Hi there,

We just found out we are having a baby girl! We are over the moon!!! We already have two boys — Everett Christian (goes by Everett) and Pierson Bost (goes by Bo). All of our names are derived from family names, so we would like to continue the trend.

My mother is battling cancer and she is my rock, my best friend. Her name is Colleen, which I have never really loved as a potential baby name. Her mother, my grandmother, is Charlotte, who is also an inspiration and I happen to love her name. Lastly, my sister’s middle name is Kathleen and my SIL is Katherine. From all of this, we were thinking about the name Charlotte Katherine, nn Charlie Kate. Only problem is it leaves out my mom! So then we thought about Charlotte Kathleen, same nn. The “een” in Colleen makes it into the name and so does my sister’s middle name. Of course, my husband likes the sound of Katherine better.

Finally, since we already have an Everett is Charlotte to similar sounding for a sibling name? I’m sure we would rarely call her by her full name, so does this matter?

Thanks in advance!!!
Meg Biggers

It sounds to me as if the main issue is that you are trying to cram too many honor names into one baby’s name. I suggest prioritizing: which family member(s) do you MOST want to honor? It sounds as if you most want to honor your mother, but you don’t want to use her name. The question, then, is this: What’s more important to you: honoring your mother or using a name you prefer?

The fact that I’m asking the question will imply that I think you should consider it more important to honor your mother, and that is not the case. But it’s rare for family honor names to coincidentally be the same as our favorite names, so usually a trade is involved: you give up a name you love more, in exchange for the satisfaction of honoring a family member, pleasing them with that honor, and remembering them every time you use the name.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I struggled with this decision: I most wanted to honor my grandfather, but I actively disliked his name—and, awkwardly, it was the name of a former serious boyfriend of mine. We ended up using it as the middle name, and I’m so glad: I feel warm satisfaction with that choice, and happiness at the memory of how thrilled my grandfather was about it. To my surprise, I have also come to like the name; I still wouldn’t want to use it as a first name, but I actively like it.

If it’s more important to you to honor your mother, I think you should use her name, probably as a middle name. If the child is named Charlotte Kathleen, and you have a grandmother Charlotte and a sister whose middle name is Kathleen, I don’t think your mother is going to think the -een of Kathleen is a tribute to herself. I suggest Charlotte Colleen, honoring your grandmother and mother while also giving you a first name you love.

I realize this loses you the nickname Charlie Kate. I suggest it anyway.

I don’t think Charlotte is too close to Everett. I see the matching endings, but even if you do end up calling her by her given name, I think it would be fine—and worth it, for the honor name. It helps too that another child is in between: Everett, Bo, and Charlotte is less noticeable than Everett, Charlotte, and Bo.

Update (and photo) on Baby Boy Nordson, Brother to Warren and Lee

Update (and photo) on Baby Girl Owens, Sister to Eli and Vivian

Hi,

I am hoping you can help resolve an ongoing struggle with my husband and I. We are expecting a boy in early October. We have been through over 20,000 names throughout our search, which began well before we ever conceived, and found only 1 we agreed on – Remington (nickname Remy). My husband is now on the fence about the name after we announced it to everyone. I agreed we could search again but I’m really at a loss as I doubt we will find anything better we both like. Here is the struggle:

Last name: pronounced like “Jocq” but most mispronounce it like “Jocks”

Names I like: Remington, Arlington, Merritt, and other surnames
Names he likes: Cassius, Roman, Maximus, and other gladiator or superhero sounding names
Ruled out due to last name: anything starting with a “B” or “J”, anything ending with a “ick”, “k”, “c”, or “x” or having a strong “x” or “ks” sound (exp. Jackson)
Ruled out due to commonness and use of it by relative: Logan, Sawyer, Harris, Harrison
Ruled out in general: Hunter, Archer, Gunnar, Lawson, Lucas, Atlas, Weston, Judge, Xander, Axel, anything ending in “son”, and basically all 1990’s classic names (and thousands more).
Ruled out by me: Anything ending with an “s” – due to common mispronunciation of last name, anything that has a 1990’s classic nickname (exp. Garrett’s common nickname is Gary)
Girl names we like: Riley, Scarlet (my parents met at Ohio State), Isla

Background: I am very education-oriented with an advanced degree and professional career. I have an atypical longer name that is relatively gender neutral. My husband is very “strength-oriented” with a law enforcement background (and several relatives in law enforcement and the military) and is really into weight training. He has a very common, single syllable name that is very masculine. The goal is to find something that reflects us both.

