Hello Swistle!

I’m hoping you’ll be able to help us make a decision about our name. I feel like we were pretty sure but now are feeling hesitant.

Our last name is a combination of Mc and the big white fluffy things in the sky. We have a four year old son Isaiah Jude and a three year old daughter Brielle Kaelyn. We are expecting baby number 3 in March.

We usually pick names that have a significant meaning which adds another layer to choosing names.

I tend to like a bit more unique names while my husband likes slightly more common. The girls name we have been talking about since we found out about this pregnancy is Elleanna Joy.

My concern is with its similarity to Brielle. The sound is different because it ends differently but obviously they are similar…

The other names I have considered are:

Olive, Liliana, Sienna, Bridget, Keira

My husbands other votes are for:

Hailey, Brooke or Paige

Any suggestions that are like these? Thoughts about having a Brielle and Elleanna?

Looking forward to your help!

I definitely see the repeated -elle- segment, and I can see why it might not be ideal, but I also don’t see it as a deal-breaker. The main concern for me would be potential nickname overlap: right now Brielle could go by Bri or by Elle or Ellie or Ella; if she were to have a sister named Elleanna, that would likely cut off those Ell- options for her.

I think it depends on how much you love the name. Is this your joint top choice and you’d both be heartbroken to give it up? Then use it, and the twinned “elle” will be a feature, not a bug.

But if it kind of bugs you, or if you are planning to have more children and you’re worried about feeling as if you have to keep going with -elle- names, then there’s still plenty of time to look around for other options. If you look and you don’t find anything you like as much, then you can rest easier in the decision.

I do think Liliana is a nice compromise: it’s very similar to Elleanna, but completely eliminates the repeating -elle- and the nickname issue: Brielle can have Bri/Bree and Elle/Ellie/Ella; Liliana can have Lil, Lily, and Annie/Anna.

Emmeline would be another possibility: it eliminates the -elle and gives nicknames Em, Emmie, Emma.

Or Vivianna? Lucianna? Arianna? Adrianna? Avianna? Evianna? Audrianna? Aubrianna? Anneliese? So many good -anna- names.

Or Corinna or Karenna?

Oh, or I wonder if we could find a good way to spell Hailey + Anna, to take a name from your husband’s list and make it more like a name from your list? I’m not finding anything that looks quite right. Haileanna, Haleyanna, Haylianna?

Or I know an Evelina (ehv-ah-LEE-na) and I think that’s so pretty.

For something more like your husband’s list, I’d suggest Delaney. It has that -elle- sound in there, but with a D- to keep Elle/Ellie from seeming like natural nicknames.

Or Linley? It has the style of names like Brooke and Paige, but a little more length and femininity to go with Brielle. Or Kinley would be nice.

Update on Baby Girl M0scaritol0, Sister to Emerson and Lennox

Hello Swistle,

I had the names picked out for our first two children before my husband and I were even engaged. Our oldest, Francis Theodore (known as Frankie) was named after his paternal grandfather and my grandfather. Theodore came from a beloved uncle who had passed away around the time I became pregnant. Our second, Cormac Peter is named after an author we both adore and Peter comes from my father. Our surname is McHugh and these names blend nicely with the Irish last name. My husband’s first name is very traditional Irish and coincidentally so is mine and together we sound like a cast of characters from a Frank McCourt novel.

But now, baby three comes along and it’s a girl and we are flummoxed. My background is Scandinavian and often times names are taken from nature. My great-grandmother was named Aurora and the aurora borealis is one of my favorite things in nature, but my husband is less than enthusiastic. I am also drawn to memorable literary characters such as Regan (too popular?), Brett (from Hemingway) and even Austen after Jane.

Or should we pick an Irish name to keep it cohesive? My husband is drawn to the Irish names: Sinaed, Tristan, Aelish. Together we like: Saoirse, Brigid, Nora and Delaney. We live in a town where Irish names are popular and very common, but I worry this will make her name blend rather than be unique.

I also like the sound of masculine/androgynous names for girls such as Aidan and Roan/Ronan.

For a middle name we will likely use Elizabeth or Anne after our sisters.

