Hi Swistle,

Very long time listener, first time caller. I thought I would never need your help considering both my children are named and we are done having children. However, I have a conundrum that I accept is absolutely all my fault but of course that does not stop me wanting to fix it.

I have two lovely children, a three year old son, George, and a three month old daughter, Nell. It is Nell’s name that has caused my problem.

I have been a big fan of baby names for years and years and have always firmly believed that names should give you Options if possible. It always frustrated me that my cousin just had a diminutive as her first name (like Katie for Katherine) as I think it has the potential to look unprofessional on important documents i.e. someone may think you are putting your nickname on your resume.

For this reason, and others, we named Nell Eleanor with the intention that she would be Nell day to day and have Eleanor, or any one of its many nicknames, as another option when she was old enough to choose for herself.

Of course intentions and what comes to pass in the real world are not always the same thing. As you have likely guessed there are many people who call her Eleanor. Now obviously I like the name Eleanor but for some reason it really grates me when people address Nell as Eleanor. To me she is Nell through and through and Eleanor is just there as a legal formality.

I have tried my best to address this in a indirect way. For example, when my mother in law asks how Eleanor is I respond that Nell is doing well. I only use Nell when talking about her although will explain that Nell is short for Eleanor if people ask (it doesn’t seem to be an intuitive nickname for many people). Her birth announcement has a giant “NELL” in the corner with her full legal name in smaller letters.

None of this seems to change anything. I do get the feeling that some people prefer Eleanor to Nell but as she is not their child I don’t really take much notice of that.

I suggested changing her legal name to Nell to my partner but he shot that down immediately. Is there anything else I can do?

Help me Swistle, you’re my only hope.

Clare

I think everything is going to be fine. I think we can figure this out, and that it’s going to be fine.

I think we need to go into it with the full realization that it can be a little delicate to find the wording for “Please don’t call our baby by the name we gave her.” You have a perfect right to make the request; you have a perfect right to prefer the nickname. But from what I remember of when my first child was a toddler and my second child was a few months old, there are some hills there is not enough sleep for—and time is going to take care of a lot of this for us anyway.

For one thing, right now the baby is New! and her name is New! and everyone is getting used to her as a person and a presence. I remember especially with my firstborn, how weird it felt in the beginning to use his name at all; we kept calling him “the baby.” With all my babies, their names were something to adjust to; it took time for the names to feel familiar and natural. As time goes on and you consistently and persistently call the baby/toddler/child “Nell,” I believe that name is going to Sink In, and the incidences of people calling her Eleanor will be much less frequent. But right now some people are having a lot of fun saying it: pairing a formal professional grown-up name with a squeezy cranky newborn is one of the great joys in life. I believe that thrill will gradually cede to the increasing feeling that the child IS Nell, and people won’t even feel the urge to call her Eleanor anymore.

In the meantime, if you have the energy for it, you can use Miss Manners’s technique of repeating the same hint in the same cheery way until everyone does what you want out of sheer boredom at the repetition. The subtlety of responding to “How is Eleanor?” with “Nell is doing great” is not getting the job done, and so we level up: “How is Eleanor?” “Oh, we’re calling her Nell. She’s doing great!” The next day: “I’m sending the cutest little jammies for Eleanor!” “Oh, remember, we’re calling her Nell. I can’t wait to see the jammies!” The next level up from that is “Please call her Nell. I can’t wait to see the jammies!” The next level up from there is “Mom, we’ve been clear that we want her to be called Nell. What’s going on here?” Or you might decide instead to not level up at all, knowing that time will take care of most of them and soon almost everyone will use Nell whether they meant to or not, and you won’t have had to do all that work.

The answer to “But Eleanor is her NAME!” is “Oh, I know! But we’re not using it right now; we’re calling her Nell.” The answer to “But I LOVE the name Eleanor!” is “Oh, I know! But we’re not using it right now; we’re calling her Nell.” And/or you might decide to allow people to attempt to continue to call her Eleanor (I think most of them won’t succeed long-term), because it can be nice for everyone involved when someone has multiple options for their name. My own name is Kristen, NEVER called Kris—except by one set of grandparents and one aunt. I didn’t want to be called Kris in general, but I liked my grandparents and my aunt calling me Kris.

