Update on Baby Girl or Boy Engel, Sibling to Griffin

Hello Swistle, long time reader, first time emailer. My name is Melanie, and my last name sounds like Smiles.

Honestly, I never expected to be emailing you because I’ve always had a long list of names at the ready, and my husband’s style is similar to mine. We had no issues naming our first. She is Hunter Lorna. Her MN is in honor of my beloved grandmother.

When we found out I was pregnant for the second time, I was hoping for a boy, who would be Paxton Lucas (MN in honor of my brother). Well, we were shocked to learn that I will be having TWO boys. The first will indeed be Paxton Lucas, and we are 99% decided on Camden for the second. We like that Paxton and Camden kind of match but aren’t too matchy (both two syllables, both end with N, both have a one syllable nickname, neither are overly popular). However, I am having trouble with Camden’s MN.

The issue is that I have no more honor names left to use. I felt very, very strongly about honoring my grandmother and brother, but the only other family member I would consider honoring is my father. And frankly, I just don’t like his names (Carl and Walter) enough to use them. My husband Max is not close with his family, so he does not want to use any of their names. (You will be tickled to know that not only did he take my surname, but it was his suggestion to do so!) Also, we do not want to use any of our own names as honor names. I know you often advocate for that, but it’s just not for us.

I do not want Camden to be the only child in the family without an honor MN. The only other person I am considering for this is my friend Morgan. Here are my questions about this.

1. Is it strange to honor someone who is “just” a friend? She is like a sister to me, and we’ve been friends since Kindergarten, if that helps.

2. Is that too many Ms and Ns? caMdeN MorgaN.

3. Does it immediately invoke Captain Morgan?

As you can probably tell, our style runs more contemporary/surnames/below the top 100. Here are some other names on our boys list, just for reference. (None of these are honor names.)

Denver
Maddox (too similar to Max)
Brighton
Belmont
River
Rowan
Ronan
Rohan
Finn
Barrett
Calahan
Thatcher
Cohen
Skylar
Soren
Quinn
Avery
Bailey
Mackenzie (too similar to Max)
London
Payton (too similar to Paxton)
Aspen (too similar to Paxton)
Harbor (saw this on your post about naming a boy Harper!)

This will be my last pregnancy. (We had planned on two total, so three will certainly be enough!) If one of the twins is a surprise girl, her first name will be either Fallon, Sierra, or Winter. We would have the same MN issue.

Oh, and lastly, we want to stick with two syllables to match Hunter, Lorna, Paxton, and Lucas, but that’s not a dealbreaker.

Am I overthinking this? Is Camden Morgan fine? Should I forget about the honor MN altogether and just pick something from the list above? Or should I switch out the first name to something that flows better with Morgan?

Thank you!
Melanie

I think it is a delightful idea to use Morgan after a friend you’ve had since kindergarten and think of as a sister! One of my children has a middle name after a friend, and I worried it would seem weird since the others have family honor names—but with time, it does not seem weird. Everyone has a naming story, and that seems to matter more than what specific type of honor name each person got.

If Camden Morgan seems a little full of M and N, or too evocative of Captain Morgan, you could swap the middles: Paxton Morgan and Camden Lucas. One thing I like about this idea is that it makes it seem less as if one twin got your Ideal First-Choice Name and the other got runners-up for both first and middle.

But if you don’t want to swap the middle names, I wouldn’t advise choosing a different first name just to get a better flow/sound with the middle. In my experience, the flow/sound of the full name is satisfying during the naming process, and after that it just disappears until high school graduation, when they say it so slowly the flow doesn’t matter anyway.

I would also like to put in a vote for the name Carl. I think it’s a terrific, warm, gentle name that would grow on you with time. Camden Carl is pretty cute, and fun to say! Or I like Paxton Carl and Camden Lucas. I think the name Walter, too, is in the very early stages of a comeback, and will soon sound better to you than it does now. I used my grandfather’s name as one child’s middle, even though I actively disliked my grandfather’s name—and now I no longer dislike it: not only have I come around to it, but if anything I love it more for being a name I only wanted to use for the honor and not for the name itself.

