Andrea writes:

I am due to have our third baby boy this week and my husband and I are STILL having a difficult time coming up with a name. Our first two were named well in advance of their birth, so this difficulty is new to us and being made even more stressful by the daily questions we get on what this baby will be named!

Our first two sons are named Andrew & Alex. Both names were simply names we liked and the two “A”‘s were not intentional by any means. It honestly never occured to me that this could cause a problem in naming future children. We tend to like very traditional/Biblical names and liked the way these two names sounded together. Now with a third boy, we’re facing the challenge of not only coming up with a third boy’s name we love, but one that goes well with Andrew & Alex. We don’t intend on having our kids names be “matchy”, but I can’t get beyond the fact that to use a random non-A name will seem like a misfit to me. We’ve thrown around numerous non-A names for the past few months (Matthew, Christian, Caleb, a few others) but the use of these non-A names just didn’t flow well to me with the other kids’ names.

So as far as A names go, our very favorite name is Addison. We both love this name and if we were to use it we’d probably name him Addison Matthew. I love the way that Andrew, Alex & Addison flow, however, am struggling with its popularity in use these days as a girl’s name. My husband is less concerned about this and points out that these days many names are interchangeable between genders. We know men named: Courtney, Brooke, Blaire, Lindsey, Lynn, etc. We know girls named: Ryan, Tyler, Elliott, etc. I fear that if Addison is a “girl’s” name, our little boy will be teased. My husband is less concerned, saying that kids will always find something to tease about if they’re looking for something.

Anyway, with all of the names and queries you see coming in, I was wondering what your thoughts are on these? Do you think Addison is too much of a girl’s name these days to use for a boy? I’ve read the Social Security statistics and know that Addison has been a top 20 girl’s name for years, while it’s much lower down the line for boys (I think in the 800’s). But from reading your site, I know you’ve pointed out many times that top names aren’t necessarily as common as they were a couple decades ago (meaning that there aren’t likely to be 5 Charlotte’s in a class just because it’s the #1 name).

Between my husband and I, we actually only know one Addison (male or female) and this Addison hapens to be a man.

The other A names on our list right now are: Austin, Ashton and possibly Aiden. But while we like these, we don’t love them the way we love Addison.

Thank you for reading this! I know I may be way too late in the game to hear anything before the birth day but thought I would give it a try!

I absolutely would not advise using Addison for a boy at this point. Here are the 2012 numbers from the Social Security site (I included only spellings used more than 20 or so times):

Addison: 8122 girls, 169 boys
Addyson: 1262 girls
Addisyn: 827 girls
Adyson: 234 girls
Adison: 126 girls
Addysen: 84 girls
Adisyn: 82 girls
Addisen: 58 girls
Adysen: 54 girls

That’s a total of 10,849 new little girls named Addison in 2012, and only 169 boys (and that number is falling each year now). Addison is no longer a unisex name; it is now used almost exclusively for girls. And not just “used for girls,” but VERY used for girls: it was #14 in 2012.

Yes, it’s true that popularity isn’t what it used to be, and that’s exactly how I’d be reassuring you if you were concerned that the name Addison was too common for your baby girl, or that the name Matthew was too common for your baby boy. But that is not the question here: in this case we’re wondering if a name is too popular for girls to be used for a boy. The question “Will there be five Charlottes in every classroom?” is quite different than the question “Can I use Charlotte for my baby boy?”

Yes, it’s true that many names can be used for either boys or girls, and Addison hovered in that category for awhile, but now it has flown that particular coop. Yes, it’s true that many men have names that have since become used almost exclusively for girls, but that doesn’t mean it still works just as well to name little boys Courtney and Ashley and Evelyn in 2013. Yes, it’s true that many little girls are given “boy names,” but that doesn’t mean that many little boys are given “girl names”—fair or not. And of course children can always find something to tease about, but that doesn’t mean we should deliberately give a child a name that’s highly likely to cause trouble, any more than we should deliberately give a child a terrible haircut. I think a boy born in 2013 named Addison would be dealing with a considerable hassle his entire life. You and your husband may decide the name is well worth the risk; in that case, I strongly urge you to give him a middle name currently used only for boys (such as your choice of Matthew), and one that goes well with your surname in case he decides to use his middle name as a first name later.