If it were me in your shoes, I would feel comfortable saying to my mom with affectionate exasperation “MOM!! JUST CALL HER NELL!! I am not getting enough sleep for this!!” But I would not have been able to pull that off with my in-laws, and would have wanted Paul to handle them. I can picture him saying “Nell” “Nell” “Nell” as a little auto-correction every time his parents said Eleanor.

“We’re sending Eleanor…”
“Nell.”
“…the cutest little pajamas! Is Eleanor…”
“Nell.”
“…sleeping any better these days?”

And so on. Paul is good at taking something like that and making it cute and funny, so pretty soon everyone would have been laughing at each correction, and multiple people would start chiming in on each correction (chorus: “NELL!!”), and then he’d post pictures of the baby on Facebook with captions like “Call me IshmaeNELL.” Is your partner by any chance a good-natured Paul-type who can take some of this on?

But really, I do think you can let time fix most of this. I could be absolutely wrong about that, and of course the baby herself might choose to be called Eleanor (or Ellie or Nora) later on; but I think for now, consistently calling her Nell is going to take care of most of this, and I am in favor of sparing yourself as many stressful add-on activities as possible during this impossible stage of parenthood. (The first four months of the second baby was the hardest stage of my entire life, and I include the stage of bringing home twin babies four years later, and the stage of bringing home a newborn when the twins weren’t quite two years old.)

(Related post: We Want Our Son Called By a Nickname, But Someone Keeps Using His Given Name.)

Hi. Quick question sorry itS probably an old one but I cannot wrap my head around it! So I’m Luigi Giuseppe II, dad is Peter, great grandfather was Sr. And his son, my grandfather, was Jr. As I understand it my parents originally named me III then back peddled at my grandmothers’ insistence, and pulled one “stick” back and named me Luigi Giuseppe II, because a generation had been skipped. Now both Sr. And Jr. have passed, I’m now having a son (after having 3 amazing daughters!!) and I want to get the name right! At first I thought he would be Luigi Giuseppe III but that doesn’t seem right since he would actually be the IV with the name (my great grandfather, grandfather, myself, and himself) Was I named wrong? If so I’ll go through the necessary changes to be III and name my son IV??? Any and all help appreciated!! Baby due In May, very excited but want to be definitive about name before we tell friends and family! Thanks!!

Numerical suffixes are a botched and botchy system, and people have been botching them for so long that at this point it’s tempting to throw up one’s hands and say “DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, WHO CARES.” Except I do NOT throw up my hands, because I do in fact care.

Your parents were in a tricky situation with your name. It’s true that “II” is used when the baby is named the exact same complete name as anyone NOT its parent. (It has nothing to do with skipping a generation: the distinction is parent vs. non-parent.) But in this case, the person whose exact same complete name they gave you was someone who was already a Jr.! And that’s a little tricky! Because after the very specific Sr./Jr. situation, in which we use those terms ONLY in a parent/child relationship, everything is all numbers EITHER WAY: no more parent/child requirement! So let’s say you had been named for your uncle who was not a Jr., and you were correctly suffixed as II; and then your brother named his baby after you: your nephew could correctly be suffixed III. Because once we get into the numbers, no one cares the way they do about Sr./Jr.

So. On one hand, we could say that your parents “should have” named you Luigi Giuseppe III, because you were named for a Jr., and so you were the third member of your family line with that name. They certainly would have been correct to do so, and your grandmother was incorrect that skipping a generation made a difference. (She was probably thinking of the rule that you can’t skip a generation between a Sr. and a Jr.) And then your son would have been Luigi Giuseppe IV.

However. Your parents did not name you Luigi Giuseppe III. They named you Luigi Giuseppe II. Correct or less-correct (using II in your case was not incorrect, just less typical), that is the name you have lived with your entire life, including through the birth of three daughters. I suppose you could change your name at this point in order to change your son’s suffix, but is that something important/valuable to do? My understanding is that most people with numerical suffixes feel very possessive about them, especially if I mention that Miss Manners says that anyone who is not a pope or a king should be shifting their suffixes as earlier holders of the name die off (that is, you would now be Sr., and your son would be a Jr.); or if I mention that in the United States, the Social Security Administration does not consider suffixes part of the legal name. Every time I do a post about suffixes, I have to delete a steady trickle of comments (continuing to come in even YEARS AND YEARS later) from men ranting at me about how important their suffixes are, and how proud they are of them, and how absolutely vital to their identities the suffixes are. Sometimes the same man will comment again and again, flailing wildly like a bird against a window in his desperation to explain to me that he IS his suffix. So it surprises me a little to hear you being willing to change yours at this stage of life, in order to make your son’s suffix bigger.

