Dear Swistle,

I am currently 20 weeks pregnant and due in September so this question is not urgent by any means but it’s something that has been weighing on my mind ever since we found out I was carrying a girl a few months ago.

We currently have an almost 2 year old son named Jameson Penn who we call both James and Jameson interchangeably. A little back story with the name; my dad’s first name is James, my father-in-law’s middle name is James and my husband’s middle name is James. I love that we were able to choose a classic name with a modern twist that covered three important men in his life.

We’ve always been on the same page with boy’s names and prefer strong surnames with special meaning behind it. If this baby had been another boy we would have most likely gone with Campbell or Maxwell with the middle name Christopher.

Here is our dilemma with naming a girl. I remember reading on here once that you have an issue with parents who name their boys strong, masculine names and their girls frilly names (worded differently of course.) I found out recently that my husband has an even stronger opinion about this issue ever since he talked to a higher up in his company with a “frilly” girl name. My husband works as a research scientist for a well know pharmaceutical company in a very male-dominated field. This person he spoke with goes by the name of Ann but recently confided in him that her first name is actually Daisy. She decided later in life (in her 40s) to go by her middle name because she was tired of introducing herself as Daisy at meetings or presentations and felt she wasn’t taken seriously by her male colleagues.

For the longest time, I’ve had our girl name picked out. The first name would be Tilly, after one of my favorite characters in a book and the name of my husband’s grandma, and her middle name Juliette after my mother-in-law. My MIL’s full name is Julie Jeanette so we just combined it into Juliette for her honor name. I was quickly turned down when I brought this name up to my husband after finding out we’re having a girl however and I have to admit that it does sound like a little girl’s name after thinking it through. Neither of us like the full name Matilda to get the nickname so it is officially off the table. But now we are having the hardest time finding a name that isn’t too girly or “silly” but that we still both like. I’m finding I tend to like girlier names but I understand the dilemma of her needing to “grow into it”, something I never even thought of when we were pregnant with our son. Now when I try on a new name, I picture an adult woman at an interview or giving a presentation and I don’t want her feeling silly with that name or resentful.

I recently fell in love with the name Annabelle and my husband admits he likes it and she can always go by Ann or Anna when she is older if she prefers, but we are still unsure if it falls into the “frilly” category. My mother’s middle name is Ann so I love the idea of having another child that covers both grandmas like our son covers both grandpas. However, Annabelle Juliette sounds VERY girly and froufrou to me but I haven’t found a close contender that I like nearly as much.

We’ve thought about naming her Juliette as the first name but my husband’s name is Jeremy and I hate the idea of being the only non-J name in the family. Jeremy, Jameson and Juliette. We have to use Juliette as the middle name as we’ve already told my MIL that we would be honoring her with this granddaughter and I can’t go back on that now.

What are your thoughts on this? Are we overthinking it too much? Should we just completely start over from scratch and only consider more serious names? Does this put too much pressure on her someday to be a professional when maybe she’ll want to be a dancer or a stay at home mom like I currently am when she’s older?

Our last name is a very short, harsh-sounding German name that is a combination of Trout and Trash so I would like the first name to be at least two syllables for a better flow. We tend to like classic, more traditional names that aren’t trendy or can be dated too much. Other than that, we are pretty flexible with styles.

I promise to send an update and a picture when baby girl arrives.

Thanks in advance!

You are remembering correctly that I can get a bit of a bee in my bonnet on this issue. Frilly and girly I don’t mind: frilly and girly can be words people use to mean Very Feminine, and there’s not a thing wrong with being Very Feminine. But I do mind when names for sons are chosen to be solid and dignified and important, and then names for daughters are lightweight and insubstantial and cute—and particularly if it seems important to give the sons honor names, but doesn’t seem equally as important to do so with the daughters.

So I am absolutely on-board with Annabelle Juliette. It is indeed a very feminine name, and so a person might use the words frilly or girly to describe it—but it is in no way lightweight or insubstantial, and you are using honor names just as you did for your son. And it’s a flexible name, nickname-wise, giving her lots of options for later on. Clearly no parent should feel they ought to put “Pleasing Swistle” on their preferences list—but if you DID by any chance have it on your preference list, you can check that off. If you love the name but want to decrease the frill, you could go for Annabel Juliet—but I like the way Juliette makes the Julie Jeanette connection clearer. Annabel Juliette, maybe.