Oh, one final idea: you could use Lucas for both boys. Paxton Lucas and Camden Lucas. I have heard of a fair number of families where all the girls are given the same middle name, which is what made me think of it. Plus, I love fun twin-name stuff.

Update on Baby Boy Heinz

Update on Baby Girl Rhymes-with-McTune: Rose or Lane?

Swistle! Help!

I’m due with my second girl in early March 2022. I have an almost 6 year old daughter named Julia Elizabeth. We LOVE her name. We chose it based on the Beatles song of the same name. It, as well as her nickname Joules (spelled that way due to her dad being an electrical engineer), fits her so perfectly. Elizabeth is my middle name.

We have zero ideas that we both like for baby sister. I like Norah Rosemary and my husband loves Emma. He’s meh on Norah (thinks it sounds too old) and I’m meh on Emma (it’s too common/plain). We have thrown around Hannah and Margot but neither feel quite right. I’ve told him that if he gets on board with Norah as the first name, he can pick a middle name but he’s still not sold!

If baby was a boy, we were planning on Ezra Isaac. (Ezra is the name of the lead singer of my favorite band and Isaac is my husband’s middle name.)

Sibling names “matching” is less important to me than the individual name we give her being one that we love. I like clearly feminine but not fussy or frilly or cutesy names. Automatic nos to anything that can sound like a body part or that turn our last name into a question. (i.e. Gina or Willa)

I’ve put out requests to friends and family for suggestions and yet still nothing is feeling right. I thought maybe your expert advice could help us!

Thank you,
BreeAnn

Your husband is wrong about Norah, let’s just start there. Would he like it any better spelled Nora? Would he like it better as a nickname for Eleanor?

I know a baby named Gemma; I wonder if you’d like that better than / find it fresher than Emma. Or maybe that’s too similar to Julia, with the matching starting/ending sounds.

Would Emmeline be less plain?

More options:

Alice
Annabel
Audrey
Bethany
Bianca
Bridget
Celeste
Clara
Eliza
Fiona
Greta
Laurel
Louise
Meredith
Miranda
Molly
Naomi
Noelle
Sabrina
Sally
Simone
Stella
Tessa

Hi Swistle!

I love your blog & baby names! I feel like I’ve been making lists of my favorite girl names most of my life, but now I finally get to pick MY baby girl’s name (after having 3 boys!) and am having a bit of decision paralysis. I am hoping you and your readers may be able to help, so we can make a final decision and avoid a Dirty Dancing situation where she goes by Baby her entire life.

We are expecting our first girl in early February. She will be our 4th and last baby and has 3 older brothers: Jonah Patrick, Isaac Stephen, and Theodore (“Theo”) Raymond. Our last name is like “Glass” except with a B. One of us is very picky about boy names, so our 3 boy names were the ones left standing after comparing our lists. My husband’s family is Jewish, so we liked that Jonah and Isaac are Hebrew in origin, although we are not religious. We both really liked Theo and also liked both Theodore and Teddy if he wanted to change the name he goes by in the future. Each of our boys has a family middle name (maternal grandfather, paternal great-grandfather, and maternal great-grandfather).

Here are our finalists for girl names:

Anna or Anne nn Annie

Eliza

Penelope nn Poppy or Nell

Rose nn Rosie

Other names that almost made it on to this list (and we could be talked into adding): Ada, Charlotte, Claire, Clementine, Cora, Eleanor, Elizabeth nn Libby, Eloise, Georgia, Grace, Ivy, Hazel, Lillian/ Lily, Lydia, Maeve, Mia, Olive, Ruth, Sadie, Tessa, Violet, and Willa.

I like vintage and/or floral names that are recognizable but ideally feel fresh and not overused. I also prefer names with a recognized spelling and ‘staying power’ so that it fits her as a chubby cheeked toddler, a grown professional, and a sugar-cookie-baking grandma. I also favor names with good (or at least neutral) meanings. If the name has multiple nickname options, then I prefer to commit to one I like ahead of time to avoid an Elizabeth being called a Lizzie her whole life when I much prefer Libby.

