Hello,
My husband and I are doing ivf and the morning of our transfer (scheduled for that day a week in advance) his grandfather died. If this baby sticks around, I feel like there is something so incredibly meaningful and we have to name the baby after the grandfather. The grandfather’s first name has been used within the family 4 times (my husbands grandfather, uncle, cousin and brother) so we are not using it. But his middle name is his mother’s maiden name and has been used as a middle name in the family once. The name is Lahey. We are considering not telling anyone and naming the baby Lahey wether it is a boy or a girl. As a boy it would be Lahey William or Lahey James and as a girl it would be Lahey Elena or Lahey Anne or Lahey Rose.
Basically, in all my googling there is little data of this is ever used as a first name. Is it crazy? I know there aren’t a lot of aparent nick names for it but I can see a Layla or LaLa forming for a girl. My other daughter has a much more common name, so I am worried this will be weird. Her name is a solid top 100 but rarely top 30 name.
Our last name is hiphened and sounds okay and weird with everything so it’s of very little concern.
Thank you so much for your help!
Amanda
I love the idea of using maiden names as first names. I am not sure what I think of this particular maiden name.
As you mention, Lahey is virtually unused in the U.S. as a first name: I looked back half a dozen years and it is not in the Social Security baby names data base for any of them. (Names used for at least five boy or five girl babies are included in the data base.)
I am working on the assumption that the name is pronounced LAY-hee, but I am prepared to find that there are other pronunciations.
One potential issue with very unusual names is that associations don’t have as much chance to become diluted. My immediate association with the name Lahey is the word “lay.” Do the kids still use that slang? The name Layla, which also contains the sound “lay,” has that association for some people but has additional associations as “a first name for girls,” and as “that Eric Clapton song,” and as “a name on my friend’s baby-name list,” and as “that person I know named Layla,” and as “names that remind me of Princess Leia,” and so on. The brain files “Layla” in multiple files, and all those files get brought to the front upon hearing the name. The name Lahey has fewer files for the brain to access, so each association carries more weight.
Another potential issue with very unusual names is spelling/pronunciation. A name such as Sophia should be difficult to spell/pronounce, but isn’t, because the name is common and so we’ve become familiar with it: we know it isn’t spelled Soffeeuh, or pronounced sop-hy-uh. And when we hear it on the phone, we recognize it quickly because we are expecting to hear a name and our brain has “Sophia” filed under “names.” The name Lahey, because it is so unfamiliar, will take more repetitions. The ear may hear “Lacey” or “Laney” or “Layla” or “Leigh” or some other name that the brain offers up after it gets a 404 error, or may hear “lazy” or “lady.” The eye may see “Laney” with an extra tall stick on that N; or might see a Lah sound instead of a Lay sound, or a Hey sound instead of a Hee sound, causing pronunciation guesses such as lah-HAY (or, if it IS pronounced lah-HAY, then pronunciation guesses such as LAY-hee). You’ll have to spell it, pronounce it, explain it, over and over and over again. Will this drive you crazy, or will it give you a happy little thrill to tell the naming story each time? Parents are all over the spectrum on this kind of thing.
In addition to considering the relative popularity of your first child’s name, if this baby is a girl I would also suggest considering the relative femininity. I agree with your assessment that the name Lahey could be unisex; if your first daughter’s name is also unisex, the two names will work better together (despite popularity differences) than if your first daughter’s name is quite feminine and used exclusively for girls.
I wonder if you might return to the idea of using the grandfather’s first name instead. When I first read the email, I thought you meant it had been used for four new babies—that is, that in your children’s generation there were already four babies honoring this grandfather. But none of the people sharing the name are in your children’s generation, and one of the four is the grandfather himself. I think carrying on a family name in this next generation too would be lovely. But perhaps the issue is that your husband’s brother and/or cousin are planning to pass along the name themselves.
Looking at the middle name options, I notice a lot of repeated sounds in Lahey Elena. I would lean toward either Lahey Anne or Lahey Rose instead.
I would also like to make sure that when you say you “have to” use the name, you mean it in the sense of really wanting to because it feels like a really cool and fun idea. If you are instead feeling stress and pressure, as if the timing of things means you are required to do something you don’t want to do, I encourage you to ditch that feeling. The universe is full of interesting coincidences, and I have not yet seen a handbook that says any of those coincidences require commemoration in a child’s name. The timing could instead be commemorated by its inclusion in the story of how this child came into your lives.