I can completely see how if you know only one Addison, male, the name would feel like it belongs to that range of names that are fine for either boys or girls. It’s similar to the way I can completely see how my friend named her daughter Isabella, thinking it was a very rare name because she had never heard it on a single person; I had never met a single Isabella at that point either. These are the sorts of reasons I find the Social Security’s site so invaluable: it can be startling and helpful to see how our impressions of a name compare to the actual usage. Many, many times I’ve thought, “Pshh, I’ve never heard that name, it can’t be all that common” or “That one’s definitely gone out of style” or “No one is ACTUALLY giving that name to girls”—only to find my own experience of the name doesn’t reflect the actual situation. I can say “But I don’t know any Isabellas” all day long, but that’s completely irrelevant to the fact that approximately 20,000 new ones are born each year; all it means is that my personal sample size is too small to be accurate. We can say that Addison seems like it ought to be for boys and girls, or that the only adult Addison we know is male, but that’s irrelevant to the story the actual numbers are telling us about what is happening with the name: thirty years ago in 1983, there were 36 male Addisons born and 0-5 female Addisons; in 2012, there were 64 female Addisons for every 1 male Addison, and the number of male Addisons was decreasing.

Leaving aside the issue of Addison’s current usage for boys/girls: you say you want traditional/biblical names, and have used two such names so far. The name Addison would be a radical departure from this style—a much bigger departure than breaking the line of A-names. If you love it, I suggest using it as a middle name.

Speaking of A names, are you planning more children after this one? If so, and if you’re having trouble coming up with A names at this point, and if you’d prefer to avoid matchiness, I would certainly quit the A names now. Even if you’re planning to stop at three, I don’t think it’s weird to have two children sharing an initial and the third having a different initial; it’s after three in a row that I feel the pressure is on. It wouldn’t be some “random non-A name”; it would be your favorite boy name for this baby, just as the previous two choices were your favorite boy names for those babies. Some people will notice it when the birth announcements go out (“Oh, I’d thought they might use another A name”) and then everyone will forget about it and those will just be the kids’ names.

Since the first two boys share your initial, perhaps it would be pleasing to everyone if the third child shared your husband’s initial. Or perhaps you could look for a name that shares other sounds in common with Andrew and Alex, and/or is two syllables as they are. Or, try saying the names in a different order to see if it’s only the set-up of the first two names that makes the third stand out: Alex, Caleb, and Andrew, or Alex, Matthew, and Andrew. Or try saying the names in sets of two instead of all in a group: do you like Alex and Caleb together? how about Caleb and Andrew? If you like the pairings, you probably DO like the three names together, but you’re getting misled by a feeling that the first two create a pattern.

One name that comes to my mind is Nicholas. Andrew, Alex, and Nicholas. I think it’s the way the -c- sound of Nicholas echoes part of the -x- of Alex. Patrick would work similarly: Andrew, Alex, and Patrick. Or I like Elliot: Andrew, Alex, and Elliot. Or Daniel, to echo the -an- of Andrew and the -al- of Alex, as well as carrying the -a- sound through all three: Andrew, Alex, and Daniel.

If non-A names continue to seem jarring, I suggest:

Andrew, Alex, and Aaron
Andrew, Alex, and Adam
Andrew, Alex, and Adrian
Andrew, Alex, and Aiden
Andrew, Alex, and Asher

Sara writes:

In case you want a fun game to play over Memorial Day weekend (my name nerd friends and I play and sometimes I play as you). Rules (or caveats): 1. You can use all of the name knowledge you currently possess. 2. Name your children (the ones you have now), but pretend like you were naming them in your mom’s and grandmom’s generation. 3. Other than what was stated in Rule 1, you can only use the technological (and other) resources available to you then. 4. Bonus, name your children as if in future year(s) your children would be naming theirs (not naming your grandchildren, naming your own kids). So for me, I would be naming my kids in the late 1940s/early 1950s, the late 1970s/early 80s and hopefully not until 2035ish.