We originally agreed on Remington. I liked that it had an arguably law enforcement related background (the gun manufacturer) but also was a longer, formal name that a doctor or lawyer could use. It also has a cute nickname, Remy, which is both French and cultured (our last name is French), but also more casual for a less formal career. It has a southern flair and is more popular in the South. My husband originally liked the name as he associated Remington with Remi La Beau (aka Gambit from the comic books).

I like Merritt for similar reasons. It’s a less direct spelling of “merit” which is important in both the academic world and in law enforcement/military. It sounds masculine and southern to me but my husband isn’t a fan. It may be used as a second middle name.

I have agreed to the middle name of Dean, after a TV character my husband likes.

Goal:
– 2+ Syllables
– Nothing in the top 50.
– Strong but Ivy League sounding – can fit in a professional environment or blue collar.
– Southern flair to it (but not redneck)

Good luck on this tough one!!!

If you and your husband have gone through 20,000 baby names and have found only one single name you agree on, I think the chances are very slim that I could make any useful name suggestions. Instead I will give more general advice.

It is possible that your husband is just having cold feet about the name and that there is no need to scramble back to the drawing board. Particularly when people put a LOT of work and effort into choosing a name, it can feel weird to have the choice made and the process over with. I think this can also happen when name work is done before there is a baby on the way: switching from theoretical mode to Actual Impending Baby Mode can give a person the urge to re-think everything. It’s possible all he needs is a chance to do that re-thinking, and that he will re-think his way back around to the original choice.

If the baby is not due until October, that means there is likely approximately half of this pregnancy remaining. That is a nice long amount of time to think things over. I suggest that at this point, you casually browse baby names but don’t drive yourself crazy over it. Give him the time and space he needs to think, and I hope it goes without saying that if he is the one who wants to reconsider the whole thing, he should be doing a lot of his own name-browsing.

The goal here is not to find a BETTER name that you both like; the goal is only to find MORE names that you both like. Even if you like the names significantly less than you like the name Remington, add them to the list if you agree on them.

I think you should tell everyone else that the name is no longer set: we do not want people ordering or making personalized baby gifts. I suggest not re-releasing the name choice until the baby is born, to avoid yanking people around any more than necessary.

Looking over your preferences, I suggest getting rid of as many as you can, bringing them back in only if you need them to reduce an overly-long list. When parents have a ton of names they both love and agree on, it can be helpful to use general preferences to narrow things down; when parents have literally only one name they agree on, it is time to get rid of filters such as syllable counts and popularity rankings. If the list then expands quite a bit, the filters can be brought back in to help make the final decision.

In fact, it looks to me as if you are in general asking too much from this name. I wonder if it would be helpful to completely shift the focus and look for a name that would be solid and useful to him, without tying it so strongly to his parents’ identities/priorities/backgrounds/interests? That is, all of those things CAN BE useful when choosing a name, of course they can—but the name can also be just a collection of letters and sounds we use to identify which person we’re talking about. We need something for him to write at the top of his coloring sheet in preschool; there is no need for the teacher to swirl the name like a fine wine, detecting notes of military and academia.

If you two were finding tons of names you agreed on, then it could be a lot of fun to find a name that was Southern and Ivy League and superhero and academic and French and law-enforcement-related and so forth—but in this case you’re really struggling and I think it’s time to remove some of the pressure and strip the task down to basics. Find something sensible he can use as a name; look for a collection of letters and sounds that appeals to your eyes and ears. I suggest letting the name reflect his parents’ tastes in names, and not trying as hard to make it also reflect their careers and educations and interests.

