Every so often, I like to revisit the topic of baby names that got away. In the time since we last talked about it, some of us will have moved from the baby-naming stage of life to the stage after that; some of us will have changed our lists; some of us will have had a fresh experience of trying to name a baby and finding we couldn’t use a name we wanted to use.
I find I don’t PINE the way I used to. I remember folding laundry and actually weeping because I’d missed the chance to name a baby Anastasia. That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Now it’s more as if I am rooting for my favorites to succeed elsewhere: someone PLEASE name a baby Millicent! Winifred! George! Frederick! Alfred!
I do have secret hopes that some of my favorites will be used for grandchildren—and I hasten to say that I will not be PUSHING or even SUGGESTING the names, I just mean it would be fun if it happened to work out that way. But I know from long observed experience that in general the grandparents DO NOT see their favorites used on the grandchildren, and in fact grandchild-names tend to offer the grandparents an opportunity to practice mindful acceptance: the generation gap is difficult for names to transcend. My parents winced a little (though with awareness and acceptance) at the name Henry, a name that to them was not only elderly but nerdy, everyone’s scrawny great-uncle Henry with the liver spots and ear hair. I remember my mother-in-law suggesting names such as Dawn and Cherish: absolutely appropriate for the time when she herself was having babies, but no longer the right thing for the next generation.
Well. What are the names you are currently weeping into the laundry about / rooting for others to use?
Tobias!
I wish for twins girls, Vivienne and Felicity. Of course, they would be spunky, sparkly and darling! (I don’t really WISH for more children as I’m a grandmother but I’d like to name them)
Boys…. Lincoln or Benjamin or Samuel. I can pickure a smart kind cool kid named Lincoln…Linc. Benjamin…Ben, Samuel…Sam. Triplet Boys!
With our second, we were originally told we were having a boy – only to find out 6 weeks later WHOOPS NOPE DEFINITELY ANOTHER GIRL. We’d already picked out the name and started telling people, so it was quite a shock. Then we had a baffling 4 years of secondary infertility, and we’ve officially given up on having more. And I’m still struggling with letting go of all the names I wanted to use!
Our boy name was Tiernan Thomas (after my dad) – he cried when we told him that was our “sons” name and I’m so so so heartbroken we didn’t get to use it!
We wanted a baby girl and had our girl name all ready to go: Justine (after my grandmother).
We ended up having only boys, but my baby girl name still lives in my heart.
Oscar will forever be the one that got away and I love it still! We ended up going with Theodore which was ranked around 250 when we used it and has since skyrocketed in popularity. Still a good solid name, just not Oscar.
I have a friend with two boys: Oscar and Theodore!
After two boys I am preemptively mourning ever using our girl name, Lyra Danielle (after my sister!). The surprise was going to knock her socks off! If we are able to have a third I feel like it’ll probably be a boy. Again. Which is fine! I adore my boys. But girl names are so nice! Let’s also mourn our second girl name, Maura. We can use Maura’s middle name for a third boy at least.
June, which I did use, but at age 11, the kid in question came out as non-binary and changed it. That was more than 6 years ago but I still miss it terribly.
My 2nd was a boy. At the time, I had no list for boys and my short list for girls included Frances, Helena and Winnifred. Today, I would no longer use Frances, but would still consider the other two.
If my twins had been boys they would have been Leif and Beau, and I still pine for those.
I also still wish we could have named my second daughter Eliza, but it was too close to a cousin-we-see-all-the-time’s name.
What a fun question! I have grown grandchildren now, so the names I grieve over not using have gradually changed over the years, but my current list is:
Girl-boy twins: Beau and Belle
Boy twins: Jon Rockford and Benjamin Redmond (yes, middle names=cities)
Girl: Ruby (nn Roo or Bee)
Boy: Jon Isaac
I was filled with love when I heard CCDonna’s suggestion of Vivienne and Felicity for twin girls. omg
Which reminds me,
Girl: Lucienne
I still keep a Note with baby names on my phone, even though the ship sailed 16 years ago when I had my last one.
Our last name is a very VERY popular feminine first name with a long-e ending sou d (so popular that my daughter and I answer to it, instead of our first names, almost exclusively.) That gives you the flavor for what surname these names would be paired with:
Brooke Becker (girl) or Brook Becker (boy)
Claire Caroline
Pamela Paige
Josephine Jewel
Silas Samuel
Paul Patrick
Niles Nelson
Trevor Terrence
I do love a double initial!