We have time, baby doesn’t arrive until May. Oh May, that’s another great name!

Please help!

I’m going to browse in the Celtic section of The Baby Name Wizard, so it is likely I will be mentioning Welsh and Scottish names as well as Irish, but perhaps that would do. Or perhaps it would be a startling clash, and I would be cheerfully oblivious. Well! Won’t it be fun to find out!

Before checking this section, I’d thought of Carys—but perhaps that is too close to Cormac, or too many hard-C/K sounds in the sibling group. Frankie, Cormac, and Carys. No, I kind of like it, especially with the hard-C sound in your surname. Carys McHugh.

I like Brigid/Bridget a lot. I have a Bridget in my circle and I find her name so fun to say.

I think Delaney is great, too, and that’s another one I’ve been able to test out because of having a Delaney in my circle.

Until recently I would have been more nervous about names such as Saoirse, but then my daughter had an Aoife in her class and it seemed to work out fine. I’m sure she has to spell/pronounce it for people pretty regularly, but in an area with heavy Irish name-usage it may not be as difficult.

I think Nora is so good, especially with your surname, but I think you would be disappointed by its popularity (#36 in 2016), especially since it is also used as a nickname for the relatively popular Eleanor (#41 in 2016).

I would add to the list:

Emlyn; Emlyn McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Emlyn
Fiona; Fiona McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Fiona (possible initial issues: FAM or FEM)
Gwendolyn McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Gwennie (possible initial issues: GAM or GEM)
Maeve McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Maeve (similar to May)
Merrigan McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Merrigan
Rory McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Rory (similar to Nora) (possible initial issues: RAM or REM)
Teagan McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Teagan (similar to Tristan)

But I also like the idea of turning to the Scandinavian heritage this time; it seems as if the Irish has been well-represented. And it’s fairly common to have style differences between the boy names in the family and the girl names, and Francis/Frankie doesn’t hit my ear as Irish, so I don’t think it would seem as if she were the odd one out. I’m looking at Nameberry for some Scandinavian options, but I don’t know how to pronounce most of them and that’s making it difficult. Well, here are a few I thought might work:

Birgitta McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Birgitta (similar to Brigid) (possible initial issue: BAM)
Bridgette McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Bridgette (similar to Brigid) (possible initial issue: BAM)
Dahlia McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Dahlia (possible initial issue: DAM)
Jensen McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Jensen (possible initial issues: JAM or JEM)
Kallan McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Kallan (similar to Celtic name Callan)
Malin McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Malin
Nessa McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Nessa (possible initial issue: NAM)
Viveca McHugh; Frankie, Cormac, and Viveca

I like even better the idea of finding a nature name from your Scandinavian family tree: if Aurora isn’t quite right, then another name like it.

On yesterday’s post, Shawna wrote:

Somewhat off topic: my son is the result of IVF (so I know what the LW is going through and wish her the best) – any chance we could, in a separate thread, talk about names that celebrate the birth of babies who arrived after lots of wishing and waiting (because of fertility issues, long adoption processes, or other situations)?

Yes! Let’s do that here on this post.

Update (and photo) on Baby Boy C______, Brother to Tobias

Dear Swistle,

I am expecting my fourth child in March. This will most likely be our last child. Our son, Freddie, will be nearly 3 when the baby arrives and our twin daughters, Poppy and Daisy, will be 18 months.

We are expecting another girl. We are steering towards another floral name as we don’t want the baby to feel left out that she doesn’t have a floral name like her twin sisters.

Our surname is Powell. My favourite name so far is Lily but my husband struggles with its strong association to death. It is the number 1 flower at funerals. Other names we agree on are Violet and Rose. I like those names but don’t love them like I love Lily. I guess it bothers me that Violet is shortened to “Vi” it sounds so harsh. Rose is a lovely name but is it a bit plain?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Lucie

I think you could do a non-flower name, since Poppy and Daisy are twins: it seems as if they could have something uniting their two names without their siblings feeling left out, particularly since you already have another child without a flower name.

I do think at this point I would lean toward a name ending with -y or -ie.

