SWISTLE! can you PLEASE HELP US.
i am writing this from my hospital bed so please forgive any typos or bad grammar or whatever!
My name is Rose Campbell and my husband is Nathaniel. When I was pregnant the first time and we had a list of baby names on our fridge, my mom said something really disparaging about one of them (ok, she called one of our top choices a stripper name). It was WILDLY out of character for my mom–she was a wee bit high on post surgery drugs–and she was mortified, but it really turned us off sharing our name choices. So, we haven’t ever since. Fast forward eight plus years and I just gave birth to our fourth and last kid, a boy. The first family member I happened to reach was my older sister. I told her the name Nathaniel and I had chosen and there was just this dead silence on the other end. Finally I got her to tell me what was wrong.
Swistle, the name we chose is the name of the guy who assaulted her in high school. (she is 6 years older than me and although I knew she had been assaulted for some reason I never knew the guy’s name).
obviously this puts the name right into completely unusable territory. we see my sister a fair amount but even if we didnt–can you imagine?
So we need to find another boy name, like right now. the 2nd middle/ last name for the kids is Isaacs Campbell (Isaacs is Nathaniel’s family surname–he took mine because Bucking The System and also he is not close to his family and mine is awesome).
Our other kids–
Elizabeth Clare, mostly called Liza. Clare after my favorite aunt. Elizabeth after husbands grandma Bethany. Liza because it’s a kickass nickname.
Wallace John, mostly called Wally. John is my dad, Wallace was a friend who died young. We don’t think he will be called Wally forever, but can see it lasting throughout childhood, and maybe he will be the sort of teenager and/or adult who can pull off the nickname Wally.
Amelia Josephine, mostly called Mia. Amelia is my moms middle name, Josephine is MIL’s best friend/husbands surrogate mom.

For this boyo we want something that “goes” with the other names–so a longer more traditional name with a shorter kicky nickname. Trouble is we settled on a name quite awhile ago and before that we went thru a bunch of names and rejected them for various reasons. here are the ones we can remember going thru and rejecting:
Daniel
James
Thomas
Christopher
Samuel
Nathan
Edward, Andrew, Matthew, William, Leonard/Leopold, August/Augustus, other names that repeat an initial
Finnegan
Tobias
Theodore

So…can you help us? PLEASE? I hate the idea of taking this little dude home with no name!

Thank you so much,

Rose and the gang

This letter caught my attention not only because you put a cute picture of a fox at the top but also because this has got to be the best reason I’ve ever seen on this site for a hospital-stay name change. For your sister’s sake, let’s get to work.

I think the quickest and easiest option would be to go with whatever your second-choice name was, if you had a second choice. When we were naming Henry, we had seven finalist names, then we narrowed it down to three, then to two. If I’d suddenly found our first choice was unavailable, I would have been pretty happy with our second choice, considering how much back-and-forthing we did. However, this would not have worked with all our babies: with two of them, there was The Name Choice and then a big gap and then a bunch of names we were Fine with but never seriously considered. It sounds like that’s more similar to your situation.

Another possibility is to switch the first and middle. But I know this option wouldn’t have worked for me, since I have a different technique for choosing the first name than for the middle.

I think it works fine to have a different naming style for the boys and the girls in a family, but I do like the boy names to go together and the girl names to go together (e.g., I wouldn’t want to mix Elizabeth/Liza with Miracle/Mira). So as I looked down your list to see which names I liked best with the sibling group, I looked particularly for the ones I thought went well with Wallace/Wally. My favorites (even though I think every single one is from the repeats-an-initial list) are Edward/Teddy/Ned, Leonard/Leo/Lenny, Leopold/Leo/Leap/Lee, Augustus/Gus. Of those, I think my own choice would be Edward/Teddy/Ned. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Edward; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Teddy.

Because all the names of your other children are after important people in your lives, I feel disinclined to offer suggestions: it seems as if it would work better for your naming style to go back into the important-people list and find more options there. (Also, I am a little worried I will suggest THE VERY NAME that had to be changed!) But if you WERE looking for more ideas, I think Albert would work nicely. I’ve warmed to this name recently, for a variety of reasons (Colin Firth playing Prince Albert; a very positive association with a nice, cute, good-with-kids guy named Albert; Bertie Wooster making me feel affectionate toward -bert/Bert- names in general; getting close to the right amount of time passing since the name was last in style; etc.), and I think it’s a good brother name for a Wallace, and I like both Al and Bertie as nicknames. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Albert; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Bertie/Al.