My husband just likes the names he likes and will have final veto power of course (he likes all of the above names with the exception of Clementine and Violet, but I may be able to talk him into them ha). Bonus points if there is a kick a** historical figure with her name that we can share stories with her about (my middle and youngest son LOVE having the same names as Isaac Newton and Theodore Roosevelt and dressed up as them for Halloween this year).

If at all possible, we’d like to include a family name in her full name in some way. The 2 most obvious options are Elizabeth and Anne or some variation of those names, but we could also consider Lucille, Maeve, Mary, Maureen, or Bentura-with-a-V (my maiden name). I consider Eliza, Anna, and Anne to be family names. Rose is also apparently a family name from way back when (although it may not be as meaningful of a connection as our boys’ middle names).

Thanks in advance for any help you or your readers provide! It feels extra important to get Baby #4’s name right.

P.S. My youngest son has been calling her Rose since he first heard he was being ‘promoted’ to middle sibling. For that reason, I’ve always kind of thought of this baby as Rose even though I love the rest of our finalist names just as much if not more (depending on the day).

Sometimes a parent is feeling conflicted over a child’s opinion about what the new baby’s name should be, and I reassure them that there is no need to take that into account. My eldest felt VERY STRONGLY that his new baby brother should be named Plum, and there were tears shed, and I was nervous about it even though there was a 0% chance we were naming the baby Plum (though if the baby had been a girl, I might have considered it as a middle name)—and now it’s just a good family story, and my eldest doesn’t remember it at all so I’m glad we didn’t use the name as a middle for a girl, and there are no hard feelings. But in your case, you’ve got something different going on, and I find it compelling: it’s not just that the former-youngest has been referring to the baby that way, it’s also that you’ve started thinking of her that way. AND the name is in your finalist list. So although I still think there is no need to take into account the siblings’ preferences, it DOES cause me to put one completely voluntary tally-mark under the name Rose.

Your finalist list is very much in line with my own personal taste, which makes it even more difficult to vote. I am going to do what I do with my own name lists, which is to start nitpicking in the hopes of helping one name rise to the top.

Two nitpicks for Rose. One is that I don’t love the sound of it with your surname. The second nitpick is also subjective, and it’s the sort of thing where a downside for me could be an upside for someone else: it would give you a third long-O sound in the sibling group, or at least it does when Theodore goes by Theo. It’s not a matter of anyone being left out (I don’t think most people care about such minor issues, and in any case Isaac and Rose share an S-pronounced-Z sound), but more a matter of preferring variety of sound. But I wouldn’t let it stop me if Rose were my top favorite name: it’s the sort of thing I only noticed when I started being picky on purpose.

A similar nitpick for Eliza: it’s so similar in sound to Isaac, in addition to repeating the ending of Jonah. But if I say “Jonah, Isaac, Theo, and Eliza,” my ear catches nothing out of place. Still, for my own preferences, I would probably avoid having an Isaac and an Eliza in the same sibling group.

Same with Jonah and Anna. They’re separated by two siblings so it’s less of an issue, but the names still strike me as more similar than I’d prefer. But Anne/Annie seems great. Jonah, Isaac, Theo, and Anne. I’m not super keen on Anne with the surname, but that’s a difficult surname to work with.

I have no nitpicks at the moment for Penelope. It doesn’t repeat too many sounds; it seems fine with the surname. I don’t know if it’s more common than you would like: it was #25 last year, according to the Social Security Administration, while the others on the finalist list were less common: Anne was #625, Anna was #68, Eliza was #115, Rose was #113.

From your near-miss list, I’d like to pull Eloise back into the running. It’s up there with Eliza as one of my favorite names, and it avoids the sound-sharing issues of Eliza: Eloise doesn’t sound too much like Isaac, nor does it repeat the ending of any sibling names. Jonah, Isaac, Theo, and Eloise. (It does bring back the long-O nitpick but that feels like less and less of an issue the more I think about it, especially since Theo is a nickname and I don’t care anywhere near as much about nickname issues.)

So, let’s see. Middle names. If you choose the name Anne/Anna, then she already has a family name, and the middle might be a good spot for one of the other names you don’t use, or for a kickass namesake, or one of the names your husband didn’t like as a first name.

