted a nickname, but it isn’t a Michael/Mike kind of situation), which increases the chances she’d go by the full form. But I agree that if you feel strongly about it not being nicknamed, that knocks it further down the list.

Mary doesn’t seem too old to me; in fact, it feels like a refreshing choice. I might not have thought so, except that I encountered a Mary in the kindergarten class of one of my older boys. My first reaction was something close to shock, as my brain rearranged what I thought of the name: my mind had always filtered it as Common Name, never even really hearing it as a name, and now suddenly I was hearing the sounds that made it such a long-loved choice. Sisters named Mary and Kate do briefly bring Mary-Kate and Ashley to my mind, but surely that is not an enduring association—and not much of an association at all when it’s Kate, Elizabeth, and Mary.

I’m hesitant to suggest any further options: it seems like you must have already combed through the list thoroughly and rejected all the other royal names. Still, this makes a better reference post if we include the others, and sometimes hearing other people remark positively on a name can put it back on the list. I used Wikipedia’s British Royal Family page to assist the search.

Beatrice and Eugenie are the first two names that come to mind, even before looking at Wikipedia. I especially like Beatrice for this sibling group, and I love the nickname Bea/Bee (I would buy everything in the world that had bees on it). Eugenie seems like a harder name to sell in the United States, and also repeats Elizabeth’s initial.

Next I think of Diana. Few names have such a royal association for me as that one does. William, Kate, Elizabeth, and Diana fairly BOILS with royal.

And although you specifically said you don’t much care for the name Margaret, I want to put in a good word for it: I love it, and I love all the nicknames, and it definitely sounds royal. We had a little girl named Margaret at our bus stop a few years ago, and it made me love the name even more. If you love the name Maggie, it may be a great choice for you.

I assume you’ve considered and rejected Victoria. For me the main downside of this name is that I don’t like any of the nicknames and only like the full form.

I think Philippa with the nickname Pippa would be a strong candidate if it weren’t for the -uh/Uh- issue: it brings to mind not only Kate’s sister but also Prince Philip. Does it help at all that Philippa is three syllables? To my ear, that third syllable gives a little natural pause. I do still hear the -uh/Uh-, but it seems less troublesome.

Camilla is another name of this sort.

It would be more a royal reference than a royal name, but Georgia would be sweet. The -uh/Uh- issue doesn’t hit my ear in this case, perhaps because it’s more of a -juh/Uh-, or perhaps the issue bothers me less overall.

Two more royal-reference names would be Henrietta and Harriet, for Prince Henry (called Harry).

Sophie and Louise are both possibilities. I particularly like Louise.

I also love Alice and Sarah, if either of those are royal enough.

If you find you’re just STUCK and none of the royal names work for this child, another option is to choose a name that COULD be royal. I remember there was a lot of talk during Kate’s pregnancy about what names they’d be likely to choose, and it’s possible they WILL have a girl later on. It’s a bit of a long shot, but that could work out in a fun way, with them choosing the same name you chose for your third daughter. It wouldn’t be something to count on, of course, but it could help ease the discomfort of breaking a theme.

Name update!

Dear Swistle,

After your wonderful response I decided to go ahead and name her Grace and practiced calling her that for a couple months. It just didn’t settle right (although It’s so pretty and I really wanted to sing her the U2 song by the same name). The last week of my pregnancy I realized she must be a Jane and the others just wouldn’t do.

Jane Caroline was born on October 10 and her name which means “God is Gracious” is the perfect fit. Caroline honors many of the “Car-” named people in our lives and means “Beautify Song” (as well as being a royal name). Thank you so much for your help and the lovely comments!