My daughters are Claire and Caroline.
They are in their thirties now, but I still love their names, and I would use them again!
Mine are all girl names because I found it hard enough to name *one* boy, whereas I could have named about 10 girls.
The unused list are:
Tess
Sylvie
Nina
Blythe
My oldest is Margot. Imagine three little girls called Margot, Nina and Sylvie – plus their sweet brother who I wouldn’t wish away in a million years even though he was hard to name!
I have a Tess, who’s 33 now. We all still love her name.
It’s just such a perfect name!
Full disclosure: we have eight gorgeous, perfect children… four boys and four girls, so it isn’t that we didn’t have opportunities to use what we liked.
But our surname is a LOT like Myer, so my wanted-to-use-since-forever boy name of Oscar was a no. My honor name that never was agreed upon was Agnes. The girl who would have been Agnes is now expecting her first child and has unequivocally said they’re not using Agnes even though it’s more popular now. *shrug* Bummer. Agnes and Oscar would have been incredible.
Ooooh, Agnes and Oscar are so great together!
Love Agnes and adore Oscar! We kicked around Agnes, but my spouse’s family is from Texas and Aggie is a nickname for Texas A&M – who are rivals of Univ of Texas where they all went to school. Ugh. Foiled by the school spirit of my in laws! I know I know, it’s my choice, but ultimately the hurt looks would have been awkward.
I feel the same way about Agatha, which I love, but we live in Texas and our family are NOT Aggies. If I could come up with a usable nickname for Agatha that is not Aggie….
Hattie?
Clara (for Barton) and Florence (for Nightingale)
I love Eleanor and I’m so glad to see it on so many babies now.
I love my kid’s name, but she should have been a Tabitha. I just didn’t think about it when I was pregnant, but it would have worked really well. And, she has a deep deep love of cats so the nickname Tabby would be super cute (she agreed with all of this at 9!). We also didn’t use Samantha (in honor of my grandpa) because a coworker I worked closely with had a Samantha, but now I don’t work with that coworker and so it wouldn’t have been a big deal.
We just have the one girl, so we didn’t get to use Owen or Elliot which were favorites, but now I feel like they would have felt too popular?
I really wanted to use the name Lorelai.
Genevieve and Paige are also names I wish I could have used.
Ava. My baby years coincided with Ava’s peak popularity so I talked myself out of using it. Even though hit had been my #1 name for years prior and with sentimental meaning. Sigh.
Fast forward and there’s not a single Ava in our immediate (or secondary) orbit .
I don’t have kids, but these are names I would have loved to have used…..
Malia
Lily
Cael
I like my daughter’s name but really would have loved for her to be Tess. Our last name starts with S, so it was never on a short list, but now that she’s 10 Tess would have been a perfect name for her.
The Car Mom (that’s a real person on social media lol) named her kids George, Harriet (Hattie), and Frederick (Fred). I feel like Swistle would approve!
We’re still having babies, so I don’t have any on my list just yet.
BAH!! I’m in love!!!
First, a girl, is Lucie, and we (she and I) are still happy with it (she’s 40). Second, a boy, Benedict (Ben)… also happy. Third, boy, is Oliver George…and it’s fine, but if he’d been a she, Genevieve Anna. I miss using Genevieve.
Oliver is currently expecting (and we don’t know the gender _yet_) but Genevieve is not on their list. I have not suggested it.
I’m trying to be a good MIL.
Melina, Millicent, Ezekiel / Zeke
Oliver Williams or Oliver Robinson, after my grandfather and my grandmother or mother in law. I cried when we decided no more kids because we never got to use it.
Also Amelia was my favorite girl name for a long time, but then it got so popular!
And I secretly wanted a girl named Jane (my mother’s name and my middle name). Little Janie!
Oh how I loved Jane, Janie. My beloved niece is Jamie, and my sister had very, very strong objections to the similarity.
I don’t have children and am not at all sad about that, but I’m a little sad not to be able to name someone Josephine.
Lots of names I enjoy can be given to a pet one day if I’d like, but Josephine is a family name and wouldn’t feel right on a cat.
I quite enjoy family names on pets myself. I recall hearing of a dog named Arthur, which was both his owner’s and his owner’s dad’s middle name. If I ever ended up with a female poodle, I’d definitely consider naming her Elsie, after my great grandmother, who had poodles. Though I can see how it would feel weird if it was the first name of someone I was really close to.