Same with Eliza: if you choose that, you’ve got the family name already and can move on to other preferences for the middle. I would pick Ruth for its kickass namesake Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Eliza Ruth! Or for a February baby, perhaps Valentine. Eliza Valentine! swoon

But Penelope would need a family middle name. I like so many of the options. Penelope Elizabeth is terrific (though my Elizabeth reports that a large percentage of her female classmates have Elizabeth as their middle name). Penelope Anne has a bit more hop to it: Anne was a pretty common middle name for girls in my era, but less so now. I also like the idea of using your family surname. Or would you want to consider giving her your first name as a middle? I so wish I’d given that idea even a passing consideration when naming my own daughter. I also love Penelope Lucille: it can lead to fun extended nicknames such as Nellie Lou. My own top favorite is Penelope with your first name; second choice is a tie between your family surname and Anne.

I think Rose would need a family middle name as well. Elizabeth works again: Rose Elizabeth. I also like Rose Eliza. I probably would not choose Anne or Anna. I like Rose with your family surname. I also like it with your first name. And I love it with Lucille: Rose Lucille! Rosie Lou! My own top favorite is Rose Eliza.

Hi there Swistle,

I’m reaching out for some thoughts on how many times is too many to change your babies name…
I know sounds a little curious…

My daughter was born in May of 2020 (peak pandemic). We wanted to name her Coco Gianna (pre-Covid) but I got scared that we would associate her first name with the word Covid.

We named her Nico Gianna (and it never truly felt like “it” for me).

So, at 6 months old (before applying for her birth certificate) we added in “June” (another name I had on my list).
My husband calling her Nico.
Me calling her Nico-June.

Now she’s 18 months old and can say her own name and in her sweet little toddler talk she calls herself “Coco”.
When I say Nico, Nini or Junie, she corrects me, “Coco”.

I think Nico-June is so sweet and unique but I’m often called back to think- she should have been a Coco.

It’s SERIOUSLY pulling at my heart strings and triggering my feelings of name regret.

Do I send in for a new birth certificate and write on it Coco June Gianna?
Or just keep Coco as her little family nickname.

Siblings are-
Parker Emilia
Quentin Hayes (nn Quinn)
(and her twin) Jasper Graham

Thank you!

I have a Coping Thought I find useful when I am experiencing the kind of stress/uncertainty/indecision where I keep thinking about something, but thinking about it doesn’t seem to be getting me any closer to a decision. The Coping Thought is this: “I don’t have to make this decision RIGHT NOW.” (Currently I am using it because a housecleaner stole from us and we had to fire them, and I keep spiraling off into decisions that can wait until LATER, such as “CAN I EVER TRUST CLEANERS IN THE HOUSE AGAIN??” and “BUT HOW WOULD WE EVEN FIND NEW CLEANERS??” and “BUT HOW ARE WE GOING TO CLEAN THE HOUSE OURSELVES WHEN WE ARE FAIRLY BAD AT DOING THAT??” All of these are decisions I don’t need to make RIGHT NOW, and in fact CAN’T make right now while still at this level of emotion/stress.)

I think for now you could delight in the way that she is calling herself by the very nickname you wanted to name her and were sorry you hadn’t named her. There is no reason it has to match what’s written on her birth certificate: the birth certificate isn’t something we file with The Universe to declare our child’s True Fated Name, it’s just a government document to let the government keep track of its citizens. There are plenty of reasons why someone’s True Name might not match the birth certificate: maybe the parents felt pressured to submit to a naming tradition, so they put the Tradition Name on the birth certificate but they call the child by the child’s True Name; maybe the child doesn’t like their Birth Certificate Name and goes by something else but it’s not worth it to them to go through the hassle of changing the birth certificate, and/or they’d actually prefer to keep their True Name as something for people who actually know them; maybe someone goes by a nickname of their given name to the extent that NO ONE calls them their Birth Certificate Name, but that’s a normal/familiar situation and causes no real issue. You have another child named Quentin and nicknamed Quinn; do you feel as if you must change the birth certificate to reflect that nickname? Or does it feel as if the child can be Quentin AND Quinn?