Anne

Dear Swistle

My name is Amanda Dale and my husband’s name is Niall Aidan. Our last name is Beg-lee. My husband is Irish and I am culturally Jewish. Although we are not currently expecting, I love name searching! Boy’s names come pretty easily to me, and for now my favorites include: Connor, Theo, Brenner (my mom’s maiden name), Miller, Owen, and Declan. Despite my ease at finding suitable boys names, I have found a lot of anxiety in my search for a wonderful girl’s name. A lot of this anxiety seems to stem from what expectations I am placing on my future daughter with the name I choose- let me explain:

The names that I am most drawn to seem to be unisex names, and the reason, I believe, is what I call the “cool” factor. Growing up, I knew girl’s named Brett and Sloane, and they just seemed so ridiculously cool to me! I was never a particularly cool kid, and having a very common name didn’t add to my confidence level. Those names always stood out and have continued to draw me in.

On my “cool” name list include:

Emerson, Brett, Sutton, Logan, Piper, Tristan, Spencer, Wren, Leighton, Rowan,

Despite my obvious preference, I have serious hesitations about using these names. Given that neither I nor my husband were cool kids, I worry that giving my daughter a cool kid name will set expectations she simply won’t meet. I feel that kids with slightly off beat names really need the confidence to own those names, and while we can definitely harbor those feelings in her through parenting, I still worry that it may be too much of a weight to bear. I worry that years of people not knowing her gender will cause her undue grief..

Given these concerns, I find myself searching through and enjoying some old fashioned and more feminine name choices as well, which I feel are more “cute”. Some “cute” names that I have considered include:

Evelyn, Penelope, Madeleine, Eloise, Fiona, Lena, Lila

Despite liking these, I’m not sure I love these choices. Moreover, I’m not sure being “cute” is better than being “cool”! Are there any names you can think of that can help me bridge the gap- the perfect blend of unisex cool with a feminine touch so my daughter can enjoy being whatever she wants to be?

Thanks!

Amanda

Something I notice when I think back on the cool girls in high school is that their names were not necessarily cool: Stephanie, Monica, Lisa. Having a cool name might have further improved their coolness, it’s true—but their coolness seemed quite separate from their names. In some cases, a cool girl made her ordinary name cool by being cool herself: one example is Lynn, who had a Mom Name but forever changed the image of that name for me and probably many others at our school.

I remember some of them were given Cool Nicknames, based on in-jokes or surnames. One cool girl was called Shock (her actual name was Jennifer). A couple others were called by their surnames, which gave them the unisex/boyish/preppy sound. A girl whose name isn’t cool enough can increase the coolness if needed.

To look at the other side, I’m trying to think of the non-cool girls I knew who had cool names. I remember the first Mikayla I met: a new girl who came to the school mid-year. Her “weird name” (it’s hard to imagine it that way now!) was one more strike against her, and my guess is that she would have paid cash money to blend in a little more as a Melissa or a Nicole. The naming climate has changed considerably since then, though, and I wonder if that has considerably changed the way kids feel about other kids’ names. I do know my kids still report to me the “weird names” of other kids, and we’ve had to have discussions about that (“Kids don’t choose their own names; we don’t make fun of people’s names,” “That name is fairly common, it’s just the first time you’ve encountered someone with it,” etc.). It still seems based mostly on exposure: if they know someone with that name, they feel like it’s a normal name.

Another naming-climate issue is that unisex names are more common now. When I was a child, there was Erin/Aaron, some Jamie/Jaime and Cory/Corey; Tracy and Shannon were supposedly unisex but I knew only girls with those names (except for one male Tracy we felt sorry for). Girls who wanted something more unisex generally went the Andrea/Andy route: the feminine name with the boyish nickname. The recent naming situation is quite different: Jaden, Jordan, Avery, Cameron, Taylor, Riley—lots of names where I have to ask my kids if a particular classmate is male or female. A name that would have been startling on someone of the parent’s generation might be perfectly ordinary and non-expectation-setting on someone of the child’s generation.

In fact, we’re hindered in some ways by being The Parents: it’s hard to know which of the names we consider cool (or cute, or professional) will be considered cool by the children and their peers. It can help to imagine our own parents, and whether we think they’d be capable of choosing a name for us that our peers would consider cool.

