Wise Swistle,
We would love your help deciding on a name for our daughter who is now 8 days old and still nameless. We have narrowed it down to our top two options but just cannot choose. I know it’s very short notice but even if you haven’t got time to answer I’d love it if you just posted our question to hear what your commenters think as everyone always has great ideas here!

We have a son called Innis (spelt differently but pronounced like that), which is a Scottish name that means river island. We are English/French (me) and Scottish (my wife). We deliberately chose a Scottish name for our son as I carried him and we wanted the connection to my wife’s family but that’s not a requirement this time. Baby’s surname will be double barrelled and sounds like Shays-Potter (initials C-P). Middle names will be after our grandmothers and we don’t mind about the overall flow, we just want to pick the first name based on its own merits.

Our top two options are Sorrel and Tarn. Sorrel is my absolute favourite name and I love the idea of a plant name for a baby born on the first day of spring. My wife also really likes it but is worried it sounds like sorrow, especially in her accent, and she finds it slightly hard to say. Tarn is her preferred option, and is more meaningful for us as a family. The word tarn is used in Scotland/northern England for a mountain lake, and we like the water connection with her brother’s name and the wild/outdoorsy feel as we are keen hikers and lovers of nature. Tarn is also a river and area in France where we went on our first holiday together, so has a joint Scottish-French connection as well as nice memories for us. I do love it but am worried it’s too short (all the names I love are at least two syllables, even though I do love Tarn I feel somehow that it’s not ‘me’ if that makes sense) and not namelike enough. Is it too out there?

Sorrel is the name of my heart that I would be devastated to let go of but I don’t want to use it and for my wife to regret it so I’m leaning towards Tarn. She in turn is leaning towards Sorrel because she thinks (probably accurately) that I love it more than she loves Tarn (which was originally my suggestion) and she doesn’t want me to regret not using Sorrel. So we are at stalemate! We are planning on having one more baby after this so could save either but obviously can’t guarantee it would be a girl. If this baby had been a boy (we didn’t find out until she was born) we would have used Guthrie.

Sorrel is currently 4001st in the name ranking for England, Tarn has been registered a few times for boys but never for girls. Innis’s name is 3411th in England but 83rd in Scotland. (If you’re interested you can track name rankings for England and Wales at names.darkgreener.com).

Other options we’ve recently eliminated but could reinstate if we can’t agree between Sorrel and Tarn: Delphi, Petra, Odette, Vesper.

We’ve reached a point where we feel stuck in our own echo chamber and just really want outside opinions on how these names come across to other people!

Thanks so much,
Izzy

If I put it through the “Which name would I want for myself?” test, I choose Sorrel. Tarn to me sounds almost indistinguishable from the word darn, and reminds me of the words tarnish and torn; sorrel doesn’t sound like the word sorrow the way I say it. Sorrel sounds somewhat name-like, even though it is not currently used as a name in the U.S., because it sounds like Laurel and Coral and the surname Norrell; I can’t think of similar names to bring Tarn into the name realm. But these are United States English impressions of the names, which may not apply.

I know she’s already 8 days old, so this suggestion could feel like too large a step back, but I do think it might actually help to kick out both Sorrel and Tarn, especially if we’re at the point where both of you feel like you can’t even use your own first choice because of how it would make the other parent feel.

Just yesterday we covered Our Favorite Names Starting with D, so Delphi from your list catches my eye, though I’d make it Delphine. Odette would be my next pick: unusual but familiar.

Name update:

Thanks so much for posting our question! Just wanted to let you know we decided to go for Sorrel. All the positive comments helped my wife feel more sure about it. We’re still saving Tarn for a future daughter though despite nobody seeming to like it! It was actually quite reassuring to see how many of the problems people had with it were specific to an American accent/background (e.g. I’ve never heard of the word tarnation). We have a few more years to psyche ourselves up anyway! For now we love Sorrel’s name, she is our hopeful little springtime sprout. Thank you!

Hi Swistle!

This is baby girl # 3 and we don’t plan on having more children. Our last name is pronounced In-Stiss but starts with an E and ends in the spelling “ice.” Our daughters are Tilly (Laura Tilson) and Lulu (Louisa Susan)- all of those names being family names, tributes to grandparents and parents.

I would like this baby to be named in a way that honors my grandmother, whose name was Frances Bernice, but who always went by “Bea.” My name is also Frances but I go by Franny.

Our first choice became Beatrice because I like it more than Bernice and the nickname “Bea” can honor my grandmother. Then we realized that with our last name this may not work: “Bee-ah -triss In- stiss” – both names end in the same sound and also both share the same last letters “ice.”
Now we feel we cannot use the name- do you agree?
My husband also thinks that “Bea Instiss” just doesn’t roll off the tongue/ sound right.

