Update on Baby Girl Freitag, Sister to Sophia and Oliver

Hi! We are expecting a little girl in March and we are having trouble coming up with a name. Our surname sounds like Coil, and my grandma and our favorite person in the world’s name is Judell. I LOVE how unique her name is but it will always be a grandma name to me. We thought about Adele, but we didn’t want people to think we named our daughter after a singer, as angelic as her voice might be.

Her middle name will be Kay…Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks!

If Judell is pronounced as I’d guess (joo-DELL), then it is a member of a highly-sought-out group of middle names: two-syllable names with the emphasis on the second syllable. That type of name tends to work with many, many first/last combinations, and it’s also a little hard to find, which is why so many of us have Nicole or Marie. You’ve said the middle name will be Kay and that you’re looking for a first name, but in case those preferences aren’t yet set in stone, I will still start by suggesting Judell as the middle name. The middle name is the perfect place for the name of your favorite person in the world, when the name isn’t what you want as a first name. (I’d be inclined to go straight to suggesting Kay Judell, but I’m not as fond of the sound of Kay Coil.)

If you definitely want the honor name (1) altered and (2) as a first name, then I’d start as you did already: by looking for names with similar sounds. Adele is out, but perhaps:

Delaney
Della
Jada
Jude
Judith
Julia
June

The main issue, it seems to me, is that none of those do a very good job of calling the honoree to mind. Delaney, for example: my name is Kristen, and if a grandbaby were named Tenley after me I would have trouble bragging about that to my group of grandma friends. If you aren’t set on the middle name, you could consider something like Jade Ella Coil, or Julia Della Coil, or Delaney June Coil: something that breaks the name up and redistributes it, increasing the honor by adding more pieces of the name.

Or you could reproduce the TYPE of name Judell is. Do you know how it was chosen? For example, were her parents considering Judith but decided to change the ending to make it more unusual? Or was she named after a Judith and an Eleanor? Or was she named for a Grandpa Jude? Depending on the answer + the equivalent available names in your family, you might be able to make a name the same way.

In some families, matching the initial(s) is considered an honor name. If this is the case in your family, any J name would work. Josephine Kay, Jillian Kay, Juliet Kay. Even better would be matching first and middle initials if possible.

You know your mind better than I do, but I would suggest not entirely ruling out using Judell as-is for the first name. You said it will always be a grandma name to you, but I am not sure that would be the case if the name were on your baby girl. My guess is that we have among us many parents who used a grandparent name for their child and have found the name able to stretch to both. I can picture Judell on a grandmother, but I’m imagining seeing it on a class list and I think it’s got a lot of potential. You could say “She’s named after my grandmother,” and call her Jude or Ella for short.

And I will push one more time for my top-favorite option, which is to leave the name intact and use it as the middle name. It’s such a good place for honor names.

Update (and photo) on Baby Girl Myth-with-an-S, Sister to Henry and Grey

Hi Swistle,

We’re expecting our second child next month and won’t be finding out the gender of the baby. We felt naming our baby the first time around was far easier, and settled on Leon for our son pretty early on in the pregnancy. This time around we’re struggling, particularly with boys names. Our surname sounds like Monahan.

We chose the name Leon previously because we liked the fact that it was uncommon, yet easily pronounceable and a strong short name. We also appreciated that the name worked well as it was, without needing a nickname.

We love the name Anais for a girl, with the pronunciation as ‘Anna-ees’. Would love your feedback on what best spelling would best match the pronunciation. Elise is also another name that we like that also goes quite well with Leon.

For boys we’ve narrowed down to either Emil or Henry / Henri but are less confident. We like Emil for the same reasons we like Leon. Short, and pronounceable. We like Henry too but prefer a more uncommon name, and that Henri with an ‘i’ is more modern than the traditional/classic names that we like.

Would love your thoughts.

M

The association with Anaïs Nin is going to help at least a portion of the population with the pronunciation of Anais. But you’re right, it’s a bit of a challenge for many. I am not having success coming up with a pleasing alternate spelling.

Because you also like the name Elise, I suggest Anneliese.

I also like the idea of Anne Elise, either as a double first name or as first/middle (but calling her by both names).

For a boy, I think Emil and Henry are both nice choices, and I agree that Emil is more in line with Leon. If I saw the spelling Henri, I would think the name was pronounced on-REE.