If, as the years go by, she is known as Coco to absolutely everyone, and she actively dislikes the name Nico, and it bugs you/her that Nico is on the birth certificate and Coco is not, you can change it then. But until then, I think everything is okay: you wanted to call her Coco; Coco works as a nickname for her given name; she is calling herself Coco; you can call her Coco, too! Those are all happy things! The birth certificate doesn’t need to be involved in this at all. It CAN be involved, later—but you don’t have to make that decision RIGHT NOW. It isn’t even a question of how many times a parent can change their baby’s birth certificate (I’d say as a rule of thumb ONCE, and after that the parents should look into whether there may be a different issue masquerading as name regret), but more a question of whether it needs to be changed at all (unknown), and whether that decision needs to be made RIGHT NOW (no).

Update on Baby Boy Meyer-with-an-S, Brother to Sixth-Month-of-the-Year

Update on Baby Boy or Girl Denmark-without-the-D, Sibling to Alana

Hey Swistle!

We are expecting our first child around Thanksgiving. We are waiting to be surprised by the baby’s sex. We think we have our girl’s name picked out (Lucille “Lucy” Mae or Margot Marie), but we are absolutely stumped on a boy’s name.

We have set a few parameters in choosing our name:
– Baby’s middle name will be Robert, which is Dad’s first name (follows family tradition going back at least 4 generations)
– Our Catholic faith is important to us so we’re looking for something classic and “saintly”
– Baby’s name will be a name used only/primarily for boys
– My wife Claire and her family are very conscious about monograms so something that looks good next to SR (first name initial, last name initial, middle initial) or RS (first name initial, middle initial, last name initial)
– We’re not too excited about names that start with a vowel
– We want a name that will shorten to a cute nickname we can lovingly call him (one of my friends named his first son Eugene, but calls him Egon; I’m looking for similar creativity)

Perhaps these parameters are too restrictive, but it has led to a nice list of names:
Charles/Charlie
Peter/Petey
George/Georgie
Ernest/Ernie
Augustine/Gus
Louis/Lou (honors my wife’s hometown)
Theodore/Teddy
Joseph/Joey
Benjamin/Benji
Douglas/”Doc” (because his first two initials would be DR, ;) – Also would honor great-grandfathers on both sides)
Franklin/Frankie
Frederick/Freddie
Samuel/Sammy

While we have this list, none of them seem to be “the one” We really liked Charlie, but then my parents got a dog a few years ago and named him Charlie (Can we name our son after the family dog?). Peter, Samuel, and Joseph are certainly Catholic, but is it too biblical? Douglas/”Doc” seems really cute, but is it too much of a pun for a name and will it require too much explanation?

We seem to be at an impasse and are looking for some guidance as we wander through this quagmire of names. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
C+R

My first suggestion is that if you have a girl, you give her the middle name Claire. This balances the very common patriarchal naming tradition happening on your side of the family; and, as a lucky bonus, Claire works beautifully as a middle name. I seriously regret that I didn’t even consider using my first or middle name as a middle name for my own daughter, especially since my family too has that familiar “middle name is the father’s first name” thing happening for male children (along with the even more familiar “and of course we use the father’s family surname for all the children”), so you’d think it would have occurred to me to use a parallel idea for female children. Lucille Claire; Margot Claire.

For a boy, I think you have a terrific list and can’t go wrong. That can make the decision more difficult, as you’ve found, but it can also be soothing to think “The reason none of them are rising to the top is that they’re all so great; no matter what we choose, we’re likely to be really happy with it.” If the middle name and the surname are both from your side of the family, then for balance/fairness I suggest your wife have final say in the choice of the first name, and/or that the two of you choose the name from among her top favorites.