And I might be the only one who finds this fun. But I thought you would enjoy the challenge.
If you post it, I’ll share mine in the comments :)

I love it. Wait, so what resources can I use? Not the Social Security site, but I can use old baby name books? This makes me very, very happy I ordered a copy of Miss Grace‘s favorite baby name book What Shall We Name the Baby?, published in 1935. …Oh, this makes me mad: I ordered a 1935 copy, and it’s only this minute that I notice they sent me the 1967 edition instead. Well, I was going to use it for pretending to name my children in the 1940s, but instead I will use it pretend to name them in the 1970s. Actually, I will also use it to pretend to name them in the 1940s, but I will double-check if I think a name might not have been used then.

Wait. I’m not sure I have a firm grasp on this task yet. My name knowledge is very, very of my generation. I’m not sure I even KNOW what names were being used in previous generations or how those names sounded to people then, unless I look at the Social Security website. Like, I know I mostly like to use Top 50 names for boys, so to see what I might have actually named my boys in the 1940s, I think I’d need to look at the website to see what were the Top 50 names in the 1940s, and then choose from those. And to know what a “Top 50” name would be, I’d need to look at what percentage of kids are given Top 50 names now, and translate into whatever the equivalent would be in the 1940s. If I were actually in the 1940s, I’d have been steeped in cultural awareness I haven’t actually been steeped in; I think technology would help compensate for that lack, or else I might be tempted to claim I would never have used Gary for any of my sons when actually I probably would have been exactly on board with that.

So I’m going to change the game in the following ways: 1. I can use technology where I think it will improve the accuracy of my answers, as long as I keep in mind that I would not have had access to that information then. That is, I can use it to try to figure out what names would mostly likely have been my style, in order to look at the name pool I think would have been in my consciousness in the same way as the Top 50 names are now; but I may not use it to cheat so that I look like I would have chosen better names than I would have. My girl name style will be more challenging for this, because I like unusual girl names—and yet the names I might have THOUGHT were unusual in the 1940s/1970s would be names I’d now KNOW were much more common.

But I’m not sure how I can get into the 1940s/1970s mindset of “here are the names I would have thought were unusual.” How do you guys do it when you play? I know my parents thought the name Kristen was pretty unusual, and my grandparents certainly didn’t realize they were giving their daughter the 2nd most popular girl name in the United States. And I just remembered that one of my son’s names was a name I really liked but wasn’t going to use because I thought it was much too unusual—but then I looked it up and found it was Top 50 and used it. That’s hard to find a 1940s/1970s equivalent of.

Perhaps I am over-thinking this. Why don’t I see if I can just make some lists?

1940s
I looked on the Social Security baby name site for the middle year of my year of baby-naming (2003) and added up the percentages of the Top 50 boy names; that came to roughly 36%. So then I looked at 1950 (the middle year of my grandparents’ baby-naming), and looked for the top 36%—which turns out to be only the top 12 names:

James
Robert
John
Michael
William
David
Richard
Thomas
Charles
Gary
Larry
Ronald

I’m not sure that’s fun enough to choose from, and I’m not sure I would have chosen from basically the the Top 10. It occurs to me that although I say my boy name tastes are “Top 50,” I never do choose from the Top 10. I choose from right around #35—which was about half a percent of boy babies born in 2003. In 1950, interestingly, that would ALSO be right around #35. Here are the names from #20 to #50 in 1950:

George
Daniel
Edward
Mark
Jerry
Gregory
Bruce
Roger
Douglas
Frank
Terry
Raymond
Timothy
Lawrence
Gerald
Wayne
Anthony
Peter
Patrick
Danny
Walter
Alan
Willie
Jeffrey
Carl
Harold
Arthur
Henry
Jack
Dale
Johnny

Picking as me NOW, I would want George and Henry and Daniel and Edward. Using similar methods to narrow in on a girl name, I’ll bet I’d have chosen something like Rosalinda or Estella. But it seems like if those names sound good to me now, they wouldn’t have sounded anything like that in the 1950s. My parents say that Henry is an “elderly old great-uncle” name. I don’t think current peers of boys named Henry will think the same, so that means a 2003 Henry is not the same name as a 1950 Henry. I am having trouble getting my mind around this challenge!