You are allowed to change your name if you want to, and you are allowed to call your son Luigi Giuseppe IV without having to prove to anyone that the suffix is correct. But it feels wrong to me. Changing your name just because you’re now having a son feels Off in a way I’m having trouble putting a finger on. My own opinion is that the best solution is to keep the name you’ve had all your life, and name your son Luigi Giuseppe III. (Assuming the child’s other parent is completely and enthusiastically on board with the idea of continuing this tradition from your side of the family.)

Update on Baby Boy Lox-with-an-F, Brother to Harlow and Violet

Update on Baby Naming Issue: Hyphenated Middle Names

Hi Swistle,

I am pregnant with my sixth (and last) child. My other kids’ names are Boston Striker, Scarlett Elsie, Isla Libby, Raider Cannon, and Miller Gibson. For eight long years we’ve had the name Hazel Maisie picked out if we ever got to have another girl. However, after all these years, I feel like the shine has faded on Hazel for me. I still love Maisie, and in my mind we have called this baby Hazy Maze for years. But I just feel like I can’t commit to Hazel anymore, and while I like Hazy for a nickname, I don’t like it as her legal name.

Other names I’ve loved for a girl are Anne (Anne of Green Gables) and Rose for my grandfather who raised and bred award winning roses. But I never used them because they didn’t match my other girls and it was hard to break with what we had going. (Here is where my crazy hangs out. All my kids have a 2-2-3 syllable name. The girls have first names that can’t be shortened and the “ee” sound ending for their middle names.)

I recently heard the name Navy for a baby girl and I fell in love. I think it is so sweet. And my grandmother, whom I provide end of life care for, wore Navy perfume my entire life. It seems a sweet honor toward her, especially since she hates her name and would be furious if we used her actual name as an honor name. We are now talking about Navy Rose to honor both grandparents and I love it, I love it so much I can’t stand it. But I feel like it is too unique. And it doesn’t match my other kids’ names at all in rhythm.

Also, I’ve always felt like there is a fine line between fun and unusual, and American Gladiator names from Saturday morning after cartoons. So much so, that I have extreme name regret over Raider’s name. I feel like we crossed that line. When he was about a year old, I tried to talk my husband into changing it to Rider. Just dropping the A would have been an easy change for a baby and would have given him a more common name. I worry about his future trying to get a job and being taken seriously. However, my husband was a hard no. He insisted the name fit him and it was fine. The name does fit him perfectly, but I still worry about it. Especially with all the jokes you see about unusual names these days. And now I’m considering naming my child Navy Rose!? Am I just walking Millenial cliche?!

So I guess I need reassurance. Is Navy Rose too ridiculous? Does it sound like a cartoon name? I can’t have name regret twice.

Thanks for your input from a mom with 8 years of name regret.

I don’t think the name Navy is ridiculous, but two things make me hesitate in this particular situation:

1. The noun middle name Rose, which emphasizes the adjective sound of Navy and I think is what could give it that fairytale/comics feeling.

2. A sister named Scarlett, which gives you two color names in the same sibling group. (I’d feel similarly about the name Hazel, though to a lesser degree because the name itself is more familiar as a name.)

I don’t think either of those things is a giant deal-breaking issue, especially with a name you love so much you can’t stand it, but they’re the kind of thing I’d want to have thought of ahead of time rather than afterward.

If possible, and I realize such things are not always possible (and I might not myself find it possible), I think you should see if you can let go of the impulse to match things such as syllable-counts and “ee” sounds in middle names. These are things that absolutely no one will notice, and it’s hard enough to choose a sixth name without sweating the small stuff. Besides, Scarlett can be shortened to Lettie, and Navy already has an ee-sound. But if you must have two syllables and an ee-sound in the middle name, you could use Rosie. (I am not fond of that with Navy, though, because of the repeating ee-sounds.)

Another option is to use Navy as the middle name. It has the right number of syllables and it has an ee-sound. You wouldn’t want to do Hazel Navy, would you? That might freshen up Hazel for you. It is two color names—but again, I find that less noticeable when we’re leading with Hazel. But you did say you can’t commit to Hazel anymore, so I think what I would do in your shoes is start experimentally looking for more first names you like, and see if you like any of them with Navy as the middle name. Fiona Navy, Clara Navy, Stella Navy, Bridget Navy, Mirren Navy, Cleo Navy, Louise Navy, etc. And then if nothing holds a candle to Navy Rose, go right ahead and use it.