I don’t think of Rose as plain. As a middle name, it is extremely familiar, but as a first name it still sounds fresh. The nickname Rosie would give her the -ie option.

I suggest Ivy. Freddie, Poppy, Daisy, and Ivy.

Or Flora. Freddie, Poppy, Daisy, and Flora.

I also like Posy, but I’m worried it seems like a combination of Poppy and Daisy.

I think something like Ruby would work: gemstone names are similar to flower names, but avoid the bouquet effect. Freddie, Poppy, Daisy, and Ruby.

Or Bonnie: I think any pretty word-name works well. Freddie, Poppy, Daisy, and Bonnie.

I wanted to suggest May, but May Powell makes me think of maypole. Not that we routinely discuss maypoles, and not that they’re a bad thing, so perhaps that’s not a deal-breaker. But perhaps June would be better: Freddie, Poppy, Daisy, and Junie.

On a recent post, Emily commented, in part:

I still kind of regret not using [my maiden name] with at least one of my kids…I am very proud of my family and my name, and it is a nice way to stay connected to that.

(Plus my MIL likes to acts surprised and disappointed that we didn’t give any of our boys my husband’s first name as a middle…I would have liked to not only *not* give my husbands name, but use my maiden name instead.)

I identify with this sentiment so strongly. So, so strongly, Emily. My mother-in-law kept hinting things like “You know what’s a great middle name? Paul!,” even though SHE HERSELF deliberately refused to use ANY family names for her own kids. In fact, she and Paul’s dad defiantly broke a generations-long naming tradition of alternating father/son names, causing a family rift that makes me angry every time I think of it (Paul’s grandfather didn’t acknowledge Paul’s birth for years). Why would Paul’s grandfather think he gets to name not only his own children but also his grandson? And why did he think it so strongly that he would be willing to take such an amazing stance? Well. Screw the patriarchy, basically, since they don’t seem to be able to handle it.

Where was I? Oh yes! Emily’s comment, which reminded me of my mother-in-law’s hints about using her son’s name. If Paul had said to me, bashfully, “Hey…I wonder if we could consider using my name as the middle name?,” I don’t know exactly what I would have thought about that, or what I would have negotiated for in return, but I absolutely would have been willing to consider it—just as I’d want him to consider using my name for Elizabeth’s middle name if I’d wanted that (I didn’t). And if it had been very important to him, I almost certainly would have figured out a way to make it work. But because Paul didn’t want that and his mother KEPT HINTING…well, let’s just repeat that I identify very strongly with Emily’s comment. Whatever it says about my temperament, I took some satisfaction in NOT using Paul’s name as the middle name, and then additional satisfaction in using more honor names from my side of the family than from Paul’s, and I feel that satisfaction TO THIS DAY. If anything, I only wish we’d gone further: EVEN MORE names from my side; a hyphenated surname; maybe a double surname.

Here is what I am in the mood to talk about, and it seems like a nice Friday-afternoon topic:

1. Were there any naming ideas/traditions that your parents or in-laws or other relatives wanted you to follow, when THEY THEMSELVES had not followed those ideas/traditions?

2. Do you, too, identify strongly with the satisfaction Emily and I took in NOT following someone else’s ideas for baby names?

These two things can be separate questions or linked, depending on your circumstances, and can be expanded to include situations where you did succumb to the pressure but resent it (even if you now love the name), or where you were pressured by people who HAD followed the ideas/traditions themselves, or where you are currently being pressured or worry you’ll be pressured in the future. I won’t speak for the crowd, but for myself and my current mood I’d say this would be the wrong post to talk about how you in fact felt honored to use your husband’s name or family naming tradition or whatever. Those are GREAT stories for another post, but today is more about defiant satisfaction and/or resentment.

Hi Swistle,

I wrote to you in 2015 when we were expecting our first baby! You featured our question and we had a wonderful little boy and called him Forre$t James thanks to you and your readers help and advice 😊

We are expecting our second baby and due in January 2018, we are really really struggling with names this time. Not even having a favourite and I am beginning to worry it will be a baby with no name once he/ she is born.

We haven’t found out the sex and are excited to have either a boy or a girl.