So maybe it would be better to look at style. One of my boys has what The Baby Name Wizard calls “New Classics” names: names that are good, basic names, but on the other hand we don’t have grandparents with those names yet (she uses Evan and Allison as examples). One boy has a sort of Celtic/trendy name. Two of my boys have biblical names, but one is timeless/traditional and the other is more of a recent revival. And my girl has a frilly, uncommon name. (If I’d been thinking of style when I chose the kids’ blog pseudonyms, I probably would have chosen Ian, Keegan, Clarissa, James, and Caleb.) I’d need to find out which names were considered “new biblical” in my parents’ generation, and which were nice basic names that weren’t used two generations before, and which were trendy and very tied to that time period, and which were the frilly unusual girl names. The task seems interesting, but difficult and lengthy.

Okay, I’m ready to turn this game over to everyone else! How would you do it? What names do you get? And I want to hear what Sara chose for my kids when she was playing as Swistle!

Update (and photo!) on Baby Girl Provolone, Sister to Juliette Elizabeth!
Update on Baby Boy Greenfield!
Update (and photo!) on Baby Girl Hellger, Sister to Samuel and Amelia!
Update on Baby Girl Roberts!

Lara writes:

Hi Swistle! Unless a miracle happens in the next few months, I’ll likely be writing for name help again, but as I was perusing my name list, I keep getting stuck on this issue, and thought it might be a quickie email that you could answer quickly and that others would find helpful.

I really like both Elliott and Emmett for boys, but fear that they skew slightly feminine (girls! stop taking boy names!), though they stay firmly on my boy list for now. Where I COMPLETELY get stuck with these particular names is the nicknames. They’re multisyllabic names that seem to cry for a shortened version – but what?? Ellie and Emme are clearly out, since they are feminine nicknames, though they seem the most obvious. Elliott could, I suppose, use Eli – but is the “EH” to “EE” pronunciation change too much of a change? And with Emmett I’m completely stuck. Mett??? Metty??? Gross.

So what do people use for nicknames for these boy names?

Thanks!

I would do no nicknames; I don’t think they need them. Especially Emmett—that’s only two syllables.

The Elliott/Eli connection doesn’t feel natural to me, though I know people do it. The letters are the same, but the sounds are completely different: not only eh to ee, but also ih to eye. When we shorten a name, it’s common to add a long-E sound to the end (Ellie, Emmie, Maddy), but not common at all to add a long-I sound. If Eli weren’t a name, I don’t think anyone would naturally start saying those sounds as a shortened version of Elliot—any more than we’d give a Madelyn a nickname that sounded like “Made-I.”

Emmett so far is not skewing feminine at all: according to the Social Security Administration, in 2012 there were 2,007 new baby boys named Emmett, and only 10 girls. (For comparison, that same year 20 girls were named Matthew and 18 girls were named David.)

Elliott is still mostly used for boys, but girls are indeed using it. Here are the 2012 numbers:

Elliot: 307 girls, 1480 boys
Elliott: 236 girls, 1252 boys
Elliette: 96 girls
Elliotte: 46 girls
Eliot: 23 girls, 215 boys
Eliott: 59 boys

Yes, Ellie and Emmie definitely seem out to me, too. But I would just use the full names: neither Elliot nor Emmett seems too long to go without a nickname. There was an Elliot in my classroom back when I worked in a daycare, and it didn’t feel odd/long to call him Elliot. But if you definitely wanted a nickname, you could use the initial, either alone (E.) or with a middle/last initial (E.J., for example).

Avery writes:

Hi Swistle!
I’ve been a blog follower for over a year now, and I thought after reading all of your great suggestions to others, that when it came time for my husband and I to start talking about what we would name our baby, we’d magically agree and the name would just “work.” No such luck.

