Rachel writes:

I so appreciated the advice you and your readers gave me, regarding an honor name issue my husband and I had, when naming our first son (Miles Joseph). We are expecting our second child, a girl, this August, and again, are stuck on a middle name.

In fact, we aren’t convinced we have a final choice for a first name, but are pretty sure.

My husband and I both like the name Claire. I’ve liked the name for years, and even though I love searching for new names, I think it’s still my favorite. I like how Claire and Miles sound together. Our last name is Trude1le. We may want another child in the future.

We’re stuck on a middle name. Marie is my middle name, the middle name of both of my grandmothers, and the first name of one of my sister-in-laws. I like that it would honor my side (with our son, we honored my husband’s by using his middle name). But I see a few possible issues with it:
Claire Marie is the flip of the name of a magazine. I don’t know how strong this association would be for others (it’s not huge for me, but I am aware of it). Visually, does it make you think of the magazine? I almost notice it less when I say both names aloud. Is a magazine title a negative association?
I still have a desire to use a name that somehow honors my father, who passed away. His name was Eric, and we considered using his name as a middle name for our first child, but ended up sticking with a family tradition on my husband’s side (the issue I wrote to you about last time). Back then, I thought we could always use Erica for a middle name if our next child was a girl. Now, I’m not sure I like Claire Erica, or even Erica at all for a middle name. I do, however, love the name of my grandmother (my father’s mother, who also passed away), Maxine. Claire Maxine is a little more unique than Claire Marie and I would love to honor this grandmother, whom I was also very close to, growing up.

The problem with this is that my other grandmother is still alive, and I worry a little bit about hurting her feelings by using my other grandmother’s first name, instead of the middle name that honors them both. She would never say she was hurt, but it feels a little silly to honor one, when we could honor both.
I’d love to know your thoughts! Thank you so much for your advice!

Claire Marie doesn’t make me think of Marie Claire magazine, but it’s the sort of thing I would be glad to have thought of beforehand so I could make sure it didn’t bother me. It seems like a bigger issue if you plan to call her by both names than if she will be known as Claire and only a few people will know her middle name. The magazine association doesn’t seem negative to me in any case.

I also love Claire Maxine. And this is where you have run into one of the big issues with honor names: people who AREN’T honored. My own opinion is that if you prefer the name Maxine, and if you were closer to that grandmother, that you should go right ahead and use it. Reasonable people understand the idea that only a certain number of honor names can be used. Since you want to honor your other grandmother and you describe her as someone who wouldn’t say anything about it, I suspect she is a reasonable person; if you spin the name choice as one that honors your father, as well one that honors a relative who will never get to meet this baby, I think it is unlikely that your other grandmother will be hurt. And of course she has no way of knowing if perhaps you plan to use HER first name for the NEXT baby; she also wouldn’t know that you chose the name Maxine OVER the name Marie. It helps too that Maxine was a first name in your family, while Marie is a middle.

On the other hand, Marie is also your middle name, which gives me a happy mother/daughter feeling about the name. So really I think both middle names are good choices, and that you could go with either one. I have a slight preference for Maxine, for these reasons:

1. It’s less familiar as a middle name
2. It’s a first name in your family, which feels like a higher honor
3. The concern about Claire Marie reminding people of the magazine
4. I prefer the sound of it
5. I prefer the look of it (Claire Marie repeats four of the same letters)

But I like Marie for these reasons:

1. It has a happy “tying in with the girls in our family” feeling to it
2. It honors more people at once (though this then dilutes the honor somewhat)
3. I don’t think the magazine association is a problem

Let’s have a vote to see what everyone else prefers!

[yop_poll id=”54″]

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

Thank you so much for your help with baby number two’s middle name.  I loved reading your thoughts, as well as your readers’ comments.

We decided to use “Marie” for many reasons, but I especially like the parallel between our son’s and daughter’s middle names (our son shares my husband’s, our daughter shares mine).

Claire Marie was born on August 19th at 8:33 pm.

Emm@ writes:

I have a name question that is only partially about baby names at the moment, but I was hoping you could help me out – it will impact hypothetical future children.

My name is Emm@ V1ctory, and I have recently become engaged to J0nath0n W@rren-Wh1te. His parents each kept their surnames and hyphenated his. He has no middle name; mine is Ann.

My question is, when we do marry what should our names be, and what surname should we plan on for any future children?

I love my surname, and he likes it as well. He would have no problem if I kept my name (his mum did, after all).
I am not in love with his surname, but I think I would like to feel like we were connected in a naming way – I also feel like I would feel left out if he and the imaginary children shared a name that I didn’t. Perhaps V1ctory could be become both of our middle names, and the kids could either be V W-W or just W-W.
Also my initials would be EW-W – not ideal but also probably not a dealbreaker.