Frederick is another name in the Albert category for me: until recently I might not have considered it, but now I feel like pushing it on people as a not-yet-rediscovered treasure. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Frederick; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Freddie.

And I love Louis (I am thinking of the pronunciation that could also be spelled Lewis, as opposed to the one that could also be spelled Louie). I love to say it. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Louis; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Louie.

Name update!

Swistle! Thank you and your commenters SO MUCH for the invaluable help! We weren’t sure what we were going to go with until about an hour ago…we ALMOST went with Jonathan/Jonty but although we both liked the nickname we couldn’t get behind Jonathan.
But even though we had rejected Theodore in the first round, Swistle your delight in the nn Teddy and the commenters delight as well–sorry that makes no sense, I’m a little tired–made us really love it again. We don’t love quite as much as the original name we picked but we definitely love it ENOUGH. So our boy is Theodore George Isaacs Campbell. Not super thrilled with the rhyming-ness of his middle name but oh well, it’s kinda cute.
thank you again SO SO MUCH!

Rose, Nathaniel, Liza, Wally, Mia and baby Teddy!

Hi Swistle,

I’m due July 1st with another boy (the doc was pretty sure but not 100%) brother to Judah Samson. Samson is my mother’s maiden name and Judah is named for my husband’s maternal grandfather whose hebrew name was Yehuda (Judah is the english version of Yehuda). I briefly worried about having an “S” middle name after Judah because I was afraid it would sound like “Judas” rather than “Judah” but then I realized people wouldn’t very frequently be saying his full name anyway and I liked the Samson connection too much to give it up. We didn’t/don’t plan to use the nickname Jude – but we like that there is that option if he chooses it or others want to call him that in the future. We are so happy with his name and people from our families on both sides are truly touched by the connections his name has to his roots.

So far we have pretty much decided on the first name Ezra if this is a boy (the first name would be after my husband’s grandfather whose first name was Israel). For the middle name, we’d like to go with something that honors my grandfather – in English his name was Robert Henry, or Chaim in Hebrew. The problem is, so far none of those names really work with the first name and our last name, which sounds like Korver.

Ezra Robert Korver (B followed by V makes it hard to say, styles don’t match)
Ezra Henry Korver (quite a mouthful, styles don’t match)
Ezra Chaim Korver (no way, don’t like a sound in there no one can pronounce)
Ezra Micah Korver (We even got creative and thought of using Micah, an anagram of Chaim). This still doesn’t flow well with the two names ending in A sounds and may be kind of feminine. But I do like the creativity of it, and I like that the name styles seem to go together.

Other boy names we like, but ultimately decided we like Ezra better because of the honor connection and sound: Elliot, Joel, Rafi, Oren, Ian.

Help! Do you have other thoughts or creative ideas for how to honor my grandfather in my son’s name? Is there a perfect derivative name of Henry or Robert or Chaim we haven’t thought of? He was really musical and we shared that passion – anything i can do with that?. I called him Pop, and my grandmother called him Bobby if those spark anything. Maybe you can convince me that one of the options above is the one or suggest some brilliant advice or alternative.

THANK YOU!
Shira

I don’t think the first and middle names DO need to match in style. In fact, I’d say I generally prefer them NOT to match: I think of the middle name as a great place for a name that doesn’t work in style as a first name, or for an honor name you like more for the honor than for the name itself, or whatever. Ezra Robert Korver seems perfect to me.

I also don’t think the whole name needs to avoid being a mouthful, or that the middle name needs to flow perfectly with either the first name or the surname, unless your family tends to say the full name frequently. In most cases, a person is called by first and last, or only by first; the middle sort of drops out of the picture. But Ezra Henry Korver doesn’t seem particularly like a mouthful to me anyway.

In general my feeling about honor names is that they’re worth a little awkwardness. If you find the B followed by the V a little difficult to say, I think a minor pronunciation issue (especially one that is unlikely to be said) is well worth it as the price of using the honoree’s first name. Using an anagram or hobby-related name seems unnecessary here: I think Robert works beautifully.

I also think Chaim works beautifully, if that name would be more meaningful to your family or have a stronger connection to your grandfather: if anyone needed to pronounce the middle name for some reason and couldn’t manage it, I doubt that would cause a level of difficulty or inconvenience that would make you sorry you’d chosen the name.

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

Thanks so much for your advice and your reader’s insights!

Ezra Ronen was born on 6/24/15 at 7 lbs 13 oz. We thought of Ronen as a middle name option pretty late in the game but it had a lot of great benefits. It starts with Ro like my grandfather’s name Robert, it means joyful song so has the music connection I was looking for, and my husband has a close friend with that name so he has a really positive association with it and so do I. I also loved that with his first name, Ezra, meaning “help or support” his full name “Ezra Ronen” means to help or support through joyful song. That so describes my grandfather and the unique gift he had to lift people’s spirits through music that it feels like a really strong connection to him. Here is a picture of Ezra and one with proud big brother Judah as well.