Our baby girl is due in early fall and our last name sounds like Jasper with a “K.”
My husband is from a family with very traditional Catholic names. His name is Paul Joseph and all of his siblings have what I would consider to be older-style names. My husband goes by his initials, and we have both agreed that what we name our child is what we want her to be called–I strongly dislike nicknames. I’m a bit younger than my husband and my name is Avery. My name was considered “unique” when I was growing up and I always got compliments on how much people liked it. Of course now the name Avery is very popular, which is fine with me. I commend my parents on their great taste in naming.

Our naming problem, I feel, stems from our own names. My husband, with his traditional, older-style name, can’t get on board with my more modern name choices.

The two names my husband is stuck on are Charlotte and Penelope. Both names that I would never, ever choose. I enjoy names that my husband considers to be “boy” names.

Names that I love:
Landry
Berkley
Rowan
Harper (This is at the bottom of my list of likes because I don’t know if I like the double “-er” sound, and because it seems to be quite popular.)

Names that we removed from the list:
Caroline (We dislike the nickname Carrie. Again, I want our child to be called by her name, not a nickname.)
Brynn (It sounds too much like his Mom’s name.)
Brynlee (We think this would be cute for an infant, but a hard name to pull off as a 30-something professional.)
MaryAnn (I love this name because it pays homage to my grandmother; however, he has about 10 Marys on his side of the family, and that’s just too much name recycling for me.)

We also do not care for the “Mc” first names or names that you have to look at for a while before you can figure out how to pronounce it. We want the name to be spelled exactly how it sounds.

Since my husband’s middle name happens to be the male form of Josephine, and he mentioned that he kind of liked that name for a girl. I agree it’s a good name–but it seems more fit for a middle name for me. As you can see, we have drastically different naming styles, and we can’t get anywhere on names. My husband said he could agree to pairing a traditional middle name with a more modern first name, but neither Charlotte or Penelope work for middle names.

Please help us so we don’t end up having a baby named “Baby.”

It’s unfortunate that you don’t like nicknames, because I think one of the best compromises in such situations is to use either a traditional name with a modern nickname (Caroline/Rory), or a modern name with a traditional nickname (Ellery/Ellie). If you have different naming styles AND you don’t want nicknames, two other methods come to mind:

1. One of you gets the first name and the other gets the middle name
2. Finding a third style, one that’s second-choice for both of you

One thing you have going for you is that you both like names that are currently in fashion. He’s not advocating for Ashley and Jessica, or for plain traditionals such as Elizabeth and Sarah: he likes recent/current favorites Charlotte and Penelope. You’re both fond of modern names, it’s just two different modern styles: vintage/revival for him, unisex/surname for you.

Your husband says he could picture using a modern name for the first name and a traditional name for the middle. This is a huge compromise move, and one I think it would be wise to grab while it’s still available. The corresponding compromise move from your side would be to give him more sway on both names: for example, give him his choice of middle name among all the ones you think would be fine (I don’t see any reason Charlotte or Penelope couldn’t work as middle names, depending on the first name), and work to find a group of modern names he finds appealing. Perhaps give him a copy of The Baby Name Wizard open to the Last Names First section or to the Androgynous section, and have him make a list of all the ones he likes.

If Brynn and Brynlee were names he was willing to consider, that gives us a jumping-off place:

Ainsley
Britt
Emlyn
Emryn
Finley
Hadley
Larkin
Linden
Linley
Linnea
Perrin
Quincy
Quinn
Tierney
Winifred
Winslow
Wren
Wynn

And if he considers your choices “boy names,” then I suggest digging through names of your preferred style looking for the more feminine choices. Ellery, for example, is modern and surnamey, but the Elle sound is very feminine. Or Delaney, which is used almost exclusively for girls, and which may sound decidedly girlish to him because of actresses Dana Delany and Kim Delaney. Or Waverly, maybe? Or Linley in the list above is similar to your choice of Landry, but the “Lynn” sound further feminizes it. Or Harlow, which is similar to your choice of Harper, but without the -er issue and with Jean Harlow.