Or I can think of a few more names you could consider as given names if you’d like to use Tilly as a nickname, and I’m hoping the commenters can think of still more. One is Ottilie. I haven’t yet encountered this name in person, and it is full of potential pronunciation/spelling issues, but it’s a very pretty name; I like the German pronunciation which is somewhere between oh-TEEL-ee-ah and ah-TILL-ee-ah. I’m afraid in the U.S. you’d hear a lot of AHT-tih-lee. Spelling it Ottilia/Otilia (as we do with names such as Anneke/Annika and Tilde/Tilda) would help, I’d think.

Another is Tilden. This name is too new to me for me to have an opinion yet, but I would think it would fit in well with other surname/location names. But I wonder if it might sound wrong with the surname.

The third is Natalie. It feels like a stretch to get Tilly from that, but I’ve seen bigger stretches.

Name update:

Dear Swistle,
I wanted to give you an update on our baby girl’s arrival after you posted our question and so many people took time out to respond. I was secretly heartbroken that we wouldn’t be using the name Tilly after loving that name for most of my life. Both my husband and I fell instantly in love when we read your answer and the name Natalie jumped out at both of us as the perfect solution. It became even more special when we learned that the meaning of the name is “Christmas day” when we were both engaged and married at Christmastime. Natalie “Tilly” Juliette was born a week early and we are all in love and adjusting to life with two little ones. Thank you so much for your solution and to everyone who helped!

Dear Swistle,
I am due with baby number 3, a boy, the first week of June. My husband and I have known what we would name him even before we found out I was pregnant, but we are now having serious second thoughts due to a potential nickname issue that just recently came to light.
Our first 2 children, one boy and one girl, are Colton and Hannah. We named them both with the thought that they would go by their full names, which is how we introduce them and how they are known amongst friends/teachers/teammates etc. However, over time they’ve both developed nicknames used mostly at home, but my husband and I and a few other family members almost exclusively call them Coley and Hannie— names we never would have planned in advance!
The name we’ve chosen for baby #3 is Emerson James. But it only just occurred to me that if we follow our past trend, we will likely end up calling him Emmy. The name itself doesn’t bother me so much. The problem I have is my association with the name. I have an estranged step sister named Emme (pronounced Emmy), who I’ve never been particularly fond of, and over the past 10-15 years has battled a drug addiction and spent time in and out of jail. My immediate family does not have a relationship with her whatsoever, but she’s the only Emme I know and the name feels very negative to me. I have never connected the name Emerson with Emmy until just recently when my daughter used that nickname for him.
I’m not concerned about what other people will think of the association. I’m more worried that I’ll regret or dislike his name over time because I associate the two. So my question for you is: is there a way to avoid the nickname altogether or should we start from scratch and find a new name for him?

Thank you!

In general, I think the likelihood of the nickname Emmy would rest almost entirely on whether the Emerson in question were a girl or a boy. For a girl named Emerson, I would say I thought the chances of her being nicknamed Emmy could be quite high—high enough for me not to want to risk it if there were a very negative association with that sound. But for a boy named Emerson, I’d guess the chances of the nickname Emmy are much, much lower. Perhaps some parents of boys named Emerson, Emmett, etc., could weigh in on this.

However, in the case of your particular family, you have gone Colton/Coley and Hannah/Hannie without anticipating that you would do so, and now your daughter has started using the nickname Emmy for the baby before he’s even born. This tells us the chances in your family are different than the chances overall. That is, in general a parent naming a son Emerson probably doesn’t need to worry that people in general will default to the nickname Emmy—but in your particular family, it is not only a possibility but a strong likelihood. The only thing that comes to mind as a way to avoid this would be to come up with a different nickname ahead of time and start using it preventatively—but I’m not sure that would work, and I’m not sure what alternate nickname to suggest.