With a good long list of candidates, I recommend making ranked lists: you and your wife each put all the names on the list in order, ranked 1, 2, 3, etc.; more than one name can share a ranking. So just as an example, perhaps your lists (truncated for the sake of the example) would look like this:

Peter 1
Samuel 1
Joseph 1
Ernest 2
Benjamin 2
Frederick 2
Franklin 3
George 4
Charlie 4
Augustine 4

Franklin 1
Frederick 1
Peter 1
Samuel 2
Joseph 2
Benjamin 2
George 3
Ernest 3
Charlie 4
Augustine 4

In this example, you could feel pretty safe taking George, Charlie, and Augustine out of the finalists, because they’re #3 or #4 for both of you and not likely to be chosen over the other candidates. You might also perhaps decide you could safely remove any names that were #4 or below for EITHER parent, even if the name were #1 for the other parent. Peter, at #1 for both of you in this example, would get a little star; perhaps any name ranked #1 by one of you and #2 by the other (in this example: Samuel, Joseph, Frederick) could also get a little star. Names ranked #2 by both parents could be good compromise names for lists where all of one parent’s #1 names happened to be the other parent’s #3 names and vice versa. And so on.

Even some of the less-common biblical names have gone mainstream in the last couple of decades, which helps considerably if you’re trying to hit a nice balance between “our Catholic faith is important to us” and “not too biblical.” Of the three you’re wondering about, I think the name Peter is the freshest: the name Samuel has ranked in the 20s for well over two decades; the name Joseph was in the Top 20 from the time the online Social Security records begin in 1900 until just over a decade ago when it slipped into the 20s near Samuel; the name Peter is ranked in the 200s.

However, I’m not sure about any of those three names with your surname. Make sure you’re trying them without the middle name acting as a buffer: Samuel Stoiberg; Joseph Stoiberg; Peter Stoiberg. Peter in particular seems to merge with the surname; Joseph in particular seems to transition awkwardly to the surname. (Make sure you try this with the girl names, too: normally it will be just the first and last names said together, rather than first/middle/last.)

Typically I urge parents not to worry too much about the names of pets: for example, if you’d grown up with a dog named Charlie, I would say soothing things about how you’re not really naming the child AFTER the dog, and also that most people won’t even know your childhood pet’s name. In this case, since your parents acquired/named the dog only a few years ago, I would use this as a little lesson for us all in being careful about naming pets, lest we accidentally rule out names we would have loved for our grandchildren.

I for one am ready to hear the name Douglas on little kids again. The nickname Doc feels like a stretch, and I find joke nicknames a little wearisome, but you could give it a try. For me it matters if the honor to the great-grandfathers is because they were named Douglas or if it’s because they were doctors. If they were named Douglas, then I think Douglas/Doc works very nicely: you can say “Douglas is a family name” and people will assume you wanted to use an honor name but then made it your own with a cute nickname. If instead the great-grandfathers were doctors, then it feels like a joke/game and makes me feel weary (though I realize this is subjective, and there will be many others who would get a big kick out of it).

From your list, my own favorites are Frederick, Franklin, Louis, George, and Benjamin. Louis Stoiberg is a little hissy on the transition, and Frederick Stoiberg and George Stoiberg both involve a slightly awkward transition, but nothing that would rule them out for me. Actually, on re-reading, I think I personally wouldn’t use George, which is sad, but it keeps feeling difficult and clunky to say; however, if I saw the name on someone else’s child I would not give it more than a moment’s thought or feel it had been a mistake. Probably I would not use Theodore, either, because of the very similar near-rhyming ending of the surname; again, I wouldn’t think it was a mistake on someone else’s child.

If you plan to have more children, it can be helpful to look ahead to future hypothetical sibling names. I think you could easily and successfully combine many of the names on the boy-name list (and in fact that would be a lot of fun: Frederick and Augustine! Benjamin and Louis! Douglas and Franklin!), but I would cross-check the girl names and the boy names to look for issues. If you use Lucille, does that rule out Louis and vice versa? Looking at the boy names: do you want to avoid repeating initials (e.g., would using Frederick rule out using Franklin)? do you want to avoid rhyming nicknames (e.g., would using Frederick/Freddie rule out using Theodore/Teddy)?

This exercise can also help narrow things down when you have a good long list: if you take each boy-name candidate in turn and combine it with a future sister name, do any pairings make you love the boy-name more? Frederick/Freddie and Lucille/Lucy; Frederick/Freddie and Margot. Benjamin/Benji and Lucille/Lucy; Benjamin/Benji and Margot. And so on.