Or you could have him turn to the Exotic Traditionals section and see if that’s the third style, the one you could agree on: unusual choices, but mostly feminine, and nothing so modern it’s never been used before. Bronwyn, perhaps, or Imogen or Cleo. Sometimes it helps to be able to refer to a name’s long and solid history—just in case anyone from the more traditional side of the family might be tempted to use an adjective like “made-up.”

Rachel writes:

I’m just realizing now that I asked for name help back in July 2010 and forgot to send you an update. It may have been because our little boy was born 3 1/2 weeks early, only four days after you responded with your post! This is the original link to my letter and your response: https://www.swistle.com/babynames/2010/07/23/baby-boy-greenfield/

We ended up naming our son Evan Maxwell Greenfield. He was going to be Max right up until the eve of my scheduled emergency c-section, but somehow Evan started to feel much more “right”. We didn’t settle on his full name until he was born. Several hours after his birth and (my parents begging to know the baby’s name!), we decided to risk it and use both favorite boys names we loved in one fell swoop. I let my husband “win” by using the more formal Maxwell instead of Max. Now, I obviously regret that just a little but can’t imagine him with any other name.

So now I’m due with baby boy #2 in October and it’s back to the drawing board. I do still really like Alexander (Alex for short). We have very close friend named Alex and his full name is Alejandro, so I feel like if we used Alexander it would somehow distinguish our boy’s name a little bit. Though I would really plan to use Alex down the line. What are your thoughts on Evan and Alex for brother names?

Also, we’d like to use either the initials J or S for a middle name. My grandfather was named Julius and we have multiple grandmothers with S names to honor. These are the (very) few names that are in the running.

Alexander Jacob Greenfield
Alexander Jules Greenfield
Jacob Alexander Greenfield
Alexander Samuel Greenfield

There seem to be so few good S names. And I actually really like Jacob as a middle or first name, but I hate the nickname Jake (so thought maybe a middle name would eliminate that). It makes me think of the book “Jacob Have I Loved” from my childhood. Though it seems incredibly popular right now and I don’t love the Twilight association. We could also still use the name Cooper as a middle name. I would have loved to use something kind of offbeat for a middle name like Sky or Blue (though it sounds corny to write type that out) but our last name doesn’t really lend itself to that style. I also like Reid.

Are there any other names that come to mind that have a similar look/feel to the names I listed? Would love to hear your suggestions.
Thank you!!

I think Evan and Alex make very compatible brother names (I think Alex is even more compatible than Alexander), and it’s nice that the name has some of the sound of Max.

I’d also suggest Alec again.

If you love the name Jacob, but it’s too popular and you hate the nickname Jake, I’m definitely in favor of your idea of using it as the middle name. The nice thing about a name being popular is that the associations become very diluted: I don’t think of Twilight particularly.

Or Caleb is a nice Jacob alternative for either the first or middle name.

I also think Scott would make a handsome middle name: Alexander Scott Greenfield.

Or Stephen: Alexander Stephen Greenfield.

And I like your idea of Samuel; that seems very compatible with Maxwell.

More first-name suggestions:

Andrew
Asher
Daniel
Derek
Jackson
Jared
Jasper
Jeremy
Joel
Joshua
Kyle
Rhys
Spencer

Sawyer might make a nice S middle name along the lines of Cooper.

Krystal writes:

Hi Swistle, we are currently pregnant with our third (and probably last) baby, who we found out will be a boy and need help with naming. Our last name is Salazar (sale-ah-zar). Our two littles are named Isaiah Daniel and Ayva Jordan (with Isaiah, Daniel, and Jordan being family names).
Names so far considered:
Lucas- I love, husband hates and doesn’t like Luke either.
Jude-Husband loves and I’m unsure. I like it best as a mn and it’s his cousin’s name although we’re not very close to him so it shouldn’t really matter.
Anthony-Husband’s name and too common and very present throughout our family but could be a mn.
Ryland-we both like as a mn and it combines a couple family names of our father’s that we can use. Not sure it’s the one though. I like it but not sure if I love it but probably depends on the first name we choose.
Josiah- like, don’t love.
Landon- like but unsure it goes with the sibset.
Emmett- we both like and don’t know why the but, but there is one.