I can’t say whether it would make you regret or dislike his name over time; it’s possible it would instead erase the negative association with Emme/Emmy. But I too would be worried, and I don’t think it would be a bad idea to get out the baby name books as you’re thinking this over, in case you end up coming down on the side of choosing something else. If it is of any help at all, the name Greyson kept coming to mind as I was working on the post.

Name update:

Hi Swistle!
It’s nearly two years later and I’m finally getting around to sending a long overdue update.
After discussing the name conundrum many times over, we decided to stick with the original plan and named our little guy Emerson James. And guess what! The Emmy thing has been a total non-issue. As far as I know, nobody has ever called him Emmy. Just like his siblings, he mostly goes by his full name, but our close family often calls him Em-J, another completely unplanned nickname.
Thanks to you and your readers for your help, and for making me feel less like a crazy person for endlessly obsessing over finding the perfect name.

Hi Swistle!

My husband and I are expecting identical twins this fall. We have decided to not find out their gender and are completely stuck on names. Our last name is M@njg@fic. The easiest way to pronounce it is Main-ga-fitch. My husband was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so we tend to like names that have a Eastern European/pan-European feel. We have one daughter already who’s name is Cecilia Ajsa (eye-sha).

Before we knew we were having twins, we were pretty set on Vera for a girl and Roman for a boy. However, now that we know there are two of them, we can’t think of two more names to go along with these! I feel so much extra pressure naming a set of twins than I would for a set of siblings. We will constantly being saying their names as a pair for years to come and I would really like them to sound great together! I don’t want them to be matchey or rhymey, but I do want them to sound like an equal pair. Does that make sense?

For girls we like distinctly feminine and romantic names, that aren’t too dainty. Other names we like, but are not sure of include,

Tatiana- Beautiful name and I love that it has ancient Roman roots like Cecilia, but we do not like any of the nicknames like Tia and Tiana. Also, not sure if its too much to be a twin of Vera

Helena/Elena- I love Helena, my husband loves Elena but neither of us want to budge and go with the others name

For boys, we are even worse off. My husband tends to like short nickname names like Leo and Gio. These are not really my style and my husbands name also is short and ends in an o, so it seems way too similar. Roman was the only name we could agree on. I really like Nicolai, but hate the idea of him being called Nick for the rest of his life.

Please help us finish our twin sibsets! I’m sure the perfect names to go along with Vera and Roman are out there and we just haven’t found them yet.

Sincerely,

Taylor

I found when selecting twin names that I had to sort of start all over. That is, with each of my pregnancies, I immediately started making lists of boy names and girl names—but when I found out during one of those pregnancies that I was having twins, I needed new lists. I still had a list of boy names and a list of girl names, but then I started lists of Twinned Names: in my case I didn’t know if the twins were identical or fraternal, so I needed three lists, one for boy/boy twins, one for girl/girl twins, and one for girl/boy twins. In your case we need only boy/boy and girl/girl, unless there is any chance they are not identical and could be boy/girl (though in that case perhaps you would go with Vera and Roman and be done with it).

What I’m trying to say is that it might not work to find a girl name to go with Vera and a boy name to go with Roman. It might very well work—but it MIGHT not: there might not be any girl names you like as a twin for Vera and there might not be any boy names you like as a twin for Roman, and I think it can be helpful to go into it knowing that, so that if you DO run into what feels like a wall, you know not to keep walking into it. There were some names I liked for singleton babies that I just couldn’t make work for twins—not because I was looking for anything matchy, but because sometimes any two favorite names might not go together, and when it’s twins the names do get more attention as a pair.

But for now, you are starting the way I would start: pretend the twins were instead going to be born as singletons, and choose one name for the first baby, and then work on a name for the next baby, pretending the second twin was instead born a couple years later. So you’d have Cecilia, Vera, and now it’s two years later and you are having another girl: what name do you want now? or you’d have Cecilia, Roman, and now a few years later you are having another boy: what boy names do you like for this next baby?