I’d love to hear your take on what all the options are, and what you’d suggest as the best choice.

Thank you!

One reason there are so many ways to choose a family surname is that the symbolism means different things to different people. Perhaps one woman feels as if giving up her birth surname symbolizes giving up her whole family and being absorbed into her spouse’s family, while the next woman finds it romantic to take her spouse’s surname. Perhaps one man worries that other people will think the children aren’t really his if they don’t share his surname, while the next man is thinking he really prefers the sound of his spouse’s surname and isn’t bothered at all by the difference. One couple might want to make a symbolic statement by choosing to go against tradition; another couple might want to emphasize tradition.

I struggled with this a lot when I was engaged to Paul. I didn’t like the idea of taking his name; to me it did feel like giving up my family and prioritizing his, and I didn’t like that all my children would then “belong” to his family rather than to mine. (I feel like I’m “a MyDad’sSurname” rather than “a MyMom’sSurname,” even though I know I’m just as much a part of one family as I am of the other.)

But I also didn’t like the idea of bucking tradition: I liked it in theory, and for other people, but I didn’t want any of the options in that category for myself. I don’t like having to explain things, and I didn’t like the idea of people assuming, for example, that my birth surname was my married name. We considered coming up with a new surname, but I didn’t like the feeling of THAT, either: I imagined people saying, “Oh, that’s an interesting surname, what country is that from?”/”Oh, are you related to…?” and me saying, “Um. We made it up.” I didn’t want to hyphenate, because it was bulky and seemed like a one-generation fix. I didn’t want to keep my own name and then have one of us have a different surname than our children. Paul was willing to take my surname, but even though that SHOULDN’T insult anyone (no one in the woman’s family is insulted if she takes her husband’s surname), we knew in his family dynamic it would be perceived as a huge symbolic slap; plus, I was back to not wanting people to misinterpret the family tree. I didn’t want to do an option such as giving the girls my surname and the boys his surname. I felt really stuck: NOTHING seemed right.

Eventually what I did was keep my own surname as a second middle name, take Paul’s surname as my surname, and do the same format for all the kids’ names: they have my surname as their second middle name, and Paul’s surname as the surname. It is not a highly satisfactory solution: clear priority is still given to the man’s family, and it’s a one-generation fix. But it was the solution I disliked least of all the options. When there are several preferences that contradict each other, eventually one set of preference has to be chosen above the others.

That’s the long way to say that I don’t know what you should do in your own case, because so many individual factors and personal preferences need to be considered. What are your feelings about the various symbolisms of surnames, and what are your fiance’s feelings? Which options are you both willing to consider? When you look at the consequences of each choice (having a different surname from your children, for example, or losing the family history of the surname, or causing family-tree confusion), which of those bother you more and which bother you less?

In the end, you may find yourself in the same situation as I was: ALL the options were wrong, and I finally had to pick one that felt the least wrong to me. I was fortunate that Paul was flexible about the various options: I think if he’d been stubborn about following tradition, it would have been harder for me to make that choice. It was hard enough as it was, and left me feeling resentful about patriarchal traditions without feeling like there was a better solution for my particular set of preferences.

In your case, you have some very nice things to work with. For one thing, you know that whatever you choose is not going to be perceived as a slap in the face to his family, since his mom kept her own name and his parents hyphenated their child’s name. For another thing, your husband is accustomed to a hyphenated name. For a third thing, because he has two surnames and you have one, there is some room to play around with combinations.

If you’re willing to hyphenate, I might suggest a new hyphenated name, with your surname and one of his surnames. The two of you could be:

Emm@ and J0nath0n V1ctory-W@rren
Emm@ and J0nath0n V1ctory-Wh1te
Emm@ and J0nath0n W@rren-V1ctory
Emm@ and J0nath0n Wh1te-V1ctory

If I were looking at that list for myself, I’d eliminate Wh1te-V1ctory because that selection/order seems to have its own symbolism. I also might eliminate W@rren-V1ctory for sounding like “war and v1ctory”—unless that were my favorite choice symbolically and I were willing to patiently endure the recurring “Oh, heh, that sounds like war and v1ctory!” (which I might very well be, and it makes the name easier to remember). If it were down to V1ctory-W@rren or V1ctory-Wh1te, I’d be influenced by which surname belonged to which of my fiancé’s parents (I’d be more inclined to carry on his mother’s name, since I’m annoyed that it’s often the mother’s name that gets dropped in the next generation of hyphenated names), but also by how he and I each felt about each of my fiancé’s parents (if, for example, one of them had been a poor parent to him, or if I found one of them very difficult to get along with).

Then you could give that same hyphenated surname to all of your own children, and your whole household would share the same surname.

