Amy writes:

You probably don’t get emails like this often (about re-naming a 4 month
old baby) but I am struggling with baby name regret right now – probably
because I didn’t discover your site until after my daughter was born. We
named our daughter Evelyn Suz@nne. Our last name is Qu1nn. Suz@nne is
after my mother. Evelyn is a name that my husband and I agreed upon – but I
always felt kind of on the fence about it. It was always at the top of my
husband’s list. I have trouble making decisions and went with my husband’s
(2nd) fave because I couldn’t decide. His favorite was Virginia, his
mother’s name – which I do like – but had reservations about using.

I have not felt good about her name since she was born and am seriously
contemplating changing it. At first my husband was adamant that we would
not change the name – but has reconsidered if it would truly make me happy.
We also may add a name instead of changing it altogeter. The other names on
our list before she was born were Sadie, Sarah and Molly. At this point, I
don’t really like any of those and realize that I did not put enough
thought into naming the baby during my pregnancy. After she was born I came
up with a new list of names, Anna being on the top of the list. I later
found out my sister-in-law is using this name in January for her daughter
and then that it was my great-grandmothers name. I had always meant to look
at my family tree for a name but never did. I did suggest Anna to my
husband when i was pregnant, but he shot it down. However, I would have
fought for it harder if I knew it was a family name. Catherine is another
family name that we both like but can’t use because we have a niece named
Katherine/Katie. My husband and I were looking for a name with a good
nickname. We call our daughter Evy (rhymes with Chevy). While I think Evy
is cute, I’m not sure it feels like a name to me. I also worry about
childhood teasing and Heavy Evy – a connection I did not make before. My
husband does not want a top 10 name. I thought the same before the baby was
born, but have reconsidered now that she’s here. I would much prefer a name
I really liked over a name I liked less but was less popular. Here are some
names I’m considering changing it to:

– Elizabeth (great-grandmother’s name and grandmother’s sisters name) nn libby?
– Clara
– Emma (too popular?)
– Isabel nn Izzy (too popular?)
– Amelia nn Milllie, Mia
– Chloe
– Rose (great aunt)
– Keira
– Maia

Names I would pick if I had the courage (or my husband would let me)
– Violet
– Francesca
– Maisie
– Clementine

Family names
– Louise (great-grandmother)
– Beatrice (great-great aunt)

As you can see, I’m a bit all over the place. With my two favorites – Anna
and Catherine – out of the running, I’m not sure where to go. I’d
appreciate any advice you have to give.

Thank you!

I remember writing about this twice, once for changing a baby’s name and once for a baby girl—but I can’t find the post about the baby girl. Oh wait—I wonder if it was before I had the baby name blog? YES! here it is, on my regular blog. I also sort of wrote about it again on my regular blog.

I can sum those up for people who don’t want to click through:

1. I’m not opposed to changing a baby’s name, and I think there are many good reasons for doing so.

2. If you’re going to do it, the earlier the better.

3. There will be SOME kerfuffle no matter what, but probably everyone will get over it, and the paperwork stuff will be a bit of a hassle but then it will be done with, and one day it will be an interesting story.

4. One exception: if the name is a family name. In that case, the repercussions of changing it are too hurtful to the family member to be outweighed by a dissatisfied feeling with the name, and better to find a nickname you like and use that instead.

So in your case, according to me, you may not change your daughter’s middle name. And Anna Suzanne doesn’t really work anyway (because of the repeating “ann” segment), even if there wasn’t the issue of your cousin planning to use the name, or of your husband not liking the name.

However, you MAY move your daughter’s middle name into the first name slot. Not only is it a family name, but Anna or Annie would be a fine nickname for it. And unlike the name Anna, where you didn’t even know it was your great-grandmother’s name and perhaps didn’t know your great-grandmother either, the name Suzanne has an actual family association for you.

And you also may choose a new first name. If the repeating “ann” segment DOESN’T bother you (it bothers me a little, but not enough to be a total dealbreaker if I loved the first name and had to use the middle name), maybe you would like other Ann-based first names such as Annika, Annabel, Anya, Anneliese. Annabel in particular is a nice alternative to Isabella (the most popular girl name in the United States), and Annabel Suzanne puts some distance between the two “ann” sounds.

But reading your email, it sounds like it might be better to keep the name as it is. If you had another name you LOVED and felt it fit your daughter exactly, it would be different. I’m worried in part about your husband here: it sounds like he’s only willing to change the name to keep you from being miserable about it, but I don’t feel confident that changing the name will help with that, if even now that she’s here in front of you there isn’t a name that feels right. And there’s no net benefit to changing the name to one that makes you happy and him miserable.