The Baby Name Wizard has a small section of “Names without Borders” that I thought would go well with what you’re looking for. For girls, I especially like Anika and Nadia. For boys, nothing from the list seems quite right. I am not sure what to pair with it. Possibly something like:

Anders
Arthur
Cyrus
Ezra
Hugo
Jasper
Karl
Milo
Noel
Rufus
Silas

But I am especially glad to have the comments section for this post.

Update on When You Have Many Favorite Baby Name Styles, How Do You Choose?

Update on Baby Girl Ramires: Naomi, or Go Back to the Drawing Board?

Dear Swistle,

Longtime highly devoted reader of all things Swistle. I have a two year old daughter named Penelope Jane, and am currently pregnant with a boy, due April 22nd. Penelope’s nicknames are numerous and varied, but she primarily goes by Penelope or Pip. She refers to herself as Ell-uh-pe, which is very cute. We liked Penny as a nickname, but didn’t like it with our last name, which sounds like Hearty but spelled differently. I didn’t like the double “y” sound when saying them together.

(This is unrelated to the current situation, but for anyone considering Penelope but fearing their child will always be called Penny, it really hasn’t been an issue for us. People will ask if she goes by Penny and we say: “No, we mostly call her Penelope” and that’s usually the end.)

I am pregnant with my second, this time a boy. My daughter’s name was fairly easy, one day I said the name offhandedly and my husband liked it, and it went on the list. By the next day it had become THE NAME in my mind, and stayed that way throughout the rest of my pregnancy, and I maintain high levels of satisfaction bordering on smugness to this very day. Her middle name is Jane after my beloved grandmother. Because our children will have my husband’s last name, it is important to me that they have a family name from my side to provide some balance. My husband is on board with this.
Names we are considering:

Henry
Carter
Calvin
Grant

Henry Carter Hearty. I like this combination, but worry that Henry Hearty is too matchy matchy. I actually kind of like the matchiness, because it makes him sound like a comic book character. This is actually the only reason I chose to go by my husband’s last name. But just because I like it doesn’t mean that my son will. How much of an issue do think this is? I’ve also had many people tell me this name is too popular. That doesn’t bother me.

Carter Henry Hearty. This is my top choice. Carter is my dad’s name, and I’ve always loved the name, and conveniently also love my dad.

Issues:

1) I originally didn’t like the combination because of the repeating “ar” sounds in the first and last names. Car Har sounded too harsh too me, I didn’t like the flow of Carter Hearty. Now it doesn’t bother me anymore, and I can’t tell if its because the flow was always fine, or because I’ve just gotten used to it. Is the flow weird? What are your thoughts?

2) My husband feels uncomfortable giving our son the first name of a living relative, because he thinks it is confusing to have two people with the same name in one family, and that it puts a lot of pressure on the relationship between the two. No one in my immediate family shares a first name, but many people in my extended family do, and neither thing has ever been a problem as far as I can see. I think it just feels normal to me because it is common in my family, and unusual to him because it is uncommon in his. Even though I have arrived at this very logical and well reasoned conclusion, it doesn’t seem to have changed the reality of our preferences.

3) I worry that it will feel less special to my daughter to have a family middle name if my son has a family first name. I especially don’t want her to think it was because she is a girl and he is a boy. The only reason that I didn’t choose Jane as her first name (and for the first half of my pregnancy that was the plan…well MY plan) is because I felt so zingy about Penelope. But I feel equal amounts of love and affection about using each name.

4) Although I feel like passing down the last name is a pretty big deal already, I wouldn’t want my in-laws to feel slighted by not having my father in law’s name used. My husband does not think this is an issue at all.

Calvin “Middlename TBD” Hearty

With our first, our boy name was Calvin. Obviously Cal is the cutest.

Issues:

1) With this pregnancy, Calvin has lost some luster for me. I still like it, but I don’t feel the same heart eyes that I did two years ago. My husband still likes it quite a bit, it dipped for awhile but is probably back to number one for him.

2) I don’t know what his middle name would be. Calvin Carter makes me think of Calvin Klein, and I’d like to avoid naming my son after underwear. There is literally no other male family name on my side that I want to use. My grandfather’s name was Haze, which could maybe work, but there are so many Hazes in my family at this point it feels a little redundant. So to use Calvin, I think I would have to give up using a family name, and that makes me really bummed. (I just had my husband read this and he has surprised me by saying that he likes Calvin Carter as a middle name.)