Swistle!

I need help with a verdict. I’m due in July with a girl, whose name will be Willa Rose. We have two boys, James Francis and Christopher Aaron. My question is about last names—both boys have my last name as a second middle name (Phel@n) and my husband’s last name (sounds like K@minsky). We’re going to give our daughter my last name as her last name—Phel@n. I also want to give her a second middle name of K@minsky, but my husband doesn’t want to. His reasons are: it’s clunky and annoying (it is, somewhat, for example, our first son’s second middle name was left off of his SS card, and it’s often included on documents as a last name along with his real last name—he’s only 2 and his paperwork has been pretty limited, so I’m not sure what fun it will cause going into school years), and his other reason is that he doesn’t “need” it. I want to include it so that there’s still some symmetry with our kids’ names matching one another, even though their last names will be different, and I like the idea of including her heritage from both sides in her name. Part of me is still hesitant to go in such a bold direction by giving her a different last name than her brothers, but I’ve been slowly convinced over my pregnancy. My husband originally suggested the idea and I dismissed it because I wanted the kids to be “together,” but then I realized that I’m “out” of the group by not having the same last name as the rest of the family, and your recent post about last names helped to convince me, too. Anyway, what’s your verdict—include my husband’s last name as a second middle name, or no?

Also, unrelated, but while I have you, do you think our boys names are too common for the relatively uncommon girls name, Willa? All names are from authors (M.R. James, Christopher Marlowe, and Willa Cather—with a little nod to William Shakespeare), and they also tie to important people in our lives. Willa Rose uses both my husband’s and my own middle name, too. Margaret (Atwood) was another frontrunner we were considering, and our boy name was Theodore Michael (Fyodor Dostoevsky). We’ll probably have one more baby, so those are contenders for #4. Do you think all of those work stylistically?

Thanks!

Katie

I absolutely vote for giving her your husband’s surname as her second middle name. I feel quite strongly about it. It follows the pattern of the first two kids, and makes the whole arrangement easy to understand and explain. Leaving his name out is non-parallel and makes everything seem kind of weird and hard to remember. Symbolically-speaking, he could also seem to be saying it doesn’t matter that your surname is in the boys’ names (since he considers that an unimportant role for himself to have in his daughter’s name), or that it’s not as important that a girl have all the family surnames. I get what he’s saying when he says he doesn’t need it, but what you guys are doing with the names is pretty cool and symbolic, so I say let’s not mess up the symbolism. I would like to avoid any possibility of the message that it didn’t matter to her father if she had his surname in her name or not, but that it DID matter to him that her brothers had it.

But mostly it’s the symmetry of it: it just makes sense that way, and it doesn’t make sense not to. Sure, it can be a little clunky or annoying, but you’ve already done it for the first two kids, so I’d keep going with it. Let all the kids bond over the clunkiness and annoyingness. And in my experience with five children who have my surname as their second middle name, it’s not that big of a deal in the long run. Most of the fuss (or potential for fuss) happens while getting the Original Paperwork (birth certificate, Social Security card, doctor’s office registration, school registration) in place, and after that you mostly coast. (Plus, you get good at drawing little diagrams on new paperwork with brackets and labels to show which names are in which role.)

I don’t think Willa is too unusual with James and Christopher. I usually think it’s fine to have different levels of popularity with the girl names in the family than with the boy names, though I personally prefer to aim for roughly-similar levels within a brother group or within a sister group. I think Margaret and Theodore are both good as future siblings. Margaret is more common than Willa (in 2017, Margaret was #132 and Willa was #454), but they feel within range to me.

Update (and photo) on Baby Boy or Girl Ernie-with-a-B, Sibling to Xavier; Christian/Superhero Baby Names

Hi Swistle,

I am a longtime reader and I have always enjoyed your posts but never had any personal questions about naming babies (I don’t have any, don’t plan to for a while if ever!).