Would it help at all to know that the name Evelyn, as we’ve discussed, has a good chance of joining the top ten soon? It’s a name people are thinking of very positively. (This sort of thing doesn’t help everyone but it does help me: when I was considering Henry for my fifthborn, I was very swayed by the number of people who DIDN’T say, as I’d feared they might, that it was an old-man name.)

And if you’re not as fond of the nickname Evy as you’d hoped, would you like Linny (or Linnie or Lynnie) better? I love the light and feminine sound of that name. I can just picture holding a little baby girl and calling her Linnie.

Jenny writes:

No, I’m not pregnant. ;) I was just reminded about something by today’s post that might be a good topic for discussion.

The issue of plural sounding first names and surnames. For example, I really liked the name Miles. I think it sounds good with my last name: Miles Jacobs. But what about when you need to talk about possession? The ball belonging to Miles? That ball is Miles’s Jacobs’s? Gah!

Also, I know that wasn’t proper punctuation above, but honestly, I’ve never been clear about how to do it right. I’m not sure what exactly I am asking you to address, but I always enjoy your take on things.

I totally agree: this is one of the main problems of names that end in S. When I worked in a daycare, we had a boy in our class named James, and my co-worker wrote “Jame’s Cubby.” Er?

More typically, people get confused because they memorized a “things ending in S vs. things not ending in S” rule rather than the “plural vs. singular” rule they should have memorized. So they treat a singular-name-ending-in-S as if it were plural, because it ends in S: James’ Cubby, Miles’ Cubby. But in fact, singulars get an apostrophe-S even if those singulars end in S: it’s James’s Cubby, or Charles’s Cubby, or Ross’s Cubby (Triple S Award!). And in the case of Miles Jacobs, it would be either Miles’s Cubby or Miles Jacobs’s Cubby: one possessive apostrophe per unit, and “Miles Jacobs” is one unit.

And yet, saying it out loud, we’d probably say it as if it were Miles Jacobs’ Cubby—just because we tend to do that verbally when we run into the “zezzes” sound. This is probably why there’s that weird exception that Jesus gets to be a plural possessive (Jesus’ Cubby), even though that is totally nuts: everyone felt weird about saying “Jesuzzes,” especially during responsive readings or The Lord’s Prayer where everyone was saying it together and sounded like a hive of oversize bees, and so they made a group decision to let it be “in Jesus’ name.” My guess is that that decision lead to a LOT of confusion: you can only see “Jesus’ name” so many times before you start writing “James’ Cubby.”

Here’s a trick for remembering how to make a first-name-ending-in-S possessive: pretend it doesn’t end in S. If we were talking about the cubby belonging to Adam, we’d say Adam’s Cubby: we added an apostrophe and an S to the name. We do the same for the cubby belonging to Lucas, and it’s Lucas’s Cubby.

But! All this is to say YES, it’s a problem. “Miles’s Cubby” both looks and sounds more awkward than “Michael’s Cubby,” and it’s the kind of thing that causes problems for many people. It may be one of the reason ending-in-S names often make my finalist list but so far haven’t made it to any of my babies.

Eilidh writes:

Hello! My husband and I have Emmett, who is 6, then Alice, who is 4, and Leighton, who is 2. We have an issue with naming our last baby, a boy. We both love the name Shane, and it is our very first choice. However, the meaning is “God is gracious”. This is where our issue is. Both my husband and I are non-religious, and we aren’t raising our children with a religion. We don’t want to give him a name tied to a religious meaning, and it can mean a lot to someone. We’re both very Irish, and love those sort of names. We’d love some help! Thanks so much!

P.S.: If the baby was going to be a girl, he would have been Rowan. Is that any help?

Oh, easy one! I know exactly what you should name your baby: Shane.

About the meaning—I getcha, I do. But baby name meanings are not the actual meanings of names. Generally meanings are based only on the root words from which the names were formed. Other meanings can be totally arbitrary. Baby name books frequently disagree on what any particular name means.

Meanings are fun and may even significantly enhance a name for the parents, but that’s it. Rowan means “little redhead,” but if your baby had been a girl she needn’t have been a redhead to possess that name, nor would your giving her that name have meant that you wanted her to be one. And the name Leighton means “meadow settlement,” but you’re not rearing Leighton as a meadow settlement and no one should think you were.

Shane in particular has a very tenuous connection to its meaning: Shane is the English version of one possible pronunciation of the Irish name Sean (the English version of the other possible pronunciation is Shawn). Sean, in turn, is the Irish version of John. The name John is a contracted form of the Hebrew name Johanan. And it’s Johanan that means “God is gracious” in Hebrew. [Source for all this stuff: Oxford Dictionary of First Names.]