Our new favorite choice became Ruth- Ruth Bernice or Ruth Frances- nickname Ruthie.
This name popped up as one we both have always liked and we feel it fits in well with our other daughters’ names. It is a (distant) family name and I worry it doesn’t hold as much “meaning” as the other names we’ve used. Also I’m sad to walk away from using the name Bea. I do love the name Ruthie though and have for some time.
I consider the name Ruth a classic/ biblical name but I’m wondering if it will become “trendy” this year with many families honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Final option that I’m still toying with- I have always loved the name Blaire for a girl-
Blaire Frances nicknamed Bea or Frances Blaire nicknamed Bea. My husband does not feel that Bea is a nickname for Blaire like it is for Beatrice or Bernice. I worry that Blaire doesn’t fall into the same category as our other daughters’ names (traditional yet whimsical? I don’t know how to categorize them!)

Can you provide any insight into what name would be best for this new addition?
We just continue to go in circles!

Other family names we’ve considered: Tucker, Mary nicknamed Mae or Minnie, Frances with another nickname (could Annie, Nan or Nancy be a nickname for Frances?)

Other names we like: Martha, Clementine, Poppy, Daisy

Thanks to you and your readers for any help you can give us in naming this special girl! I promise I will give an update!

Franny

I started by trying to figure out a way to make Bea work for Blair (“Well, it’s like B., which would be a perfectly legitimate nickname for any name starting with B…”), but then started feeling like “Bea, from B., from Blair, for Frances-Bernice-called-Bea” was getting too many steps away from the honor name.

But I don’t think of Bea as a nickname for Bernice, either. DID it come from that, in your grandmother’s case? It seems like so many women of that generation had names like “Eleanor Ann, called Peggy” or “Margaret Mildred, called Dolly.” And I do think it’s possible to just DO that: Frances Blair, called Bea; or Ruth Bernice, called Bea. But it also makes me feel a little tired.

Wait. Wait wait. Actually, I don’t feel tired when I consider the option of naming her Frances Bernice, called Bea. Then it becomes FULLY naming her after your grandmother: both of your grandmother’s actual names, plus her nickname. AND, this then clicks into a naming practice more familiar to us with male names: your daughter would have the same first name as you, so it would be familiar/expected for her to have a different nickname to avoid confusion.

So that is my STRONG first choice: Frances Bernice, called Bea. Your grandmother’s entire name/nickname, and also your first name. An absolute total package of an honor name. I don’t really want to consider anything else.

But I don’t think you have to rule out Beatrice Instiss, if you prefer that option. I think it’s probably a little tricky to say, and Not Quite Ideal in its combination of sounds—but something I’ve noticed over the years is how VERY MANY names are Not Quite Ideal. If you look at the credits of a movie or TV show, or leaf through a yearbook, there are SO MANY names that, if they came up on this blog, we might all agree Don’t Quite Work—and yet! there they are! working!

This morning I was listening to NPR, and once again noticed Franco Ordoñez carefully saying his name. If his parents had come to us, I think quite a few of us would have recommended avoiding putting all those O’s together—but there he is, saying that name on the air, and if anything it’s catchy. Similarly, I might have advised against the name Windsor Johnston, explaining that I found the whole thing difficult to say with all those sturdy consonants—and yet, after hearing Windsor Johnston say her name again and again over the years, and saying it myself, I see how it gets easier with practice and familiarity.

I don’t worry about how a nickname sounds with a surname, as long as it doesn’t result in something rude or silly (the classic example is Ben Dover). Bea Instiss is fine, and would not likely be said very often anyway, and will sound normal once it’s familiar. And “Tilly, Lulu, and Bea” is a pretty unbeatable set of sibling nicknames.

I also love Ruth. I like Ruth Frances best, to honor you and your grandmother. I don’t think it would be possible for that name to feel trendy, even if it became much more popular. And if it DOES have a surge of popularity because of RBG, I think that would be touching and delightful, and that it might feel lovely to have your daughter one of that group. (I am getting a little choked up thinking about this.)

Still: my top favorite by far is Frances Bernice, called Bea. If it were my job to assign names to babies, that is the name I would assign to this one, and I would do it with decisive confidence.

Name update:

Dear Swistle,
I’m in disbelief that it’s taken me 3 months to write, probably the fastest 3 months of my life! Your response was just perfect and most of all made me excited to name our daughter again, it felt like we couldn’t go wrong. After your response I was almost 100% sold on Frances Bernice nickname Bea. However I just kept coming back to the fact that I don’t love the name Frances (even though it’s my own!) or Bernice.

I kept thinking about names that “don’t quite work” working. It is genius! I was overthinking the whole thing.
I love the name Beatrice and after speaking with my mom I felt like my grandmother would be so honored by a baby Bea regardless of her full name.

Your “not quite ideal” and “don’t quite work” theory also influenced us in another way. I’ve always felt like we needed to honor my mother in law who is such a great grandmother but both her first and middle name always “didn’t quite work” so were dismissed early in the naming process. Suddenly I was like I don’t care I want her to feel honored! When we got to the hospital I said to my husband “well this doesn’t “sound” right to me at all but I suddenly want to give the baby your mom’s middle name.” He was like that is so weird I was just thinking the same thing!

So our perfect miracle girl got her perfect imperfect name!

Beatrice Lynn “Bea”

Thank you and your readers for all your help!

Franny