BUT. Twins run in my family, and I have always had this sort of hunch that if I do conceive children, I might have twins. And so sometimes I do think about how I would go about choosing twin names. I’ve never settled on any in particular, but then today, I was struck by a question I can’t get out of my head!

When someone has twins of the same sex (or any pair of twins where the names aren’t going to be assigned to the babies on the basis of their sex), how do you choose which twin gets which name?! Is it PURELY random? That seems…strange. But how do you decide, if it isn’t random?

Anyway, was just curious if you have thoughts about this or if other readers (perhaps those who have named twins) do?

Thanks so much!

Maya

Before we knew we were having a boy and a girl and therefore didn’t need to worry about which twin would get which of two names, I gave this issue a fair amount of thought. It seemed kind of fun to figure out which would be which but also kind of stressful/weird: I imagined looking at the twins later and realizing their names could easily have been the other way around. Or worse: thinking that the names would have been a better fit the other way around.

One way I considered was to look at the twins after they were born and then figure out which one looked/acted more like which name.

Another way I considered was to pick which order I preferred to say the names in, and then dole them out in that order: if I preferred “George and Oliver” to “Oliver and George,” then Baby A could be George and Baby B could be Oliver.

Or the names could be given in alphabetical order: that can also help other people remember the birth order, if there’s any advantage to that.

Another way is to imagine the babies were suddenly singletons and one would be born now and one in a couple of years: which name would we like to use first? Give that name to Baby A. But I didn’t like the way that implied Baby A was getting the preferred name.

Another way would be to go with what “felt right” for each baby. I definitely got a feeling for their little personalities while I was pregnant; whether or not those impressions turned out to be accurate, it would be a way to choose.

I also considered doing random chance: write the names on slips of paper and draw, or flip a coin. That gives the comforting feeling of allowing fate to decide.

A friend of mine had agreed before finding out she was having twins that a boy could be a junior. When she found out she was having twin boys, she could have figured it out by saying, “Okay, usually the firstborn boy is a junior, so in this case the firstborn twin boy will be the junior.” But she said she found that didn’t sit well with her: it seemed like giving too much specialness to one twin (this assumes that being a junior is a treat, but that is what this set of parents was indeed assuming). So they decided one twin would be the firstborn, and the other would be the junior.

Because of the way the babies are referred to as Baby A and Baby B throughout the pregnancy, some parents choose an A name for Baby A and a B name for Baby B.

If you’ve named same-sex twins or know someone who’s named same-sex twins, how was it decided which name would be given to which baby? Or, if you were having same-sex twins, how do you think you’d want to decide?

Hi!

I am due with our second boy in mid-June and we CANNOT come up with a name!

Our first is Theodore Louis (we call him Theo). I ADORE that name…so much so that anything we come up with feels like “Oh it’s great, but it’s not as good as Theodore Louis.”

For the second I’d like a similar “classic but not outdated” vibe. Middle name of Edward (my grandfather) would be nice but not 100% necessary.

Names we like but have vetoed because we have family members with the name:

Jonathan
Andrew
Christopher
Adam
Matthew
David
Joshua

Names I thought I liked but vetoed because I didn’t like the nickname potential for reasons I can’t exactly articulate:

Thomas (Tommy)
Timothy (Tim/Timmy)

Names we generally like but don’t necessarily like with Edward (open to middle name suggestions here):

Oliver
Samuel
Gabriel
Elliott
Brady

Name we ADORED but vetoed because it means “supplanter” and I can’t do that to a second son (or, really, to my first son!):

Jacob (middle name would have been Elliott)

I think this is sufficient (probably too much) info! HELP!