One good solution might be to choose a name that is cool but also relatively common. Avery, for example, is unisex and strikes me as falling into the Cool category, but it was #12 for girls in 2013. This makes it familiar enough not to stand out in an uncomfortable way, and the number of Averys helps to dilute the associations people have with the name: if you know one cool Avery and one sporty Avery and one academic Avery, it’s harder to have expectations of other holders of the name. More possibilities of this sort: Harper, Taylor, Riley.

Another good solution might be to choose a name that’s cool and unisex but has a common and girlish nickname. Emerson from your list is a perfect example of this: she could easily go by Emmie or Emma if she preferred. Miller from your boy-name list would work well for this too, if you wanted something more daring: Milly/Millie is sweet.

Or you could do the opposite: give her a familiar/traditional girl name, but with a cool/unisex nickname. I recently encountered a Nicole my age who is going by Cole, which is a big change from all the Nickys. A Katherine could go by Kit; a Caroline could go by Rory; a Charlotte could go by Charlie or Chaz or Chip; a Juliette could go by Jet or Jules; an Alexandra could go by Al or Zan. I think this works particularly well with girl names that have boy versions, such as Charlotte/Charles and Alexandra/Alexander: it seems like any of the “boy” nicknames would be available for the girl version.

Another possibility is to use a very cool name, but use it as the middle name and then deliberately put it into rotation as one of her nicknames as she grows up. This gives her the option of using it if she wants to and/or it suits her, or hiding it if she doesn’t and/or it doesn’t.

Or I think it can be easier to pull off an unusual or cool name if there’s a good quick explanation for it. For example, if you used Brenner for a girl, she’d have “It was my grandmother’s maiden name.”

It may also reduce your concerns if you choose a unisex name that is used more often for girls: Emerson is now used mostly for girls, but Spencer and Tristan are used mostly for boys. Piper is used almost exclusively for girls. She’ll need to correct people less often with a name like Wren (48 new baby boys and 332 new baby girls in 2013) than with a name like Logan (12,270 new baby boys and 704 new baby girls in 2013).

When I think of names that seem “too cute,” I think of the ones that seem too lightweight: names chosen for a cute little baby girl that will feel silly or diminishing when she’s a grown woman. I feel nervous about giving examples for a category I just described so negatively, but perhaps it would help if I used one from my own generation: I know a Chrissy who would prefer to have something a little more solid to use now that she’s an adult, and I find it difficult to even use her name: it feels like I’m using an inappropriately affectionate nickname, and it also feels too babyish for her serious nature. Another of my peers has the given name Jenni: that’s another that seems too cute to me.

The names on your cute list don’t seem cute to me at all. Evelyn, Madeleine, Eloise, Lena—these are good solid traditional choices, nice vintage revivals. Penelope and Eloise and Fiona have a little more whimsy to them, but they’re still serious choices with good long histories. If your list were Maddi, Ellie, Evie, Fifi, and Pip, that would fit better with what I think of as “Maybe these might be too cute” list.

The big question here, though, is whether a cool name puts too much pressure on the child to be cool. I’ve been thinking about that since you wrote, and I find I can go either way on that. My first answer is yes: I do think it’s possible to burden a child with an overly cool name. I think a child can feel pressure from her name, and I think parents can inadvertently or deliberately put their own issues and expectations into a name. But if the parents like cool names, does that mean they shouldn’t use those names, just because it could be an issue? That’s where I start to come down on the other side of things.

I think my main advice is to see if you can figure out what style of name is your favorite, separate from the image of the names. That could be a nearly impossible task, since the image of a name is a huge part of whether it’s to our tastes or not. But what I mean is, see if you can separate “a cool name” from an image of “a cool high school girl.” See if it helps to do the same exercise I did: think of the cool girls you knew, and see if all of them had cool names or only some; think of the girls you knew with cool names, and see if all of them were cool or just some. Or when you’re out and about, mentally try the names on people of all ages and types to see how well you like the names with those people attached to them instead of to the cool girls from your memory. Picture various types of kids with various types of names; picture people your own age and your parents’ age with various types of names. Sit at the mall and watch people go by, and try the names on for size. Break the name from your image of the name as much as you can, and see if you still like the name.