Both of our other kids have names after my husband (Isaiah and Jordan) his only names left are Anthony and Jude (which is probably why he likes Jude Anthony but I’m not sold as previously stated above). I would like to incorporate my name somehow by converting names to a boys name but my name is Krystal Lynn maiden name Gallegos (Guy-egg-ous). Chris and Christopher are out as they are used by family members. Don’t like Christian. My dad’s name is Larry Daniel (Daniel being my son’s mn) the only name I would come up with was combining Larry and Lyn to get rylyn which I converted to Ryland but would love to hear any other suggestions you and your reader’s have.

I’m not sure of our naming style. I would like to say nothing too common but Ayva has been top 5 for years and Isaiah seems to be gaining popularity but nothing like Jack or John. We want a strong but somewhat offbeat name and not sounding too weird. Also,both Isaiah and Ayva end in the -uh sound, and I don’t necessarily want to make that our trend but if this is our last child does it secluded him from the other two kids? Their names also both start with vowels which again I wasn’t trying to make that a theme but don’t know if that needs to be considered in finding THE name this time around.

Anyway, I love yours and your reader’s advice and am praying you can shed some light our way!

Thanks in advance!

The Social Security Administration reports that the name Isaiah was #42 in 2012; Jack was #46, John was #28, and Ava held its place at #5. But names are very regional: Ava is relatively common where I live, but there hasn’t been a single Isaiah in any of my kids’ classrooms. And I’ve encountered so many boys named Jack it’s getting comical, but not a single John. (Many of them are probably going by Jack, which can throw off the statistics considerably.)

If the name you like best of all starts with a vowel or ends in an -a/-ah, I think it would be okay and not too overly matchy to use it; but my own preference would be to avoid it. I wouldn’t have thought the similarities between the first two names were on purpose, but if you add an Elijah it suddenly stands out to me as a deliberate theme—and if this child ends up not being your last, you might feel pressure to continue it past the point where it would be fun. Although there are always going to be people who are looking for offense and hurt where none was intended, I think the odds are in your favor that a third child will not feel rejected and excluded if his name doesn’t end in an -ah sound or start with a vowel. If it does ever come up, I’d say, “Oh! No, we just chose our favorite name each time, and the first two just happened to be similar in those ways.” Then I’d play the Similarities/Differences Game, which is where you point out all the things that make the names similar and different: “See, Landon, all three of you have A’s in your names; and you and Ayva both have two syllables while Isaiah has three; and you and Isaiah both have six letters while Ayva has four; and Isaiah and Ayva’s names start and end with vowels while yours starts and ends with consonants…” etc.

If you DO want to match the beginning and ending, I suggest Ezra. It has the same biblical revival sound as Isaiah, and it gives you a different initial. Isaiah, Ayva, and Ezra.

By the time the paragraph about honor names got to the name Ryland, I felt like the name had nothing at all in common with either Larry or Lyn. At that point, I think it would be better to just choose the name you like best, with a wistful feeling that it’s too bad it didn’t work out to use another honor name from your side. Things often do work out that way: one side of the family will be rich with good honor names, and the other side won’t. Do you have any good surnames on your side that could be used as middle names? Or perhaps he could share your initials: Kai Landon, Kelvin Larry, Kent Lucas, etc. Or your dad’s initials: Landon Davis, Leo Dawson, Levi Declan, Louis Dylan, etc. Or your mom’s initials, since your dad has already been honored once.

I mentioned Louis as an example of an L name, and I think it’s a good candidate even if you’re not trying to match initials. It’s similar to Lucas, so maybe your husband will dislike it just as much, or maybe it’ll be different enough that it’ll be something you can agree on. My main hesitation is the way the -s of Louis hits up against the S- of Salazar, but it doesn’t make a combination that sounds like something negative or causes confusion about the names, so I think it’s fine.