We sadly had a miscarriage in March and feel this has clouded our decision on names this time as associated Thelma with a baby girl. We didn’t find out the sex of the baby we lost but if it was a girl it would have been named Thelma.

We don’t want a name beginning with H for our baby as don’t want the same initial as our surname.

Our boy name would have been Marty but we have a close friend with a boy called this so can’t use it.

The names we like this time (but don’t seem to love) are:

Girls:
Thelma (not sure if I associated this with a baby girl and after miscarriage feel differently about it now)

Daia or Darla (but a close friend has said she is going to call her baby Dana and we feel this is too similar)

Juniper
Jovie
Sylvie (don’t seem to mind the ie ey rhyming like I did last time!)

For boys:
Lynwood (we sometimes call Forre$t woody as a nickname, not out loud just in messages to family and friends so this might be too confusing!)

Kepler (like the unusual name but think this may be too extreme)

Grey

And that’s it for boys… 🤔😖

Please help!!

From Jo$eph, K@yley & Forre$t H@rtley

Hi Swistle,

Husband and I are expecting baby #3, gender unknown. We already have two girls Piper and Felicity (last name is Kelly). Piper was named as soon as we found out she was girl at the ultrasound appointment. Felicity was named after she was born and from a list we went to the hospital prepared with. We originally thought we were going to call her Ivy but someone in town used the name 3 weeks before her birth date and I didn’t want two Ivy’s attending the same school with each other.

My family and friends think I’m a little crazy with my rules when naming baby #3. I don’t want another ‘P’ or ‘F’ name, I don’t want a name ending in ‘er’ or ‘y’. I prefer to stay away from names that have potential nicknames. I’m not a fan of common names and overused names.
My husband rather not talk about names a million times a week.
Names that are on my list that he hasn’t directly said no, or made a weird remark about are:

Girls: Cordelia, Violet, Sage, Raven, Scout, Esme, Rose and Arya
Middle name will either be in preferred order: Mary, Lynn or Suzanne (so right off the bat Rose Mary is not possible)

Boys: Ace, Dawson, Clarke, Lane, Holden and Theo
Middle name with either be in preferred order: Ross, Bud, Christopher (Husband loves that Bud is my grand-father’s nickname and for the longest time growing up I thought that was his real name)

Names that have been on the list but have been removed are: Rhys, Forrest, Gideon, Delta, Matilda, Whitney. My husband all-time favorite boys name is Cole… I can’t do do it, way to popular…. but I also don’t mind the idea of using Cole for a girls middle name….

Feedback on what you think of the potential list of names and any new suggestions are welcome. I just want that one name that stops me in my thoughts and makes me say… That is it!

Thank you,

Amanda

Hi Swistle,

Sorry, there is no real baby in question here. But I have a dilemma in future baby naming that I think might interest you, regarding family surnames as middle names.

Typically, I am all for this tradition. In fact, my middle name is my mother’s maiden name – although her maiden name also happens to be a fairly common unisex first name. I love it and will definitely be passing it on to a future child – boy or girl – as a middle name.

But what about my own maiden name? When I married, I changed my last name to my husband’s name and actually dropped my maiden name completely, rather than moving it to the middle name slot as seems to be traditional in the American South. I did this for two reasons: first, my maiden name is extremely unusual and hard to spell and pronounce and I was tired 20+ years of dealing with it, and second, as I said above, my middle name is my mother’s maiden name. She has only sisters so the family name stopped in their generation, whereas I have a brother to carry on my father’s name.

That being said, I still love my maiden name and identify with it. Because it is so unusual, and my first name is common, I was always known as Firstnamelastname growing up, even by friends. My brother went by a nickname of our last name. My friends had contests to see who could learn how to spell it correctly. Having such a complicated name was a big part of my childhood and young adult identity, and I’d love to honor my family history by passing on this name as well.

Given that I didn’t even want to inflict my maiden name as a middle name on MYSELF, is this cruel to do to a child? I don’t want to share the actual name due to its uniqueness, but it is Slavic and along the lines of Tsyplakov in that it contains a letter combination that don’t occur in English. Additionally, my family pronounces the name with emphasis on the first syllable, which is traditional in the name’s country of origin but not how most Americans pronounce the name based on English phonetics.