The name Jacob has been in the U.S. Top 10 for the past 25 years, and in the U.S. Top 100 for the past 45 years. In the U.S in 2016 alone, there were 14,416 new baby boys named Jacob. My assumption is that not all of those Jacobs have been firstborns. My further assumption is that although a small number of people may be interested in name meanings and therefore think of “supplanter” when they hear the name, none of them think that meaning is the reason the name was given to the child, any more than they’d think that any of the 6,807 new U.S. baby boys in 2016 were named Cameron because their noses were crooked. I am a name hobbyist, my children have more than one friend named Jacob, and I have never once thought, “Eeek, supplanter, really??” Not even for the ones with older siblings.

You guys are struggling with names; you ADORE the name Jacob—but you can’t use it because it “means” supplanter? Name meanings can be fun, the way star signs and flower meanings can be fun, but this sort of situation is why I am not generally a fan of them: when the fun thing starts preventing people from making the choices they want to make, it stops being fun. The name Jacob is ancient, historical, traditional, a solid name for a person’s whole life—but someone decided it “meant” supplanter so now it’s off the table?

It isn’t even as if the meaning were an absolute thing. According to The Oxford Dictionary of First Names:

The derivation of the name has been much discussed. It is traditionally explained as being derived from Hebrew akev “heel” and to have meant “heel grabber,” because when Jacob was born “his hand took hold of Esau’s heel” (Genesis 25:26). This is interpreted later in the Bible as “supplanter”: Esau himself remarks, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? for he has supplanted me these two times” (Genesis 27:36).

You are going to give up the name you adore just because a few thousand years ago some peeved biblical character used wordplay to diss his brother? “Jacob” hardly even sounds like “akev”; and even if it was in fact the exact same word and we were discussing the use of the name Akev, “heel” is not a synonym for “supplanter.” The whole thing is ridiculous: Esau made some pissed-off joke and now, thousands of years later, parents think they have to cross a name off their list because of it? I won’t have it! Imagine thousands of years in our future, someone finding a book from our times in which someone made a joke about someone named Adam and the similar-sounding words “a damn,” and baby-name-book authors deciding the name Adam therefore “meant” damnation, and then parents deciding not to use the name because of it. No! We will not lose perfectly good names to this!

But if you can’t let it go, then my favorites from your list are Oliver, Gabriel, and Elliot: I think they all work very well with the sibling name Theodore. Samuel is good, too. Brady seems too modern/surnamey to me with Theodore.

I am not very concerned with the flow of first/middle names, especially when the middle name is an honor name: I think in time, the satisfaction of the honor name comes to outweigh any small sacrifice in ideal flow. I think all the names on the not-great-with-Edward list are fine or even good with Edward. If a combination doesn’t sit right with you, though, or if it prevents you from wanting to use the name, I suggest finding another honor name—perhaps from the list of names you can’t use because of having family members with the names. Or perhaps Timothy or Thomas would be good as a middle name, since that placement avoids the nicknames. I especially like the way the sound of Thomas lines up with the sound of Louis: Theodore Louis and Oliver Thomas, for example, or Theodore Louis and Elliot Thomas.

I recommend scrapping the practice of comparing each name choice with the name of your first child. Not only does it make sense that your first child’s name would have been your favorite name, and so logically you wouldn’t like any other names as much as that one; but also at this point that name is no longer a NAME, it’s a CHILD. No name can compare with that, not until it too represents a child you love so much. Don’t try to find a name you like as much as the name Theodore Louis; just try to pick your favorite name from all the names that remain.

This has been the kind of week that has me looking forward to Monday because things will get back to normal. Actually, things will not get back to normal until our new stove is delivered; until then we are cooking on a two-burner hotplate I ran to the store for.

Last night I had a dream that I was in the hospital and had just that day given birth to twin boys. The babies were being measured and cleaned up by the nurses while I rested in that happy “the delivery part is OVER!” state. Sometimes in dreams like this I then PANIC when I realize I haven’t yet come up with any names for the baby/babies—but in this dream it was a thrilling moment. I thought, “Oh!! I still have the whole fun NAMING part to do!!,” and I reached for a small yellow legal pad next to my bed and started making a list, thinking I would have to have Paul bring me my baby name books later. I wrote George, Oliver, Frederick, Charles, Miles—and as I was wondering if two names ending in -s would be a fun twin-name thing, I woke up.