Grant Carter Hearty

This name is fine. I like it. I’m not zingy about it. My biggest issue is that Grant is a family name on my husband’s side, so my son would have two family names and my daughter would only have one. Is that a big deal?

Had this baby been a girl, her name almost certainly would have been Juniper Bess. Other girl names we like: Tabitha, Willow, Clara. There is a 90% chance that there will no more children.

I feel like I have a lot more to say, but its mostly just additional hand wringing around the same issues.

Sometimes when I read a letter I have an immediate Very Strong Opinion, and my main struggle is with moderating the communication of that opinion so that it does not come across too forcefully. It is clear to me that the point of this blog is not for me to choose MY favorite name from another family’s list (though I enjoy voting, and so I go ahead and do so), but for us to help THEM to choose THEIRS. But something about the tone of your letter makes me think I can trust you not to feel overly pressured by my opinion or to think that I would think you SHOULD feel pressured by it, and so I am just going to go ahead and try to talk you into my far-and-away top choice, which is Calvin.

Now I will tell you why—though still with the understanding that I am talking here about my own preferences, and not what I think yours should be. I will put these reasons not in order of importance, but in the order that they occur to me as I am typing.

One: Calvin is my favorite with Penelope for popularity and style. Both names are familiar, yet unusual in my personal experience at approximately the same levels, and they give me similar reactions of surprise and interest. I also do love the style of Henry with Penelope, but this brings me to reason two.

Two: Calvin is my favorite with your surname. I can see the charm of Henry Hearty, but not quite to the extent that I would want to use it myself: the beginnings AND endings of the names match, AND they have the same number of letters and syllables, AND they both have an R sound in the middle. The not-quite-repeating art/ard sounds of Carter Hear(t)y bothers my ear and tangles my tongue. Grant Hearty is fine (though I don’t love two word names in a row), and is my second choice of the four candidates.

Three: Calvin Carter is my favorite of all the options for including your dad’s name, and I really like the idea of you using your dad’s name.

Four: I love the nickname Cal.

Five: Calvin Carter doesn’t make me think of Calvin Klein. It’s making me think of something else, but I can’t put a finger on it. Oh, actually I think I’ve got it: it’s just that both are presidential names, so that’s ringing that bell. Or maybe it’s that Calvin (Klein) and Carter’s are both clothing companies? In any case, it doesn’t make me think of underpants at all. And even if it did, I wouldn’t be bothered by that in a middle name. I also think Calvin Grant Hearty is nice, but it bugs me that then it’s two names from your husband’s side and none from yours.

Six: I just like it best, OKAY??

But! I know what you mean about the luster wearing off a name, and that could indeed end up being the dealbreaker. Unless SWISTLE’S FORCEFUL OPINION might renew the luster a bit? Well, I will hope.

In the meantime, I am going to brush away a bunch of concerns. Again, this is about how I feel, not about how you feel or how you should feel (though feel free to find my arguments persuasive).

One: Even though I love things to line up tidily, I don’t think it generally matters if one kid has a family first name and one has a family middle name. I also don’t think it generally matters if one kid has two family names and the other has one. I do acknowledge that there are tons of situations where I would be advocating that an attempt be made to adjust things in a particular situation (like when one kid has two super-important-and-sentimental family names but the sibling-to-be is getting none, or when three sons have been given double family names but the daughter-to-be is getting none), but nothing is setting off red lights for me with your various options. I guess it does seem slightly non-ideal to have the first name be one that is also a closer family member. But I think a lot of that can be spun using casual tone: “Oh, yes, well it was down to either Penelope Jane or Jane Penelope, and in the end we preferred Penelope Jane,” or “We knew we wanted to use Carter as either a first or middle name, so we just played around with names until we found the combination we liked best.”

Two: I don’t think it ends up being particularly confusing to have a grandparent and grandchild sharing a first name, especially when the surname is different. Or at least it has not mattered in my family, where one of my sons is named after my dad. What we noticed is that there’s hardly anyone in the family who would call both of those people by the same name. I call my dad Dad, I don’t call him by my son’s name. My kids call my dad Grampa. My mom calls them both by their first names, of course, but when she’s talking to me she refers to my dad as Dad, and when she’s talking to the grandkids she refers to him as Grampa. On the very few occasions where it could be confusing, such as when my mom is talking to her friends, it has not been difficult or problematic or sitcomesque to communicate or understand which one is being discussed. Really, a non-issue. With you and I BOTH seeing things this way, I don’t see how your husband can fail to find his perceptions changed. …However, I am still not in favor of the sound of Carter Hearty, so on second thought I take back this whole paragraph.

