Dear Swistle,
We are expecting our first baby – a girl – at the beginning of April. We had a pretty hard time agreeing on a name, but after a lot of deliberation, we’ve decided to name her Mackenzie. Our last name sounds like F0rd. My question deals with middle names – specifically surname middle names. My husband and I would like to use my maiden name as the baby’s middle name. My last name sounds somewhat like F0lgers (but no coffee association), and when we got married I took his last name and moved my maiden name to the second middle name position. For various reasons, my maiden name is very meaningful to me.
The thing is Mackenzie is already derived from a surname. It’s not a surname in either of our families, but it originated as a surname. So her name would be a collection of all surnames. Is this weird or noticeable? I suspect that other people have run into this because of the popularity of surnames as first names like Parker, Fletcher, Anderson, Beckett, Kennedy, Jackson, etc.
I’ve also wondered if Mackenzie is unisex enough that it needs a feminine middle name to make it clear that it’s a girl’s name. However, since Mackenzie hasn’t been in the top 1000 names for boys since 2001, and it’s been in the top 100 for girls for the last 20 years, I think it’s safe to say that it’s gone completely to the girls like Kelly, Ashley, Leslie, etc.
If we don’t use my maiden name, we would likely go with either Marie or Jade. Marie would also be an honor name because it’s my middle name and my mom’s. But Marie doesn’t feel like a very specific honor name since it seems like half of the women I know have the middle name Marie. Jade is not an honor name – it’s just a name that we both strongly like but felt sounded silly as a first. (Jade F0rd sounds strange to me, but Mackenzie Jade F0rd sounds better to my ear for some reason.)
Technically we could give her 2 middle names, but I like giving her the option to push her last name to a second middle position like I did if she gets married and wants to, and my husband generally doesn’t like the 2 middle name option either.
What do you think about maiden names as middle names for babies with a surname-y first name?
Thanks!
If it’s your maiden name I see in your email address, one issue that may sway things toward using it is that I think it’s a much prettier name than F0lgers. But I would like the idea even if the name WERE F0lgers: I like very much when both parents’ family surnames can be incorporated.
It sounds as if the idea of two middle names doesn’t appeal to either of you, but if you DID go with that, she would still be just as able to structure her name the way she wanted to later on. Whether she starts as Mackenzie F0lgers F0rd or Mackenzie Marie F0lgers F0rd, she’s just as able to decide to be Mackenzie F0lgers F0rd MarriedName later on if she wants to. More names gives her MORE options, not fewer. But it does seem as if a Mackenzie F0lgers F0rd is more likely to keep the F0lgers part than a Mackenzie Marie F0lgers F0rd: the latter has more names to consider dropping (if any names will be dropped), so each name has a somewhat smaller chance of being kept.
One thing I liked about giving the kids two middle names is that it meant I still got to have the fun of choosing a middle name. It also reduced the surname-heavy aspect of it. But that was because I wanted ALL the kids to have my family name as a middle: if I were using it only for the firstborn, I would have felt differently about it.
Even knowing that Mackenzie is a surname name, it doesn’t feel much like a surname name to me anymore. If you were considering Miller F0lgers F0rd or Campbell F0lgers F0rd, I would feel like that was a lot of surname. I might very well still think it was a good idea to use it, but I’d see what you meant. But with Mackenzie, after 20 years in the Top 100, I think by now it feels more first-name than surname—more in the category of Mason and Jackson and Dylan and Madison than in the category of Anderson and Fletcher and Miller and Campbell.
I agree with you that the name is currently so used for girls, I wouldn’t feel the urge to use a clarifying middle name. In 2013, the name was given to 3,990 new baby girls and only 42 boys. And that’s only for that one spelling: the next most popular spelling, Mckenzie, was given to 2,196 new baby girls and 22 boys. The next most popular spelling, Makenzie, was given to 1,929 girls, but isn’t in the data base for boys.