If that doesn’t work, if for example you keep finding names that go well with Cecilia but not with Vera, or names that you love but they sound odd with Roman, then I suggest leaving aside the names Vera and Roman for now and making new lists of all the boy and girl names you like; then experiment with pairing up names from those lists. What I did was take a name from one list, and then fairly rapidly pair it with every single other name: “Edward and Daniel, Edward and Milo, Edward and Henry, Edward and Charles…” and then go to the next name on the list: “Daniel and Milo, Daniel and Henry, Daniel and Charles, Daniel and Alan…,” writing down good combinations as I went along. Some names got crossed off my list because they didn’t go well with anything else on the list.

And when you’re making these master lists of all the names you like, don’t be too selective: that is, include names you like that your husband is tepid about, and names your husband likes that you’re tepid about, and names that don’t meet other preferences—allllll the names. A name one of you isn’t crazy about might seem much more appealing when paired up with another name. Put Elena and Helena on the list: maybe during the naming process one of you will be willing to give up your preferred version in order to get more say on the other name. (Or perhaps since you have already agreed to use your husband’s family name for all the children, and considering you are looking for names that represent your husband’s culture, your husband could take his turn and agree to use your preferred version of the name. It really seems like a very small step toward compromise on his part, considering everything you have already agreed to.)

I really like Nicolai; do you like the nickname Nico any better? Though I agree that if you hate the nickname Nick, probably that rules the name out: it’s hard to know what the child himself may choose to be called.

Same with Tatiana, if you strongly dislike the nicknames. And I don’t like it with Vera anyway: it makes the name Vera seem plain by comparison, especially when there is a third sister named Cecilia. Cecilia and Tatiana end up sounding like the twins, and Vera their older sister.

Using your husband’s surname and also using your husband’s ancestry for the first names feels to me as if it leaves you a bit out in the cold. I wonder if it would open up the naming field to look at names from your family’s background? When parents are already having trouble finding names they can agree on, and then they level up to TWIN names, it seems like we should do anything we can to widen the pool of names.

You mentioned liking names with ancient Roman roots, so I’ve flipped to the Classical section of The Baby Name Wizard.

Aelia and Livia
Augusta and Claudia
Cassia and Sabina
Lydia and Claudia (maybe matchier than you’d like, with the -dia endings)
Sabina and Lydia
Liviana and Sabina

I started to make a similar list for boy names, but I wasn’t finding as many options. Marcus, maybe; Rufus, Darius, Cyrus—too much -us. Maybe one of those would work well with Roman, though: Roman and Marcus, Roman and Darius, Roman and Cyrus.

I’m finding the name Roman particularly difficult to pair with anything else. It’s a word name, and word names can be tricky: they can feel simultaneously as if they MUST and MUST NOT be paired with another word name.

I found a Behind the Name list of names from Bosnia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and paired some of them up with Vera:

Vera and Aida
Vera and Dalia
Vera and Lana
Vera and Lena (another possible Elena/Helena compromise)

I found a fair number of names on the list that worked in theory, but in the U.S. are much more popular names than Vera, and would be a very different style: Mia, Emma, Nora, Eva, Ella.

If I look in the Slavic section of The Baby Name Wizard, I might pair up names such as:

Anya and Mila
Danica and Veronica (matching endings)
Anya and Vera
Sonia and Vera
Daria and Katia
Vera and Irina
Vera and Nadia
Lana and Nadia
Mira and Sasha
Mira and Lana
Mira and Nadia
Verica and Irina

Anton and Roman
Andrei and Nikolai
Ivan and Victor
Marek and Roman
Marek and Lukas
Roman and Ivan

I think overall what is needed is MORE NAMES to work with. I think the place to start is with longer lists, so you have more room to play around with combinations.

Name update:

Hi Swistle,

We recently welcomed our identical twin girls! The process to finally decide on their names was a long one. We initially decided on Lydia and Helena, but after a little bit we both felt Lydia was not the right name for us. We kept coming back to Vera.

In the end, Vera Aldina and Helena Marie were born on 11/2! Their names fit them perfectly. Thank you and your readers for all your help!

 

Hello baby naming genius, I need your help!

I am currently pregnant with my third child: a girl, due June 11th. My husband and I absolutely cannot (and never have) agree on a girl name, so my sister-in-law sent me to your blog and I am reaching out in desperation!