But maybe you will do these exercises and realize that you like cool names because you like cool names: you DON’T feel like they’ll change your child’s temperament and you don’t even want them to, you DON’T mind if she doesn’t end up being cool, you’re NOT trying to correct for your own childhood experience—you just like cool names because you like them and they’re your preferred naming style. In that case, I would treat them as I’d treat any other name category: it’s considerate to build in some flexibility if possible (a middle name, a nickname, etc.), but as long as you’ve taken into account the things I can see you’re taking into account already (wondering how the names will fit on a variety of people, wondering how the child might feel about the name), it’s okay to go with the ones YOU like best. That’s what we all end up doing, whether our favorites are Margaret or Spencer or Chrissy. Then our children either like their names or don’t, just as we like our names or don’t, and they modify them if they need to—but most don’t need to.

I think the reason I had trouble deciding on this issue is that I feel one way up to a point, and then I feel a different way after that. I DO think it’s important to be aware of the seriousness of naming a child, and all the issues that can go along with choosing a name. I DO think it’s important to consider how the child might feel about the name, and what the consequences of each name might be. I DO think it’s important to separate names from our images and expectations of those names, so that we don’t accidentally feel as if giving a child a willowy, pretty, confident name will make her turn out willowy and pretty and confident. I DO think it’s important to imagine the names on plump plain receptionists as well as on popular pretty high school students.

But I ALSO think that we can only take this so far. We don’t know what the child will be like, and thinking about it a lot won’t tell us more. We don’t know how ANY name might fit the child, or how those names will be perceived as the child grows up. It would be silly to throw away a name we loved “in case it doesn’t fit,” and then have the child turn out to be a PERFECT fit for that name. And I think it’s possible to worry more than we need to: it is, in the end, just a name. For MANY names on the spectrum, the name is a stretchy garment that fits a great variety of wearers.

Name update:

Hi there,
Almost 6 whole years ago I wrote to you asking if a cool name sets expectations for a child. I wanted to give you an update! Since then I have had 3 boys. The first is 3, Charles “Charlie” Nolan. The other two are 2 month old twins- Henry Ethan and Graham Brenner. Funnily enough none of the names I liked back then were names we even considered using. While I still gravitate towards what I would consider “cool” names, when I actually had to name a real child some of those names felt totally wrong for my own children. Plus my husband seemed to only like names that you would find in the English monarchy (we almost ended up with Charles, Henry and George!).

Hope all is well during this crazy time
Amanda

Nancy writes:

I can’t stop reading your blog. I am four weeks from my due date without any sort of naming yet figured out, and could use all the help I can get.

A quote from an earlier post stuck me:

“A first baby’s name can cause extra anxiety because you’re also choosing your whole naming PHILOSOPHY.”

This summed up our problem naming – we’re not sure even what direction to head in, let alone specific names. For background, my parents named all five of their children with family names (my middle name is after an old family friend, but that’s the only exception in ten total names). We also have a tradition of naming the second son after the father, so if we do have two boys (a fairly big if, but we’d like to have a big family – four is the plan right now) the second one would be Philip. For reference, I’m Nancy – named after a great aunt.

My husband’s family doesn’t use family names, and he is less certain they need to be included. I would like to at least have a family name as a middle name.

With his surname (something like Stinson), we’ve felt that all names that end in -en, -an, -on, or -in are out, as they end up to rhyme-y. (For example my father’s name, Gavin probably wouldn’t work). Names that end in S are also not great, but I think workable (a possibility is Wallace Stinson, after my brother).

Another question is how soon is too soon to have a namesake? I like two of my sibling’s names, Sophie and Wallace, but they are both under thirty. I like the idea that then they have a sort of godfather/mother like position in my child’s life, but maybe it’s too much.

Away from family names, I also like some more modern names, like Wilder (for a boy) and August (for a girl). We also were considering the name Cedar (for a girl). We come from a woodsy place, so nature themed names are not uncommon.