To me, this means that if you were rearing your children in that religion, you could think pleasantly of Shane’s several-times-removed connection to that meaning. But the name Shane has, well, almost NOTHING to do with the name Johanan. The name Shane HAS no meaning. Name your son Shane! You love it, and the only real meaning of that name to you is going to be “Our Baby.”

R writes:

My husband and I are expecting our first child November 2nd. We don’t know yet if it will be a boy or a girl, but we have names picked out. We recently looked up the girl name in one of those baby name books, and it essentially means unlucky girl. This doesn’t bother me because I think name definitions are kind of silly, but it does bother my husband. What do you think? Does the definition of a name matter?

Hm. This is tricky. But overall, I’m with you on this and think it doesn’t much matter.

For one thing, many definitions aren’t “real,” per se. That is, some names don’t actually mean anything; someone at some point just made up a definition for it. Many names appearing in the Bible have meanings based on Biblical stories—but what did the names mean before the Bible stories? Other names come from another language and do in fact mean their meanings—but only in that other language. Other names are words from our own language and come with the meanings of that word: Grace, Patience, Peace, Ireland, Ivy, Rose, Hunter, Mason, Tanner, Archer, Piper, Ruby. Chastity. Moon Unit.

Different baby name resources can list completely different meanings: one of my books says the name Hannah means “he has favored me,” and another says it means “gracious.” We’ve had the issue raised a couple of times on this blog that Hannah is “the same name” as Grace, because it means gracious. I don’t think sharing similar meanings (if they even DO share a meaning) makes two names “the same name,” but plenty of people do.

I remember in elementary school standing around looking up the meanings of our names—but I was the one who brought in the baby name book, and almost no one in the class knew their meaning already. And even being a huge baby-name fan, I don’t know the meanings of my kids’ names without looking them up.

The names Mary and Maria and Miriam all mean “bitter,” but there are nevertheless hundreds of thousands of Marys/Marias/Miriams. Elizabeth means “pledged to God,” but it doesn’t mean she has to be given up to the local nunnery. Delia means “born on the island of Delos,” but she doesn’t have to be. The name Dawson means “son of David,” but his daddy’s name doesn’t actually need to be David. The name Melissa means “bee,” but she needn’t buzz or make honey.

In fact, sometimes with things like this, I like to ask myself the question bluntly: “Do I believe that using a name that means ‘unlucky girl’ will have an actual effect on my daughter’s actual luckiness?” And in my case, I answer that question no. In my opinion, baby name meanings are only for fun. If I found a name I loved and it meant something negative, I don’t think it would bother me. …Much. I guess I wouldn’t use a name that meant something like “unwanted child” or whatever, but that would be because I wouldn’t want my child to wonder about it.

But we’re all likely to be at different points on the spectrum on this issue: some of you will agree with me; some of you will go even further (“Names have meanings?”); some of you will be way at the other end, choosing the meaning before you choose the name; and most of you will be somewhere in between. Where are you on the spectrum?

Last time, we talked about how just because a name is in the Top 100 doesn’t mean it’s too common to use. Today, we take it further.

I would declare this: that EVEN A TOP 10 NAME is not too common to use. I know, right? Pretty bold, yes?

Check out the name Emily. It has been the #1 most popular girl name in the U.S. for the last twelve years. It was no slacker before then, either: it’s been in the Top 50 since 1975. That is a long time to be popular—and yet I don’t know ONE SINGLE CHILD with the name Emily. Between them, my first two children have been in nine classrooms and three summer camps, and not one single Emily. You’d think you’d be stepping on a heap of Emilys every time you turned around, and yet at least some of us are not.

Aside from the occasional fluke (in one of William’s classes—but only one—there were two Isabellas, two Abigails, two Emmas, two Jacobs, and three Williams), this is true of all the Top 10 names: even though they’re the most popular names, they’re still not born so often that there are “five in every classroom.” The expression “five in every classroom” is an exaggeration I would love to see die out, because it is scaring the people who think it means they have to name their daughter Xzathianna unless they basically want her to be Jennifer.

Waiting for a parent-teacher conference with a teacher who was way behind schedule, I walked up one side of the school hallway and down the other. Outside of each door was a decoration made from the students’ first names. Just about every single classroom had a Jacob: Jacob has been the most popular name for boys in the U.S. for the last nine years, and it’s been in the Top 50 since 1978. But none of the classrooms had TWO Jacobs. I saw quite a few Emmas and Madisons and Laurens—but not TWO per classroom. Just one.