I was disappointed to wake up so soon in the process. I tried to keep things going by pretending I really did have twin boys to name, but it was not the same. Still, it’s a fun activity for a Sunday! Let’s say you suddenly had already-born twin boys to name, so you needed to work fairly quickly: what would your list look like?

Hello, we are just over 6 months pregnant with a boy and having a hard time finding a name we love. Our last name is Raynard (rhymes with Leonard). We aren’t at all worried about a middle name since we have lots of great family names to choose from (Earnest, Hugh, MacLean, Charles), but want something non-familial for the first name. Here is what we have come up with so far:

Jared – strong/descending
Jasper – treasure keeper
Joshua – God of salvation
Watson – son of walter/warrior
Peter – rock
Scott – from Scotland
Henry (Hank) – house ruler
Levi – united/attached
Wyatt – warrior/water
Cyrus – the sun/throne
Simeon – God Hears
Loxley – glade by the lake
Griffin – strong of faith

We obviously care about the name not meaning anything ridiculous, but don’t care too much about the meaning as long as we like the sound. I also care a lot about what nickname they are going to have (example: I like Jonah, but not Joe). The major problem is that my husband runs a summer camp and we both have backgrounds as teachers, so we have met a LOT of children. It is hard not to associate names.

For some reason we have found girls’ names to be easier to agree on. Here is our list for girls:

Avery – ruler of elves
Charlotte (Charlie) – free man
Eleanor/Nora/Anora – light
Grace/Gracie – grace
Hannah – grace
Helen/Helena – bright light
Lilian – flower
Lucy – light
Miriam – wished-for child
Olivia – olive tree
Alice – noble
Betsy – pledged to God
Claire/Clara – bright/clear
Faith – faith
Catherine (Wren) – pure
Eilish – God’s promise/Noble

Thank you for any help you can provide!

I was scanning your boy-name list and I felt as if I had a handle on things until you surprised me with Loxley. I don’t think I have ever seen that name before. I looked it up in the Social Security Administration‘s database and I see it was used for 29 new baby girls in 2016; it is not in the database for boys, which means it was used for 0-4 new baby boys that year (it only shows up in the database for 5+ babies). In 2015 it was used for 20 new baby girls and 6 new baby boys. In 2014 it was used for 12 new baby girls, and is not in the database for baby boys; in 2013 it was used for 15 new baby girls, and is not in the database for baby boys. In 2012, it is not in the database at all. In 2011, there were 8 girls and 10 boys. I searched online and it seems to be a place name and a surname name and a video-game-character name.

Loxley seems to me like an outlier name for you: it doesn’t fit with the broad style categories all the other names fall into. This doesn’t mean at all that you shouldn’t use it; but if you plan on having more children and you like sibling names to coordinate, it’s a good idea to think ahead to make sure there are names you like as sibling names for Loxley. Paul and I loved the name Emerson if our firstborn had been a girl—but we are lucky namewise that our firstborn was a boy, because Emerson was a serious outlier name for us, and we would have had a very hard time with sibling names.

It’s hard to know what to do when parents are teachers/counselors/ministers and have a lot of associations with names. I think the tendency is to go unusual and look for a name that has no associations—but I think if it were me, I’d go for a common name so the associations would be very diluted. Like, I only know one Cyrus, so I think of him whenever I encounter the name; but I know quite a few Joshuas and don’t have any one strong association.

The name Simeon brings to mind the word simian; I wonder if you’d like the variant Simon? Or something like Finian?

I find Jared Reynard a little difficult to say—all those R’s and D’s, and the -red that almost but doesn’t quite match both the Reyn- and the -ard.