The crux of the problem then, is that if we go with a modern or unique name, do the rest of our potential children need names that match? If we stick with family names for the first, are we stuck with family names forever?

Names we’ve considered (with relation to the baby):

Girls:
Margaret (great aunt)
Sophie (aunt)
August
Cedar

and Joanne (maternal grandmother) for a middle name

Boys:
Elliot
Paul (paternal grandfather)
Louis or Lewis
Wallace (uncle)
Crawford (great great grandfather, but also used recently for a first cousin of mine)
Wilder

Thanks for your help!

(As an aside, if this post is too long – once I started there was so much to say! – I’d love to get your or your reader’s opinion on my first question: How soon is too soon to have a namesake? In other words, can I name my baby after my brother and/or sister?)

At first I was going to say there was no such thing as too soon to use a namesake name, but then I took it to the extreme of “Well, what about naming the baby after the baby’s cousin born two years earlier?,” and I could see how that might involve additional issues. So instead I’ll say this: there is a period of time when using someone’s name could instead be mistakenly perceived as “stealing the name” (as it could seem in the example of naming after a cousin two years older), but that once that period has passed, it’s a wonderful option as a namesake name, and not too soon to use it. It might help to imagine your own aunts and uncles, and whether it would have felt weird for you and your siblings to share any of their names. I think the only reason it isn’t done more often is that it’s common for names from one generation ago to sound dated or boring by the time the next batch of babies comes along; the names of great-grandparents tend to be coming back into style and so are more likely to be chosen as honor names.

You’re also asking about whether sibling names need to match. The short answer is no, they don’t. The longer answer involves many factors, but I’d say it primarily boils down to your preferences. How much coordination would you LIKE to have? When you imagine your future family, do you feel fine with sisters named Cedar and Margaret, or does that not sit well with you? Would it bother you to have some children with family names and some without, or would that be fine?

In my own family, I found I was quite concerned about coordination at the beginning, and then less so later on. My first two children have first names that are very well coordinated, and each has a middle name that is a great-grandfather’s first name. This left me agitated when expecting the third child (which turned out instead to be the third and fourth children): Did we have to find another first name that coordinated as well as the first two did? but what if we don’t like any of those names? what if they’re getting so coordinated it’s starting to get confusing? Did we have to use another great-grandparent name for the middle name, or did it have to be a family name, or would it be wrong to use a non-honor middle name, or WHAT?

The outcome of all that agitating is that neither of the twins’ first names are the same style as their older brothers’ first names, though the styles are compatible. AND, one twin has a family first name and a middle name that’s an honor name but not a family honor name; and the other has a middle name that doesn’t honor anyone. So! We just took that mold and broke it right up. And I admit I was worried about it at the time, and so I am even gladder to report that it has so far caused no noticeable problems. No one has said to us, “Wait—so four of the kids have honor middle names and one doesn’t?” or “Wait—so you gave your FOURTH child a family name as a first name, but NONE of the other kids have family first names?” These issues turn out not to come up much in conversation, or even to be of much interest to anyone outside our immediate family. And although some kids have more honor names than others, when we tell them their Naming Stories we have stories to tell about every single name, honor or not, and there hasn’t been any “Nyah, nyah, I’m named for a great-grandfather I never met and you’re NOT!” or the like.

Where was I? Oh, yes: my overall point is that it’s up to you and your husband, and that I encourage you not to get too agitated about making the names come out the same. But my own personal preference is to keep the first names in compatible styles: for example, I wouldn’t advise having sisters named Margaret and Cedar, and would instead lean toward either the Margaret and Sophie direction OR the Cedar and August direction.

The possible future son named Philip adds a little complication, doesn’t it? Since you don’t know if you’ll have a second son, it’s hard to know how much to let the tradition influence your choices. How important is this tradition to you? How many generations has it been in effect? How set are you and your husband on going with it, if you do have a second son? Would you be willing to modify it in any way, such as using the name as a middle name instead of as a first name? These are the sorts of questions I’d consider when choosing how to proceed.