My daughter’s middle name is Josephine and I (wildly, hugely biased my of course) just think it makes the BEST middle name.
Kester for a boy
Amaryllis for a girl
Mary. I love it so much. Popularity matters not (and it never reached USA level heights here). I would have called her Maisie.
I remember being in the supermarket with my newborn and crying when the song ‘Evie’ came on the radio. I wanted an Evie and capitulated to her dad at the 11th hour. Her name suits her, she says she prefers it but I always wanted an Eve.
Boys names were harder and I used some of my favourites but I think I got my oldest wrong. We should have flipped middle and first and had a ‘Peter’. I thought people would call him ‘Pete’ but realise now that they probably wouldn’t have.
In an alternate universe I have twin sons named Gallilee and Jericho. Or daughters named Selah and Paloma.
Well, my number one name regret was not using my maiden name for my youngest. My husband and the other three boys (and now youngest too) are all happy I lost that battle but if I had it to do over I would have named him that. His current name is fine.
Since I had all boys we didn’t get to use the girl names we had picked out: Nina, Madeline, or Elena. If I had a girl now (am a grandma so not happening) I’d name her Talulah (nn Lulu). Also, if one of my boys takes his wife’s last name I’d love to see a son with our last name as a first.
All the classic names! We went trendy. While there are names I’d love someone to use (I second Millicent!), I get endless joy whenever someone names their child something slightly off the beaten path, because surely they used it because they love it.
I wish I had gotten to use Georgiana or Georgina. I used George for a boy, I really wanted to honor a George in my life but would have rather done it with a girls name.
I wish one of my boys had a more adventurous middle. Valentine maybe?
Lastly, Lorelei. I would have liked to have a Lorelei.
I recently had a conversation with my kids about the name Minnie, which I had considered. The youngest (nine, named Ann) would have liked to be Minnie. Except now that I know her personality, she would have been all in on mouse-themed accessories, which is exactly what I would have wanted to avoid. But maybe if we had named her Minnie that would have effected her personality too and given her something to rebel against?
A lot of the names I didn’t end up using feel a little too whimsical in retrospect. I considered being the kind of person who picks long names with nickname options, but eventually accepted that I wasn’t. I’m relieved that I never had to name a boy. I am pretty sure if I had gone with Willa or Wilmetta, nickname Billie I would look prescient for picking such a “cool” name…but I don’t actually wish that I had.
I do think about the name Kay sometimes. My oldest daughter is named May, and that is the perfect name for her, but I didn’t even think about Kay back then…and I do like the kind of 50s vibe of it, and how it links to my name. If I were somehow challenged with naming a baby after me, that baby’s name would be Kay. (Or a boy named Cary).
I never had a girl, so I never got to have a Jane Endellion or a Gwendolyn Pearl. I never had twin girls so I never got to have a Miriam or a Jemima (Jemma). ((Debatable I would have actually used Jemima as I live in the south and I am very anti problematic names, but I love the name. Please remember this is all theoreticals.)) I never had triplets girls so I never had a Jane, Kate and Tess.
I do have boys, and a husband who doesn’t like whimsical as much as I do, so I didn’t have a Reuben or Ira. I also didn’t get a son named George Benedict, which I LOVED as a combination, but his first name is George and his middle is nice too….just not Benedict.
Sophie Bess. It’s what my youngest would’ve been called if he’d been a girl. We all loved it. It’s sadly off the table now, even if we had a surprise fourth baby, but I will always think of it fondly and wistfully.
Accckkkk so much fun!!!
Some of these in the lists are names I didn’t use because they went to friends or family, or they were too popular, or they didn’t match or were bad with last names. Some are outliers. But I guess that might be not really answering the question properly, sorry if I’m not being a team player! 😜 I got carried away.
If I had a fourth, I would name her after my mother, Sarah, and call her Sadie. And instead of using my MIL’s name, which she has always dropped heavy hints at me to do, I’ll use MY name as the middle. Sarah Kate. In our family, our girls have my last name and my boy has my husband’s, so it might be a moment to even it out – she might have my husband’s last name – lots of fun naming discussion!!