Another option is for you to each keep your own surnames, and use one of those new hyphenated options for your children: you’d be Emm@ V1ctory, he’d be J0nath0n W@rren-Wh1te, and your children could be FirstName V1ctory-W@rren, or FirstName V1ctory-Wh1te. This strikes me as the most confusing of the options.

Another option is the one you suggest, where both of you take your surname as a middle name, and then both use his hyphenated surname. This pleases me less, similar to my dissatisfaction with my own solution: it so clearly prioritizes his names. I think it feels even more that way to me in this case, since you’d both be taking TWO of his surnames, and he has no middle name to sacrifice: you’d be giving up so much, and he’d be giving up almost nothing. But I like it better than the option where you give up your surname completely and he doesn’t change his name in any way.

To me, the reassuring thing is that in the long run it doesn’t seem to matter very much. I still get little flashes of resentment about my surname, but I don’t REALLY care very much, and there’s no solution I wish I’d chosen instead. I’ve adjusted to Paul’s surname, while still feeling satisfaction when I see my birth surname in my name and in my children’s names. I know of other families who made different choices, and the minor hassle of the parents having different surnames than their children, or the spouses having different surnames than each other, or of the family using a surname not previously used in their family trees, doesn’t seem to have greatly impacted their lives: so many people go different routes, I think society has adjusted to it. The two of you can do what you like best out of the options available to you from your own particular circumstances.

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

Thank you so much for answering my question on choosing surnames.

We were married last Saturday and were introduced as Mrs Emm@ V1ctory and Mr J0nath0n W@rren-Wh1te. The imaginary future kid will be a V1ctory-Wh1te so another generation can deal with hyphenation!

Thank you to your and readers for helping out. There are lots of options available and I think for my generation (early 30s) people do not necessarily expect a name change anymore. The general attitude in the comments seemed to be ‘do what’s right for you’ which was really good advice!

Thanks again,
Emm@

Update to the name update:

The hypothetical future kid became a real live baby this year – and was given my surname, at my husband’s suggestion!

E. writes:

We are expecting our sixth child in June. Our last name is one syllable and begins with “S”, a simple English noun name that rhymes with “Seer”. We don’t know the baby’s sex, but if the baby is a boy, we will most likely name him Peter. We don’t have too many boy names that we like, so we don’t really need help with those.

But girl names are a different story… We have tons of girl names that we like, which is good because we currently have one boy and four girls. In age order, they are:

Theodore
Bernadette
Adelaide
Teresa
Veronica

For this baby we were initially juggling about 20 girls names, but now we have it down to six:

Agnes
Irene
Louise
Phoebe
Regina
Rosemary

My husband and I really like all six of these names. The kids are okay with all of them, but their favorite is pretty clearly Phoebe.

Our dilemma is that we can’t get past the drawbacks of each of them, so we are continuously debating them and are finding it impossible to narrow the list down any further. (Granted, Peter has its very real drawbacks too, but we nonetheless can’t come up with another boy name that we like as much.)

Will the “s” in Agnes run together with the “S” of our last name? Is the name too closely associated with “Despicable Me” right now? (Our kids think that it is.)

Hurricane Irene hit our area really badly (it knocked down a huge tree in our own yard and our neighborhood was without power for four days, there was extensive damage all over the place)… We love the name, but haven’t been able to get past that association… Do you think it is still closely associated with the hurricane for most other people too?

Does the “s” in Louise present a similar problem to the one in Agnes? Or is it kind of more of a “z” sound? Does it matter? Is it a poor choice with an “S” last name? Will a Louise be very teased? Geez Louise, Please Louise, Loo (as in toilet), Wheezy, things like that?

Is Phoebe too difficult to spell? When I think about it, many names are not phonetic — take for example the perennially popular Michael: the only reason we know how to spell it is that we have learned at some point, because it certainly isn’t spelled like it is pronounced — but still, will a Phoebe constantly deal with spelling and pronunciation issues? Or is it common enough that most people know how to spell it? Our kids think the name is a perfect fit with theirs, but is it a little off?

In the comments on all of the name sites, people constantly caution against Regina because of the “Canadian” pronunciation… What do you think? Is a Regina doomed to be teased for this reason in middle school health class, if not sooner? Some people claim that they think of the female organ every time they see the name.

And we don’t mind the herb association with Rosemary, we think it is nice… But we saw in the news that they are doing a mini-series remake of “Rosemary’s Baby” right now :( So will that very negative association be at the forefront of everyone’s mind if we name a baby “Rosemary” in a few weeks? I had been hopeful that most people wouldn’t even be aware of the movie from the 60s; my heart kind of sank when I first saw a news announcement about the remake.

There is more to say, but this is very long already so I will stop here… Thanks so much for any help you can give us!! We don’t mind going to the hospital with a couple of names still in the running, but right now we are feeling very conflicted, and we will appreciate any advice that we get.