My married name is a common, easy to pronounce German-derived surname… think Wagner.

My husband and I like extremely traditional, fairly common first names. To give you an idea our lists look like:

boys – Alan, David, Charles, Nathan, Walter, Henry, Joseph, Adam, George, William, John/Jack, Robert

girls – June, Anne, Claire, Margaret, Caroline, Julia, Ruth

We plan on using several family surnames as middle names for either gender – my middle name/mother’s maiden name, which is a unisex first name like Avery; my mother in law’s maiden name which is an animal name like Fox; my grandmother’s maiden name which is a familiar surname but not really first-namey… think Thompson. But I feel strange leaving out my own maiden name! These sound so dignified –

Anne Thompson Wagner
David Fox Wagner
June Avery Wagner

But then what about

John Tsyplakov Wagner

??? Can I do this? Do people do this? People in the South are all about surnames-as-first-names in the vein of Hudson, Hunter, Taylor, or even Smith or Anderson. And I know tons of people with western-European surnames as middle names (like Pace, Whitmore, Watson, Newman, and many of our past presidents). But what about when the maiden name is a hard-to-spell, hard-to-pronounce, clunky sounding Eastern European (or otherwise) name?

I would love to hear from you and readers. Apologies for my verbosity.

E.K.

Okay! I think I am following this! Your parents gave you your father’s surname, and used your mother’s maiden name as your middle name. You would like to do the same for your child, because you still love your maiden name and have strong feelings about it. This sounds great to me! I say do it!

Your concern is that you dropped that surname when you got married, because it was too much trouble, so you wonder if maybe it’s cruel to give it to a child. But that was as a surname that it gave you so much trouble; as a middle name, it will hardly ever come up. And you dropped it in the extremely normal and typical way many women do when they get married. You kept your own mother’s maiden name as your middle name, rather than bumping it for your father’s surname as if your mom’s family name is less important, and I for one am glad you did. But I don’t think this AT ALL means that you can’t now pass down your maiden name.

My own maiden name is a hard-to-spell, hard-to-pronounce name including a letter combination not used in American English. I gave it to all the kids as their second middle name. That would be another option here:

Anne Thompson Tsyplakov Wagner
David Fox Tsyplakov Wagner
June Avery Tsyplakov Wagner
John Avery Tsyplakov Wagner

I know those seem like a lot of name written out—but my daughter has a name that is 30 letters long, which is longer than any of those names I just typed, and in her daily life she’s just Elizabeth Thistle and it doesn’t seem like too much name at all. The middle names all but vanish, brought out for special occasions such as new-patient paperwork.

I’ll add this: when my eldest graduated high school this past summer, and the man calling out names called out my son’s name, and one of those names was my maiden name (AND HE PRONOUNCED IT CORRECTLY), I felt so happy we’d used it, and I immediately started looking forward to that happening at all the other kids’ graduation ceremonies. If anything, I wished we’d given the kids a double surname instead of letting my family name drift into second-middle-name position.

I seem to have lost track of answering the question here. In short, I don’t see the situation AT ALL as you not wanting to take the name upon yourself and now inflicting it on a child. You just kept your own middle name, that’s all, which was your mom’s maiden name. Now you want to do the same naming pattern your parents used for you: your maiden name as the child’s middle name, your husband’s surname as the child’s surname. Your maiden name was difficult as a surname, but wouldn’t be in daily use as a middle name. There is no problem here. Do it. In fact, maybe do MORE of it. MAIDEN-NAME MIDDLE NAMES FOR EVERYONE!

 
Name update:

It turned out to not be nearly as long as I thought before we’d have an update (certainly a surprise for us)! We have a 6 week old little girl named June K3lly [my mother’s maiden name/my middle name]. I seriously considered adding my maiden as a second middle name but between the “two middle names” thing and the impossibility of anyone ever spelling or pronouncing the name, I decided against it. I do think I would consider it in the future for a boy with a very simple first name – I like the idea of a son getting my last name (in the middle) since my daughters will all get my husband’s last name.