Three: Zinginess is nice but in the long run I have not found it MUCH different than non-zinginess. That is, I have felt Quite Zingy about two of my five children’s names, and I still enjoy DISCUSSING and THINKING ABOUT that zinginess all these years later—but with the other three names I felt something more like Settled Satisfaction, and in the long run I am not even sure which I’d rank higher. It was really fun to choose the zingy names, but I also found it a little extra stressful. It was a little less exciting to choose the less zingy names, but I also found it a little extra peaceful. And aside from wishing OTHER PEOPLE had chosen one son’s name at a lower frequency, I don’t wish in any of the five cases that I had chosen something more zingy or less zingy: all seem Just Right. So if it’s a little disappointing not to have Zing this time, you may indeed want to seek it out; but if you are similar in temperament to me, I don’t think it’ll matter much in the long run. But of course I say that in part because the name Calvin has zing for me.

So! Are we settled? You will name him Calvin Carter Hearty, and we will all be happy. *brushes off hands with zingy satisfaction*

Hi,

We’re in a bit of a naming quandary. We’re expecting our second child (due in June) and we won’t be finding out baby’s gender. We’re all set for a girl’s name, but we’re extremely stuck on a name for a boy.

We have a little boy named Theodore, called Teddy. Our last name is like Calbert – minus the ‘C’. My favourite names are Frederick and Edmund – but then we’d have Freddie/Eddie/Neddy and Teddy! We can’t do that…can we? Does it matter if the nicknames rhyme when the full names are so dissimilar? I assume Teddy will want to go by Theo as he gets older and that would mitigate the rhyming names – but then again, he may not. Unfortunately, these are the only names we’ve liked so far and we’re feeling very stuck and a wee bit panicky (why, I do not know. Pregnancy hormones maybe?).

Arthur was a strong contender when we were expecting Teddy – but I worry Arthur is too alliterative with our surname and one of Teddy’s close buddies is an Arthur. That said, it would solve our boy name issue if we just forged ahead with Arthur. I also have an aversion to surnames-as-first-names because our last name sounds like a first name and it gets confusing (to which my husband can attest). I’m also not a fan of names that rhyme with our surname; my husband suggested Calvin but I can’t get past Cal Calbert. Same with Alexander, etc.

If we have a girl, her name will be Rosalie. Our other girl picks are Georgiana and Clementine. if it matters, we’re hoping to have at least one more child after Teddy and his sibling.

Any name suggestions we’ve overlooked? Thoughts on a possible Teddy, Freddie, or Neddy sibset? Am I overthinking the alliterative nature of Arthur?

Thank you so much!

There are exceptions, of course, but in general I don’t worry very much about nicknames the way I worry about given names. I do like to think it over and take them into account, but I don’t really mind if they rhyme, or repeat an initial, or sound odd together, or any of the other things I do care about with given names.

In this particular case, I find I am drawn to the idea of allowing for rhyming nicknames—I think because the given names are quite dissimilar and so the possibility of ending up with rhyming nicknames just seems fun. In my extended family there is a sibling group that includes a James and a Timothy—so, Jimmy and Timmy, or Jim and Tim. It seems as if it would be an issue, but it’s just been slightly fun whenever anyone notices it, which is seldom (there are two other siblings, which I think dilutes the noticeability). And as you mention, your kids may not even end up using the nicknames that would rhyme, so I’d hate to see you rule out a great name on something that might not even come up.

I do have trouble saying Arthur with your surname. Not so much trouble that I’d rule it out if you both love it—but enough trouble that if I were making a list of names, I would make a note of not being sure if I liked it with the surname. It’s not so much the alliteration, I don’t think, since the two A- sounds are different; it’s something else I can’t quite put a finger on, with the particular mix of sounds. Something about the way -thur and Alb- connect, and then the not quite repeating first syllables Ar/Al. I prefer either Frederick or Edmund—though I also DO like Arthur, and again I don’t think the sound of it with the surname needs to rule it out.

I think you have three strong choices here, and at this point could let it simmer a bit to see if your feelings get stronger for one name in particular.

Update on Baby Boy Rise-with-a-W, Brother to Nicholas

Update (and photo) on Baby Girl Iverson, Sister to Dean, Elliot, and Morgan