When Paul and I got to the point where we had a list of names we liked but didn’t have any that particularly stood out to us, we found it helpful to play name games. Especially since you have such a nice list of girl names, one game you could play is Build a Sibling Group: pick some of your favorite girl names and try each one with the names on your boy-name list and see if any of those combinations make you feel more strongly. Pair up some of the boy names to see what sounds good to you as brothers. It’s not at all that you’d be trying to actually choose sibling names ahead of time; it’s more a matter of seeing what appeals to you in a more general sense as you try to narrow things down.

Or we found a ranking/points system helpful. We took all the names on our list and ranked them—but multiple names could share the same ranking. So for example, let’s say you and your husband ranked your boy names and came up with these results:

Jared 2
Jasper 1
Joshua 1
Watson 1
Peter 2
Scott 4
Henry (Hank) 1
Levi 1
Wyatt 3
Cyrus 4
Simeon 5
Loxley 5
Griffin 2

Jared 4
Jasper 2
Joshua 3
Watson 1
Peter 4
Scott 4
Henry (Hank) 3
Levi 1
Wyatt 1
Cyrus 1
Simeon 4
Loxley 2
Griffin 3

In this example you’d be pretty safe in taking Scott off the list since you’ve both ranked it as a 4: it’s unlikely it would end up as #1. Simeon, with a 4 from one of you and a 5 from the other of you, could also go. But the name Watson got two 1s, and so did Levi, so those move to the top of the list; anything where one of you ranked it a 1 and the other ranked it a 2 can also get scooted up. Anything where one of you ranked it a 1 or 2 and the other ranked it a 4 or 5 is a name that one parent should probably start adjusting to the idea of losing. When two parents’ lists come out almost exactly opposite, the 2s and 3s can be a good area to look for agreement—but if the lists aren’t opposites, the 3s can often be removed as not likely to beat the 1s and 2s. (Pay attention to any feelings of unhappiness at removing a name in this way: that can be a clue that it hasn’t been ranked high enough on the list.)

Another good game is Name the Baby For a Day: each day, pick one name from the list and pretend it’s the name you’ve decided on. Refer to the baby by that name, and think about the name throughout the day. Doodle the name on a scratch pad, on its own and with the surname. Imagine saying, “This is my son, ______.” Imagine going to the pediatrician’s office and saying, “Hi, this is ______; we have an 11:00 appointment.” Imagine filling out the school registration paperwork. Do you get a little thrill or a feeling of warm satisfaction at the thought of the name, or do you find yourself avoiding it? Are you looking forward to certain names on the list having their turn?

I like playing with middle names, too: sometimes a first-middle pairing can make a first name stand out from the list. Maybe the name Peter seems Fine—but you pair it with MacLean and maybe it gives you that Wow feeling.

I also like the game of looking at the names on the girl list and seeing if any of them make me think of new options for boys. Sometimes these are obvious, such as seeing Charlotte and thinking of Charles, or seeing Olivia and thinking of Oliver; sometimes it’s thematic, such as seeing Miriam and thinking of Asher and Seth and Caleb and Isaac; sometimes it’s a more personal connection, like seeing Alice and thinking of Paul because of another sibling group you know, or because of a book you read.

Or I look at the boy name list and sort of let my eyes run over it and see if any names pop into my mind because of seeing certain sounds or letters or syllables that make me think of other names. Looking at your list, I think of Calvin, Elijah, Wesley, Paul, Harris, Lachlan, Simon, Everett, Elliot, Finn, Finian, Garrett, Oliver, Silas.

You have a little time still for a name to rise to Love status, or for you to find a new option that gives you that feeling. But also I want to reassure you that it’s okay if you never find anything you LOVE-love. I had some trouble getting really excited about boy names, and found I personally did better when I looked instead for a good solid choice to feel happy and satisfied with. This gave me the feeling (a feeling I believe is correct) that there were a number of good options that would all work well for my son, and all I had to do was choose the one I liked best at the moment. …Er, all WE had to do was choose the one that WE liked best. Ahem.