My husband’s name is Benjamin. My name is Rachel. Our last name is Gannon. We have 1 daughter, Chloe Hazel. She is 3. I am currently expecting our second.

We did not find out the sex with Chloe Hazel and were happily surprised when she was born. With baby #2, we originally planned to also wait – but accidentally found out a few weeks ago that we’re having another girl (tech at our ultrasound made a mistake!) We haven’t shared this news yet with family or friends but we are 99% settled on naming this baby Abigail Elizabeth (both family names).

If it had been a boy, my husband is enamored with the idea of a namesake and would love to have a junior: Benjamin Clark Gannon Jr. I’m relatively neutral on the namesake topic but want to be respectful of my husband’s strong feelings on it. So, I’d say Benjamin Jr. would be our male name contender, if we weren’t having Abigail.

I am writing to you because we (Knock on wood!) would love to have 4 kids eventually. I came from a larger family and loved growing up in a full house.

My husband has one older brother. BIL and his wife are also pregnant, with their first baby, a boy. That found out that they were expecting a few weeks before we realized that Abigail was on the way. They just announced to our entire family (and all of Facebook!??) that they plan to name their son Ben Clark Gannon.

They never mentioned this name would be an honor name for my husband in any way. They chose the first name to it honor my SIL’s uncle, apparently. And used Clark because it’s a family middle name – no issue there! (About 90% of all males on my husband’s family’s side share it). And my husband and his brother share the same last name obviously — Gannon.

BIL didn’t discuss this with my husband and has actually avoided the topic entirely since making it known through the family grapevine and Facebook.

My husband is upset.

No one else in his family thinks it’s a big deal. They don’t understand why he’s upset. Mostly because BIL is planning to name the baby Ben, not Benjamin. (FYI…My husband goes by both names — Benjamin/Ben — within all circles of his life – professionally, in the family, with friends.)

Meanwhile, every friend that we’ve told is shocked and thinks it’s really strange. However – it’s so hard to tell if that’s a result of us essentially asking our echo chamber for feedback. I understand that we could be being petty and we may be in the wrong. (Who knows!?!)

For the record, my husband *did* tell BIL that this name choice bothers him, after the news circulated to us, specifically because he’d like to use it for a son of his own. (If we have a son one day. I know it’s a big if!) No change occurred after this heart to heart. I’d say BIL and my husband are relatively close. No deep animosity besides normal sibling stuff – this situation is the most trying thing I’ve witnessed them navigate in our 7 years together. So it’s not like his long lost or estranged brother surfaced on Facebook to announce he was expecting/naming the kid my Husband’s name. (If that matters!)

We also still haven’t announced our child’s sex – and conceivably could linger, waiting to share it upon birth. But that feels *really* crazy and manipulative. We’re obviously not having a boy. BIL has confirmed the sex of their baby boy. Drawing this out won’t help. And I am not down for any type of asshole move to keep the name to ourselves…just cant tell if waiting to share the sex would cause fewer problems or more problems with this situation…or be totally unrelated.

Only thing I do know is that there’s no predicting what could happen in the future with regards to us having more children — yet we still feel slightly shafted! And we can’t tell if we have the right to feel that — and if so — what the hell to do about it!? Meanwhile, my husband is starting a campaign to convince me to name our daughter Benjamin… ha.

Help!!!!

Thanks,
Rachel

We can fill the comments section with outrage over this, and talk extensively about what should or should not be happening; and, if it helps at all, I do think this is an extremely odd thing for your brother-in-law and sister-in-law to do. But after reading the letter through twice, and seeing that you have already done all the things that can be done here, I think I can pare the post itself down to the bare minimum: They’re going to name their child Ben, so now what will you do if you have a boy?

And since you are having a girl, I say skip it all for now. Just…skip it. You’re pregnant and you don’t need this stress, and you can’t do anything else about it now anyway. Later on, in a future pregnancy, after you have found out you are having a boy, then you can revisit the entire thing and see how you feel THEN. There are no decisions left at all that need to be made NOW; everything that needs to be done (husband telling brother how he feels, husband telling brother he intends to use the name for a junior) has already been done. This entire thing can be postponed until later, and may never even be applicable, so it is a prime opportunity for that expression I can’t quite remember about not borrowing trouble from tomorrow when today has so much trouble of its own. This FEELS like today’s trouble, but it’s actually tomorrow’s—and maybe never’s.