If Emmett is not quite right, I suggest Everett. Everett Salazar; Isaiah, Ayva, and Everett. This compromises on the matching beginnings/endings: his name would start with a vowel, but not give you another -a/-ah ending. And it’s great for Similarities/Differences: three syllables like his brother’s; a V like his sister’s; all three have different numbers of letters; all three have at least one repeated letter (Isaiah has two I’s and two A’s; Ayva has two A’s; Everett has three E’s and two T’s). This is my first choice. I like it with Anthony or Jude as the middle name.

C. writes:

I am not currently pregnant but we are hoping to be by the end of this year. I have a great fondness of names and have a little list built up, and it’s something we like to talk about frequently. One day, my husband half-jokingly, half-seriously suggested the name Australia should we have a girl. At first I laughed it off, but now I can’t seem to get it out of my head! I think it sounds cute with our last name, and on top of that I have actually been to Australia so it is meaningful as well. We are pretty set on the middle name being Noelle or Rose should we have a girl, and our last name is Blacet (rhymes with glass-et). Would it be so crazy to name our child after the world’s biggest continent? After all, there are Austin’s, London’s, and Montana’s. We have even talked about calling her “Lia” (Leah) for short.

What do you think?

Let’s have a poll!

[yop_poll id=”13″]

RW writes:

I have a naming issue. It’s not a baby-naming issue, since the baby girl in question has now grown to school age. My daughter’s name is Eve. One of the reasons I chose it is because it’s so short you can’t make a nickname from it! Also I did think it would be unusual. I understand that it has gone up the baby-name charts in recent years (rats!) but it isn’t popular in our area, thank goodness. So I was surprised when she started school recently to discover a classmate, named Evangeline, who goes by Eve as well. They use their last name initials to get around it and it doesn’t seem to bother them; they are pals. I’m the one that’s bothered! I wish Evangeline’s family would pick another nickname for their daughter so it’s easier to tell them apart. I believe that going by the full name is off the table, but they have lots of other choices! We have run into confusion a couple of times with classmates/parents of classmates getting the girls confused. Nothing fatal, but still! I would hate for my girl to have her feelings hurt because of it.

Would it be wrong of me to approach the other parents and ask them to consider picking another nickname for their girl? Am I being too uptight? Is it not my problem? It’s probably not my problem. It isn’t going to go away though – the girls are in an enriched program and are likely to continue in the same class until they are teenagers.

Yes, it would be wrong to approach the other parents and ask them to call their school-aged daughter a different nickname than the one she goes by. Even if your daughter were bothered by it, which she isn’t, and even if it were causing serious and unusual confusion, which it isn’t, it would be wrong. They deliberately chose their daughter’s name and nickname, just as you deliberately chose your daughter’s name and lack of nickname. Acting as if the name ought to be your daughter’s exclusive property is the path that would lead to the genuine confusion and hurt feelings, and could end up interfering with the girls’ friendship.

In addition to being wrong, it would be impractical: not only will this problem not go away, it’s likely to get worse. This is not going to be the only time your daughter encounters another Eve, and I don’t anticipate a high success rate from asking all the other parents to change their daughters’ names/nicknames.

If you find it unacceptable for your daughter to share her name with someone else, your only option is to change your own daughter’s name. And at this point, it might not be your option to change hers, either: you could ask her if she’d like to go by a different name (Evie is a common nickname for Eve, or she could go by her middle name, or by her first and middle names together, or by her first and middle initials), but she’s old enough to prefer not to. And even if she does agree to go by a different name, she could then encounter someone in her life who shares THAT name; will she need to continue changing her name until she’s the only one who has it?

No, this is not going to work. The girls happen to go by the same name, which is disappointing but far from unusual: many, many people share a name or nickname. It sounds as if the two girls are handling it in the standard way, by using last name initials when necessary to avoid confusion. The standard way for the parents to handle it is to feel disappointed, and then to rally in a resigned way and/or find the fun in it.

Update on Baby Girl Dawson!
Update on Baby Naming Issue: Would it Be Fun to Do a Family Pattern of Initials?
Update (and photo!) on Baby Girl Sowder; Narrowing Down a List!
Update (and photo!) on Baby Naming Issue: Is Harriet Harri$ Usable?