And for some reason I want a matching S name for my imagined boy, so I’ll name him Sebastian, nn Bastian, Baz
Here are others I “mourn”:
Girls
Lilah
Dahlia
Celeste
Sylvie
Helena
Blythe
Margaret/Margo/Meg
Katherine/Kit/Kitty
Elizabeth/Eliza/Lizzy/Beth
Isobel/Izzy
Caroline/Caro
Madeleine
Sophie
Poppy
Piper
Annabel/Annie/Nan
Louisa
Wren
Marion
Vivienne
Georgia
Georgette
Genevieve
Layla
Juliet
Boys
Emmett
Everett
Elliott/Eli
Henry
Teddy
Nicholas/Nico/Nic
I really wanted to call a little girl Elizabeth Ellen (after my me and my mom), and have her go by Betty, a beloved family member . So spunky! Three honor names in one!
But I have two boys, so no luck.
I used my dads name for the older son’s middle name and I’m so glad as he is gone now.
I wasnt able to use the name Frederick, tho, which I love.
I always wanted to use the names Tabitha and Titus, but when it came time to have actual babies, I don’t remember why we decided against them. Sam’s name is perfect for him, but I would have loved a Peter or a Silas. And our girl name would have been Madeline (nn Maddie) Jayne, and I do wish we’d been able to do that too.
I always wanted James. So many nicknames! So fun for me to say! But sadly, there were enough James/Jim/Jamie/Jimmy people in our families that it didn’t feel appropriate, as we did not want to name our child after those people and it’s considered somewhat taboo in the Jewish community. So sad.
My favorite names have changed many times, so there really aren’t any I will permanently mourn, but right I love the idea of Miriam (Mimi) and Dorothy (Dot).
Others I have enjoyed:
Ellen Virginia nn Nell
Margaret nn Daisy and Louisa nn Lola
Sister set of: Eliza, Lydia, and Celia
Way Back: Mary Clare & Catherine Therese
Even Further Back: Jessica & Emily
I used my mom’s baby name that got away!
Miriam was my mother’s beloved grandmother and, without knowing this, my husband suggested Miriam for one of our twin girls. I was mulling it over and mentioned it to my mom who absolutely gushed about her grandmother and told me it was my sister’s almost-name. We were still throwing a lot of names around at that point and it almost scared me how enthusiastic she was- I worried she’d get her heart set on it and be disappointed if we went with one of the other names on the list. I considered a million other names but ended up coming back to Miriam in the end. Miri is 3 now and her name really suits her! I love the connection to my mom and her grandmother, it feels like the name has very deep family history.
My kiddo’s pre-transition name was Miriam. It makes me so happy to meet other little Miriams.
Lavender. Sigh. So beautiful, classic, rare, rolls off the tongue, nature-y, it’s just perfect. I had 2 boys and 1 girl, I couldn’t use Lavender because our last name is full of L’s and my husband said a hard “no way,” anyway.
_Pine_ is a bit too strong, more like wistful. (And most of these are honor names) I do wish I could’ve used the twin sets we’d thought of with my 2nd kid before we knew we had a singleton. She’s Susan Rae (after relatives), but if she had a girl twin, they’d have been Susan Elisabeth & Lucinda Rae, if she’d had a twin brother, he’d have been Andrew Lewis. Andrew, oddly, was DH’s suggestion, though I’m the one with a cousin named Andrew.
Also liked
Gerald (after my beloved, totally awesome grandma though with a Kerry, a son nn Gerry would be a bit much),
Robert (a beloved uncle, Lewis is his middle name),
Alys,
Alejandro (but only if one of us was a Latinx, otherwise it’d be weird)
Seth
Rebekkah
I used to like Sara, but then there was this neighbor…
My MIL cried (with happiness) when we chose to use her late (and closest) brother’s name as our son’s first name. It’s always been in my top 3 & as it happens, DH wanted to honor his uncle nearly as much as he wanted to honor his great aunt Rae. He wanted to do Kerry Ray, but I figured that naming him after a girl when we’d already decided on a slightly female leaning unisex first name was a bit much.
I totally agree that as the years go on (my youngest is 8) I don’t think of the names that got away as much or as deeply. I had almost forgotten that I chose a G name for my eldest because I really wanted to call her Gus, but that never happened and obviously it didn’t ruin me. And my youngest was supposed to be 7 other names but we chose a name out of left field, and a few of those names (Margot, Edie) do still make me swoon when I hear them on people, but my daughter is so clearly her own name that I can’t regret any other name. Like any other name nerd, I of course still keep a list of my fictional third daughter or son (Mabel or Rupert.)