If you were planning to share the news of the sex of your baby before the birth, then go ahead; if you would have preferred to keep it a surprise until the birth as originally planned, then continue to keep it a surprise; but I am strongly in support of your inclination to avoid tying that decision into this current name drama. By the same measure, I don’t think you need to feel obligated to share the sex of the baby before the birth just because of this situation; it sounds like you’ve known the sex for several weeks and hadn’t shared yet even before all this other stuff happened, so don’t feel FORCED to share it just to relieve the squirm aspect. You could let your brother-in-law and sister-in-law know privately, if you thought they were squirming and wanted to be particularly generous to them—but I don’t think that’s necessary if you’d been planning to wait until the birth, especially since I’m not hearing any evidence that they ARE squirming.

Hi Swistle,

I’m expecting my 4th child early next year and need some name help!

My children are: Anna (girl), Ethan (boy-twin), and Evan (boy-twin). Need help with new baby boy names. Our last name is similar to Hegarty.

My husband and I both love the name Andrew, but I can’t get over the fact it is too close to Anna. I feel like I’ll constantly be confusing and combining their names, but my husband doesn’t think they are too close at all.

We also both like the name Owen, and is what I’m leaning towards because of our above conundrum. We’d like to try to stick with the vowel theme and want to avoid another “E” name.

Thoughts?

Thanks so much,
Maria

I generally try, when giving opinions, to make it clear from the wording/attitude that I know they’re OPINIONS: name stuff is so subjective, and I want to make sure we reflect that here.

That said, your husband is wrong, and Anna and Andrew are noticeably close, and the potential nicknames Annie and Andy are noticeably close (and the pairing makes me think of Raggedy Ann and Andy). On the other hand, the fact that ALL the names on your list are very close (Anna/Andrew, Evan/Ethan/Owen), and you don’t have ANY that aren’t very close, tells me that you LIKE names that are close—so I think you could make the deliberate choice to lean into this. I think it would please people the way matching twin names please people, or the way a family with all matching initials pleases people: it’s kind of FUN. (And Raggedy Ann and Andy is a positive association for me, and an ancient one for current children.)

Is this likely to be your last child? If this is it, then I say go ahead and do another vowel/similar name, either Andrew (linking to Anna’s name) or Owen (linking to the twins). I like the way the name Andrew makes two sets of linked names (Anna/Andrew and Evan/Ethan), and gives all the kids an -an-. I like the way Owen links all the boys, and also I am finding Annie and Andy bothers me a little even though I don’t usually mind nickname similarities.

But if you’re going to keep having more children, I think choosing either Andrew or Owen paints you into a very difficult corner for next time, and I would look for ways to break things up a little this time.

A vowel theme feels too subtle and not fun enough to be worth eliminating so many good names starting with consonants (especially if you’re ruling out using any more E names), but if a vowel name is important, then I recommend the name Oliver. It adds a new syllable count and a lot of new sounds. Anna, Ethan, Evan, and Oliver. I’m not sure I like it with the surname, though.

After that, we’re kind of stuck with A names: the I- and O- and U- names are too uncommon (Ulysses, Orion) for this sibling group, or else way too similar even for leaning into it (Ian, Ivan).

Aaron. It gives you two A names and two E names, and it leans into the similar sounds, but it brings in a new consonant and avoids duplicating the first half of Anna’s name. Anna, Ethan, Evan, and Aaron.

Or Aidan. Two A names; all three boys have -an; but there’s a new consonant and we’re not duplicating Anna’s first syllable. Anna, Ethan, Evan, and Aidan.

Adam feels too similar in sound to Anna when I say them aloud, and I find I get them tangled. Abel and Abram are nice, but seem too unusual alongside Ethan and Evan. I love the names Albert and Alfred and Arlo, but they don’t seem right here. Angus repeats the first two letters of Anna, but with a totally different sound, which makes it less noticeable than with Andrew or Anton. I considered Asher, but I’m finding I don’t like the repeating -er with the surname. Adrian, maybe? Too unisex?

Or Alec? Anna, Ethan, Evan, and Alec. Hm. I like that.

August? Anna, Ethan, Evan, and August. Maybe.

I think my own favorites here are Aidan, Aaron, and Alec.