Thanks again!
Shira

Hi Swistle!

We have a two year old daughter named Emmerson Grace. We call her Em, Emmie, Emmie G or Emmie Grace. We are expecting a baby boy in April and I just really cannot find a boy name I like or feel comfortable with. I think names that I like are too “out there” and names my husband likes are even further out there than you can imagine (ie. he likes names such as Beauregard, Alpheus, and Yorke). These are all an absolute NO for me.

With our daughter, Emmerson always stood out to us and was our “go-to” throughout my pregnancy, even though we considered a million names and we were deciding between two names in the hospital. We really thought this baby was a girl and we just can’t seem to find any boy names that feel right. We don’t really have one name we love or one name we can fall back on.

The one name we were considering since before we got pregnant is Griffin. We aren’t sure how we like names that end in the “in” sound with Emmerson, though. How do Emmerson and Griffin sound to you?

Right now here is our list:

Griffin – “in” sounds weird with Emmerson’s name.

Whittaker – we both really like this name. My husband especially. I really like the feel of it, how it sounds with Emmerson, and that it has good nickname potential (We like Whit) but something about it feels off. Is it odd or clumsy sounding to you? Something with the ending sound “aker” makes me pause. Also, we made the mistake of mentioning it to a friend who flat out said it was awful and “stupid”. So now I’m really not sure.

Shepard – just.. eh..

August – really love but do *not* like the nickname Auggie OR Gus. Which means 1. this name has no nickname potential for us which isn’t necessary but would be nice since Emmerson has many nicknames. and 2. there is the potential for him to get these nicknames one day and I really would not be fond of them at all, especially Auggie. Also concerned about popularity.

Fielding – unsure – same deal as Whittaker. Sound is weird? Can’t picture a baby named Fielding

Wolfe – My husband loves, I do not.

Bennett – My father in law is Benito, nickname Beni and my husband likes the idea of Beni being a potential nickname. I like Bennett but do not like the name Beni so I really wouldn’t want that to be his nickname,

That’s it. Are there names we are missing? Names that have the feel of Whittaker but maybe sound a little nicer to the ear? Other names that seem to match our style that we aren’t thinking of? None of these are names that either of us are that excited about so we are open to suggestions.

Other information:

I am Bonnie, my husband is Alastor and our last name is Polanco. We hope to have three children. We prefer names that are recognizable as names but *not* popular. Emmerson has gotten a little too popular for our liking. Another reason we really like Whittaker is that it’s not in the top 1000.

He will have a middle name but that is also completely up in the air. We are open to suggestions. My grandfather’s name was Bernard. My husband really likes this name. I do not like it but like the idea of honoring my grandfather.

Thank you for your time, patience, and consideration.

All the best,

Bonnie

Name update!

Dear Swistle,

Thank you so much for posting our question a few months ago about our baby boy! He came two weeks early and we still weren’t prepared with a name. I couldn’t get past the hard sound at the end of Whittaker. I still like it, but something felt off to me. In the end Shephard grew on me, a lot. Something about it sounded really calm to me but also kind of cool. We were in the hospital and for two days went back and forth on the names August Bernard (Bernard for my grandfather) and Shephard. It was a tough call and it could have been either name. We called in family members at that point bc we were desperate and we even created a long pros/cons list for both names.

The only problem with Shephard was we couldn’t find a middle name we liked with it that had any meaning. A very smart friend pointed out that Shephard Bernard was not a good idea with the dog associations ;).

My husband always loved the name Rhys, though. SO in the end we decided that as much as we *loved* August, we did not like the nicknames Auggie or Gus at *all*. We also did not love how August is rising in popularity while Shephard (or Shepherd, Shepard) are not in the top 1000 in the SS data base.
We loved how Shephard Rhys sounded. Then my mom (who first hated the name) remembered that my grandfather used to call her Shep and Sheppy (he had crazy nicknames for everyone!) We thought this was such a cute connection we went with it! So, after all of that…. we are happy to introduce Shephard Rhys Polanco. Pictures of him and our daughter Emmerson attached!

Thank you again! You and your readers are wonderful and we are very happy with his name. It fits him perfectly. It reminds me of calm, rolling hills and shepherds tending their flocks and he is our calm, chill, peaceful little love bug.

All the best,

Bonnie and Alastor