Like others, it was really the clash with the surname that slashed those long-time faves off my list well before the kids arrived (Holly, Tess) and also that we had our kids much later than family and friends so some names were claimed (Elliott, Lucy, Malcolm, Meg, Annie, Jane.) I did get to use a name I loved but I didn’t feel daring enough to use, on a cat – Pearl! I love her name and the nicknames so much (Pearlie, Whirly Pearlie, Pearlie Girl.)
Mary, Anne, Theodora, Rosalind or Cecile and Matthias.
And I am still so excited about every name we did use. But. Mary has been my favorite since my own childhood—I wanted a double name, like Mary Rose or Mary Iris.
Still pining for Ruby Jane. Like, might-need-a-fourth-baby-to-try-to-get-to-use-it pining. 😭
I’ve gotten over most of the names I liked but didn’t use. I used to think the name Barrett was a hidden gem for boys despite being not the right style for my family, but politics has rendered it unusable anyway.
The one I’m still not over is the girl name I was set on for my 2nd, who turned out to be a boy. I love Sylvia so much! It would have gone perfectly with my daughter’s name (which is something like Harriet). I love the nickname Sylvie (they would have been something like Hattie and Sylvie!), it fit all sorts of criteria, and… we had a boy. Who is lovely and has a very nice name, but that was my last chance to use Sylvia. Oh, well.
I LOVE Sylvia, but my husband didn’t, and then I mentioned it to a friend who was pregnant and she loved the nn Sylvie, so she went with it!! I also gave her the middle name she used on her next baby: Blythe. I partly love that name bc of Anne of Green Gables, but it’s ok – I named my budgie Gilbert Blythe!!
I liked the first-middle combo Sara Leonie, but this got a hard no from my spouse.
I have to agree with your husband, since I immediately thought of Sierra Leone…but I can also see why it would inspire wistful sighs!
Dominic and Malcom for boys. Got a hard no from my husband. I still swoon over these. For girls, it was Greta and Eleanor.
My husband and I didn’t seriously talk names for our twins until after we found out they’d be boys, but I think about if they’d been girls — I think they’d be Eliza Laurel and Zoe Diana. (Middle names for our moms — our boys have our dads’ first names as middles.)
If our son had been a girl, he would have been Maia (with my grandmother’s surname as his middle, mostly because that would have made my mom so happy, but also I loved my grandma tons, and her first name doesn’t work with our last).
By the time we talked about having a second baby, I was talking to my husband about using Miranda instead of Maia. We decided to not have a second, so it became moot.
Not pining anymore, but I always enjoy seeing these names elsewhere.
I had a boy and then three girls and by the time I had my youngest, I was so sick of girl names and never got to use my second boy name, which was Augustine Thomas, nn Gus. Oh, I could just see that fat baby in my mind’s eye and then girl! girl! girl! Then we got a cat and then a dog and not only were they both girls but they were both named before we got them. Ha and this was funny – when I was pregnant with my last, we had decided on Felicity for a first name and Rose for a middle name. It’s my middle name and my mom’s first name and my grandmother’s name and finally I just gave in and used it, I thought it sounded nice with such a long first name. Right before I had her my husband asked if we could give her a more normal middle name so if she didn’t want to go by Felicity, she could use that name. I mean, first of all, I don’t think Felicity is that wild a name, nor is ROSE, but the safe name he picked and maybe is sad he never got to use is Susan. Susan!
Rose as a ‘not normal’ name – WHAT?! Ha!
Susan is not a real outlier of a name, but it’s definitely more time-linked (I expect a Susan to be 50-90 years old nowadays) than the classic Rose.
Felicity Rose is lovely.
Forever and always I will regret not having a third girl, Marguerite Evora, to join Livia Kiev and Josephine Vail. Three place name middles (for my husband the geographer), three first names with roots in my side of the family (Livia for my grandmother Olivia, who never liked that name, moved it to the middle position, and went by something else, Josephine from my mom’s family tree, and Marguerite, after my dad’s favorite aunt, Margaret, with a French twist as a nod to the French origin of my last name). We decided to stop at two for many reasons, and it’s not really a name that would make sense in another context, like on a pet or for a character in a novel, so it will forever be a name for an imaginary child.
I had to let go of Frederick nn Fritz (FRITZ!!!) which was a snappy family nn I adored. Our last name starts with K and I just couldn’t do initials of FK.