(Oh, and middle names are not an issue because the kids all have the same middle name… My husband took my last name when we married, so the kids all have his “maiden” name as a middle :) It’s one syllable and starts with F. And also, our born kids all have nicknames that are used by the family, but the nicknames each developed over the course of their babyhoods, and we aren’t worried about the new baby’s nickname “fitting in” or anything like that.)

When choosing my own babies’ names, I found it comforting to notice that every name had its own set of upsides and downsides. There wasn’t a single name that had NO downsides: if it wasn’t too popular, perhaps it was a little too unusual; if it was easy to pronounce, perhaps it had several common spellings; or perhaps there was an association with a TV show or a biblical character, or perhaps it was hard to spell, or perhaps it combined with our surname in a non-ideal way, or perhaps we didn’t like one of the nicknames. But they ALL had SOMETHING.

It’s good to look at the downsides ahead of time, because they’re part of the package deal of each name. I feel sympathy for parents who choose a name without realizing how popular it is, or without realizing what a hard time people will have with the pronunciation, or without knowing about a strong association: I think it’s a lot harder to adjust to a downside when it’s unexpected.

Now that you’ve found the downsides in the names on your list, I think the next step is to look at the upsides. Which names make your heart leap up? Which names make your heart clench if you imagine not getting to use them? Are there names you find yourself looking for reasons to use? Picture a baby in your arms, and try each name; are there names that give you a larger rush of happiness? If you’ve narrowed twenty names down to six, it may be that you already feel equally positive toward all six. At that point, I’d probably start in on an actual list of upsides for each name (“Easy to spell,” “Love the sound,” “Reminds me of my aunt,” “Love it with the sibling names,” etc.), to see which lists were longer (though adjusted for weight: “My heart leaps up every time I think of it” weighs more than “Easy to spell”).

If you love all six names the same and can’t narrow it down any further, it appeals to me tremendously to imagine letting the kids choose the name. If the kids’ vote were divided, or if they loved a name that didn’t make your finalist list, I wouldn’t be as strongly in favor of it; but since they ALL love Phoebe best, I think it would be great fun to say “Okay!” I do think spelling will be one of the issues with the name, but I don’t think it will be a big issue: many of us have to spell our names.

If you want my personal input on the various downsides:

1. I don’t think it’s a large problem if the ending of a first name runs into the beginning of the surname, unless it results in unfortunate/confusing blends. The classic example is Ben Dover, which turns into Bend Over. Or sometimes the combination makes the first name sound like a different first name: Alec Samuel sounds like Alex Samuel, for example. With situations like Agnes Seer, where there’s just a little mushing of the S sounds but no resulting confusion, I think everyone just gets accustomed to putting a tiny pause between the first name and the last name.

2. I’m not sure if Agnes is too associated with Despicable Me or not, but it’s nice that it’s a positive association. I’ve seen the movie a few times and didn’t think of it, but I’d weigh a child’s opinion much more heavily than my own: the associations of peers will have more impact on the child’s life.

3. If you haven’t been able to get over the Hurricane Irene association, I think it’s a fair bet that others feel the same about it—especially if you’re living among the people most affected.

4. I think people will play with the rhymey possibilities of a name, but that the rhymes for Louise are non-upsetting. Rhymes such as Cooper/pooper and Lexi/sexy make me hesitate, but rhymes such as Please Louise and Anna Banana do not. The Lou/loo association doesn’t seem likely to be a big issue in the United States: perhaps a few of her peers will be familiar with that slang, but it isn’t widely used here. “John” is a slang term for toilet in the U.S., but even that isn’t something I hear much.

5. I’ve heard of the Regina issue often enough that now I think of it every time I see the name. It’s a pity.

6. I’m not sure what the effect of Rosemary’s Baby will be on the name Rosemary. It helps, I think, that Rosemary is not herself a negative character, and that small children presumably won’t be allowed to watch it. I think of the herb before I think of the book/film.

As I go through these, Louise and Phoebe seem to have the fewest issues. My own choice would be Phoebe because it’s the favorite of your other children and has the fewest issues of all. Let’s have a poll to see what everyone else thinks would be best:

[yop_poll id=”53″]

Name update!

Hello Swistle!

This is the mom of “Baby Seer” writing to let you know that I had the baby on June 29, and it was a girl, and we did name her Phoebe :) Many thanks to all of you!

The kids are all delighted with the name choice, plus they have really embraced the team concept and do feel that we named her as a team. They seem so far — if they use a nickname at all — to call her “Bee” sometimes because they also like to say “Honey Bee” and “Funny Bee” (and have even made up a little song along those lines :).

Thanks again!
Emily