Even my assertion that there was a Jacob in every classroom is highly suspect: just over 1.5% of boys were given that name in 2001. That’s roughly 3 Jacobs per 200 boys. If classrooms are about half boys, and there are about 20 kids in a class, that’s 3 Jacobs per TWENTY classes. And that is the most popular boy name. Let’s just pause a moment so this can sink in. Number ONE most popular boy name. Three of them per twenty classrooms. Not per class.

In 2001 when my son was born, 32,493 U.S. boys were named Jacob; 25,043 U.S. girls were named Emily. Jacob was the most popular name for boys, and Emily the most popular name for girls. In 1973, the most popular name for boys was Michael, and there were 67,799 new ones born that year. The most popular name for girls was Jennifer, and there were 62,434 new ones born that year.

See that? Significantly more than DOUBLE the number of children had the top name in 1973 than in 2001. Since class size has also been decreasing in some areas (classes were often 25 to 30 in my childhood schools, but my kids’ classes have been around 20), you can see how that would dramatically impact the “five in every class” problem. If there were 2-1/2 times more Jennifers than Emilys, in a class 1-1/2 times as large, then a classroom with 1 Emily born in 2001 would have had 3 to 4 Jennifers born in 1973.

Well, goodness! That does explain the near paranoia the current parents have about using an overly-popular name! Although, my numbers are unrealistic: there ISN’T one Emily per classroom, but more like…[IMPENDING MATH ALERT! Feel free to duck out for a few lines]…let’s see…1.27 Emilys per 100 female births is 1 Emily per 79 female births. Those 79 girls would divide into about 8 classrooms of 20 children (approximately half of them girls). So that’s 1 Emily per 8 classes, on average across the United States. At their highest peak in 1973-1974, there were 4.03 Jennifers per 100 female births: about 4 Jennifers for every 10 classes of 20 kids, or about 4 Jennifers for 6.66 classrooms of the 30-kid classes I remember in the ’70s. Still fewer than 1 Jennifer on average per class, even for a name so legendary in its overuse it is STILL mentioned as the prime example of name people don’t want to give their kids. “I don’t want her to be, like, a JENNIFER,” they say.

Well, don’t worry about it, because there aren’t any names as overused as Jennifer right now. In 2007, the #1 girl name was not even 1% of all female births; compare that once again to Jennifer, which in its prime was more than 4% of all female births.

If you like a Top 10 name, and it is your favorite, and you love it—then go ahead and use it. Take the rising and falling of names into account, take the ranking of names into account—but if the name you want is a Top 10 name, you really don’t have to worry that there will be five in every classroom.

If there is ONE THING I would like to shout from the mountaintops in re the Social Security’s baby name information, it is that THE TOP 100 IS NOT (necessarily) THE KISS OF DEATH.

Some people, when they say “not in the Top 100” DO know what they mean by that, and they really do want to stay out of that level of use. But MOST people DON’T know what they mean by it: they think anything in the Top 100 is “5 of them in a classroom” common. When in fact, these are all names on the 2000 Top 100 list:

Isaiah
Luis
Richard
Angel
Dakota
Trevor
Blake
Dalton
Sebastian
Robert

Destiny
Trinity
Mariah
Cheyenne
Michelle
Danielle
Vanessa
Jennifer

I chose names I’ve never heard on a real child, but of course your experience with the list will vary based on the particular children you’ve come in contact with in schools and daycares and playgroups and in your family/friends group. My point is not that any one name on the list is SO UNUSUAL, but rather that the Top 100 is not like “the name Jennifer in 1975”: even the most common names are not all that common. (Even the name Jennifer—which was practically an epidemic—didn’t often result in the “five in her class” problem so often cited as a reason to avoid Top 100 names.)

Some of the names may SOUND common: for example, you might be saying, “Wait—she doesn’t know anyone named Jennifer???” No, no, I mean I don’t know any CHILDREN named Jennifer. Jennifer is a Mommy Name right now, not a child’s name. And so it goes on the list: I’ve never run into a child named Jennifer since I’ve been not-a-child—even though the name hasn’t left the Top 100.

Notice, by the way, that I used the 2000 list for those names, not the 2007: the 2007 babies are so new, I probably haven’t run into many of them. The 2000 babies, though, are in grade school now, so they’re in the public consciousness.

Okay, it is TOO IMPOSSIBLE to keep typing about this: Elizabeth has moved from “coloring nearby” to “on my lap talking about things and messing with the keyboard.” So that’s enough for now, but WE WILL RETURN.

Subject for discussion right now: “The Top 100 is not (necessarily) the kiss of death.”