If you go the Cedar and August route for girls and then use Wilder for a first son, the name Philip now stands out rather vividly; it’s definitely an easy situation to explain (“It’s a family tradition to name the second son after the father”), but it could make it seem as if you don’t like Philip’s name and only used it because you had to. And of course you could instead have Cedar, August, Wilder, and then another GIRL. It feels a little frustrating to imagine carefully planning for a Philip by naming your first three children Margaret, Sophie, and Louis—and then having another girl. That would, however, be my own inclination: if I were absolutely decided that I’d use Philip for a second boy, and if I were planning a number of children where a second boy was statistically likely, and if I had two favorite name styles and one of them was compatible with the name Philip and the other style wasn’t, then I would use that as my helpful deciding factor for using one style over the other. Then I would consider my second-favorite style as middle names.

I guess the strategy I’d suggest is this: First, discuss the “second son named Philip” idea, and decide if you’re going to do that or not, and if you’re willing to modify that or not, and whether it would bother you if his name was the only name in the group that didn’t coordinate with the others. If, for example, you don’t want brothers named Wilder and Philip, but you ARE willing to modify the naming tradition and make Philip a middle name, this lets you consider Wilder Elliot and Crawford Philip.

Second, discuss how you two feel in general about the coordination of first names: try out some combinations (“Sophie, Wilder, Cedar, Philip,” “Elliot, Philip, Cedar, Paul,” “Louis, Cedar, Philip, August”) and see what feels right to you and what doesn’t.

Third, based on those decisions, choose the basic style of the first names. Are you going to go with coordination (Margaret, Wallace, Sophie, Philip; or Cedar, August, Crawford, Wilder), or a happy assortment (this is where you choose names from different styles, but avoiding three of one style and one stand-out), or one style for the girls and a second style for the boys?

Fourth, pick your favorite boy and girl names of this style for this baby.

Fifth, make a list of middle names: family names, names that don’t work as first names in the chosen style, any other names you might want to use. Pick the middle names you like best with your two favorite names.

With a larger family especially, I wouldn’t worry about making all the names coordinate perfectly: if your first baby ends up with a family first name and a nature middle name, for example, that doesn’t mean all the rest of the children have to have family first names and nature middle names. In fact, I might deliberately make the second child’s name a different kind of pairing, to keep from feeling stuck with a pattern or creating family expectations (“They used this name and that name, so I must be next!”). What I think works well is trying to balance the naming stories: if one child has “Oh, we chose your first name after Aunt Sophie, and your middle name we just LOVED and it reminded us of this beautiful area of the country,” and your second child has “Your first name we just LOVED as soon as we heard it and knew we HAD to use it, and your middle name is after your great-grandfather,” then I think everyone will be happy and no one will feel slighted. I think it’s more of a problem when one child has two names of huge and interesting significance and the second child gets a shrug and a “Huh? Oh, I think we just found it in a name book? or something? I don’t really remember.” And among those of us who love names, I doubt that is ever a problem.

Name update! Nancy writes:

Baby Stinson finally arrived last week! We were 90% sure of our name choice for a boy (Paul Crawford) but, of course, Baby Stinson turned out to be Baby Girl Stinson. We had a long list of possible names, but somehow naming a real live living being was much more daunting then naming a potential being in my belly. So it took us a couple days.

Ultimately, we went with family names. Sophie Joanne (after my sister and husband’s mother) had been on our list from the beginning, and then when my husband’s sister was visiting she suggested the name Sophie out of the blue (without knowing we were already considering it). I did call my sister Sophie to check that it would be ok with her first. It may cause some confusion, but it felt better to name the baby after someone then simply pick a name because we liked the sounds (we came very close to choosing Hazel Margret, with no family connection to Hazel).

Long story short, she is Sophie Joanne Stinson! And we are very happy to have her by any name.

Thanks for your all your help,
Nancy