We currently have two boys, Lincoln Scott and Sullivan Woodrow. We did not find out the gender of the boys before they were born, but this time around, I just wanted to know, and we are excitedly expecting a girl. When I was pregnant with the boys, we did not have a girl’s name picked out—nothing, so I was happy that they were both boys! Actually, my husband named the boys after popular movies that had come out (or were soon to be released) around the time the boys were born: “Lincoln” and “Sully”. The boys have family middle names, one for my father, and one for my husband’s late grandfather. I love the boys names.

Our last name is Cave, which is a little unusual, but not too odd.

I LOVE the name Molly. Always have. Always will. It is the only girls name I’ve ever seriously considered. My husband, however, thinks it is a “baby name” and sounds like a “nick-name”. (He has suggested awful things like naming her “Ryan” after a best friend, or “Alexandra” which is just way too stuffy and formal). I am very stuck on Molly, but don’t have any idea of what to use for middle name—as we don’t have any female family names that we want to use, it’s pretty open to whatever sounds good.

I am trying to convince my husband to side with me (am I allowed to pull the “but you named the boys!” card?? 😉), but I need a good middle name to help me out. I feel like the middle name should be longer—maybe three syllables, to help balance the shortness of our last name. I don’t like “Elizabeth” or “Victoria” or royal sounding names, I tend to like names like “Agatha” and “Hazel” and “Willow”. However, My middle name is Joi (Joy) and I love it, but my husband thinks it would be weird to name her Molly Joi after me…..thoughts?

I am also Irish. (Cave is Welsh).

So, I don’t know if you can help me out—-perhaps even giving me another option for Molly (no, I don’t want to use “Mary”). But really, I need your help to make “Molly” more appealing! :)

Thank you!!

Tarah Cave

Let me start by arguing with your husband on pretty much everything:

1. The name Molly is not a babyish name.

2. The name Molly CAN be a nickname for Mary or Margaret, but is also a given name. My strong guess is that it is currently much more common as a given name than as a nickname. Many people don’t even know it can be a nickname for other names.

3. It would not be weird for your daughter to have the same middle name as you. Handing down a name from parent to child is in fact a fairly ordinary baby-naming practice—more common with father/son names, but why should that be? I’d like to see it get equally as common with mother/daughter names.

Also, I’m with you: he got more say with the first two kids’ names, so you should have more say this time. He should at the very least be considering your favorite very seriously and trying very hard to come around to it.

Some similar names, in case any of them would appeal:

Holly
Malia (the MAH-lee-ah pronunciation, with Molly as a nickname)
Mallory
Milly (Amelia, Millicent)
Polly
Tilly (Matilda)

I would have suggested Sally, but that’s so close to Sully. Even Molly/Milly/Polly/etc. are getting a little close, if you usually call him Sully.

With Molly ____ Cave, I like a two-syllable middle name with the emphasis on the second syllable: Molly Louise, Molly Noelle, Molly Marie, etc. But I also like Molly Agatha. Or Molly Frances, or Molly Jo, or Molly Vivian, or Molly Abigail, or Molly Ruth, or Molly Evelyn. Or this could be an area for giving your husband something he wants in order to get the more important thing you want: Molly Ryan or Molly Alexandra. Molly Alexandra gives you the initials MAC, which might be a cute nickname option if she wants it.

Name update:

Hi! I recently asked for help with naming my third baby, a girl.

My top name was Molly, but my husband thought it was a baby nickname.

Thank you for all of your help and the awesome responses!

I’m happy to say that without much prodding, I was able to change his mind about Molly! He slowly began referring to her as “Miss Molly” (it may have helped that I played him the song “Miss Molly” sung by Willie Nelson, AND one of you referred to Molly Weasley, which he loved!) about a month before she was due. Two nights before she was born I asked him again about the name, and he said that he had actually started to like it! YES! So, I picked her first name, and he picked her middle name.

Allow me to introduce:

Molly Hazel, our sweet redheaded gal!

Here she is with her adoring big brothers, Lincoln & Sullivan: