Author Archives: Swistle

Baby Girl Berryhill, Sister to Eleanor Blue

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Dear Swistle,

I’m due in two months with a second daughter. My first daughter is Eleanor Blue Berryhill (our blueberry girl) who goes by Ellie but we also sometimes call her Elle or Ellie Blue.

My husband and I picked that name out over a decade ago when we were just dating. Naming our second has taken most of this pregnancy and we still can’t land anywhere for certain. My husband was dead set on Freja/Freya because of his Scandinavian heritage but I couldn’t do it. I’m a third grade teacher and, though it is a pretty SOUNDING name, the look is just too unusual for me especially because he preferred the spelling with the j.

We are liking Mia (pronounced mee-uh) but need help with the middle name.

My husband loves Mia Black Berryhill. I love the name Mia Black because it sounds badass but as a full name, not paired with our last name. I cannot name both of my kids types of berries.

I do kind of like the idea of having a subtle color theme with both the girls. I suggested the names Violet or Ruby. My husband wasn’t hot on either.

So far I like:

Mia Jean (a family name but also because of Hermione Jean Granger.)
Mia Eileen (my sister’s middle name)
Mia Caroline

I love the name or middle name May/Mae but again, it rolls right into Berryhill. May Berryhill sounds like an homage to the Andy Griffith Show, right? No thanks.

I’m not a particularly indecisive person so all this waffling is quite annoying to me. I’d love to have a name set so I can have the chunk of my brain that’s always thinking about it freed up!

Thanks for any help!

 

I’m missing the reason why you can’t use berry names for both kids. I’d understand wanting to avoid berry references entirely for all the kids in the family; and I’d understand if you thought the berry thing was terrific and wanted to do it again but didn’t like Straw or Black or Rasp or Boysen or Logan or Huckle or Cran as names and so now felt stuck coming up with something as cute/namelike as Blue; but I don’t understand leaning into the name Eleanor Blue, and then loving the name Mia Black for many reasons but thinking “We went for a berry thing ONCE, but absolutely CANNOT with it a second time.”

I do think I’d at least hesitate before using Black as the specific berry-referencing name. It’s so archetypally iffy to begin with, and then the contrast with the sister name is additionally iffy: Ellie Blue sounds so sweet and good, and then Mia Black sounds, as you say, badass. In a picture book, Ellie Blue is wearing a gingham dress with matching hair bows, and standing in a field of daisies with her little berry-picking basket and maybe a fluffy lamb gamboling nearby; Mia Black is wearing a leather jumpsuit with matching sunglasses, and sword-fighting in space with lightning bolts and shooting stars just everywhere. It feels unfair to one sister, though I’m not sure which sister it feels unfair to. I guess it’s that it seems unfair to both, by assigning roles.

If you are set on avoiding berries a second time, I advise looking for something approximately as distinctive as the wordplay you went with the first time, especially since it sounds like you bring up that wordplay frequently with “Ellie Blue” and “our blueberry girl” and so forth. I am not sure what I’d be looking for if I weren’t going with berries, but something distinctive enough to feel an equivalent amount of special. Mia Hermione works well for this, I think; Mia Jean is nice but not enough: I love Hermione but didn’t remember her middle name was Jean.

Mia Mae also works for me: I’m not catching the difference between “Blue Berryhill / blueberry YES PLEASE!” and “Mae Berryhill / Mayberry NO THANKS.” They seem like similarly appealing wordplay to me, with pleasingly parallel nicknames of Ellie Blue and Mia Mae. I would in fact lean hard toward this idea: wordplay both times, but DIFFERENT, so you’re not boxed in if you have more kids.

I like your idea of at least doing a color theme, if you don’t want to do berries or Griffith show; it’s much less distinctive than the Blue Berry thing, but it’s something, and it lets you act as if colors was the plan all along and the berry thing was a coincidence. Violet and Ruby are very nice choices; there’s also Garnet, Olive, Scarlet, Coral, Silver, Teal, Lilac, Emerald, Lavender, Grey, Jade, Sage, Amethyst. (Rose feels too common a middle name to work as a color name here.)

The name Freya hit the Top 1000 in the U.S. in 2013 and has been rising rapidly since then; in 2018, it was #266.

(image from https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/)

I think it’s completely usable already, and will be increasingly familiar as your kids grow up. I even think the Freja spelling would work, if you’re willing to deal with the minor but steady hassle of it. It’s a nice short name to spell, and “It’s the Norwegian spelling” is such a nice easy explanation. On the other hand, if you’re already using your husband’s family surname, perhaps there could be a search for first names representing your family’s heritage for balance.

 

 

 

Name update:

Here is Mia Wren Berryhill with big sister Eleanor (Ellie) Blue!

Baby Naming Issue: Can They Name Her Mila and Pronounce It Myla?

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My husband and I are expecting our third and last child in January. We have 2 boys – Brady Mills and Walker Lee. Brady’s middle name is my maiden name, and Walker’s middle name is my middle name. We all use my husband’s surname, Kershmen. We are not finding out the gender of this baby until he/she is born.

For a boy we have settled on Davis Blake (Blake is my husband’s middle name and is what he goes by).

The girl name is trickier. Since we got pregnant with our first child we have loved the name Mila Blake and that is what we have always called our future imaginary daughter. The problem is, we like the pronunciation Myla, but the spelling/look of Mila. I have just now realized that naming a kid ‘x’ and asking people to pronounce it ‘y’ might be crazy. I like ‘Meela’ but it doesn’t make me feel the way ‘Myla’ does. But I’m totally out on spelling it Myla.

Other names we are now considering, all with Blake as a middle name:

Cora
Taylor
Mara
Claire (would have to find a different middle name for this one)

What are your thoughts? Do we need to let Mila go and come up with something else? Any other name suggestions?

Thanks!

 

My first thought was that it would be okay: I was remembering when names such as Mia first started coming into style, and people were wondering if it was MEE-a or MY-a, and it all worked out fine in the end. My second thought was “…But now we all know it’s MEE-a.”

I looked Mila up in a couple baby name books, just in case MY-la was offered as an alternate pronunciation, but no. I’m sure there ARE Milas out there pronounced MY-la (just as there are probably Mias pronounced MY-a), but if I encountered one, I would get that little eep feeling of wondering if that was on purpose or if the parents saw the name in writing and guessed wrong on the pronunciation. If I were a Mila pronounced Myla, I would get very tired of correcting people.

Here I was going to say that on the other hand, the name was not so common that it would be a constant issue. Then I looked up its current popularity and was surprised to find that, according to the Social Security Administration, Mila was the 14th most popular girl name in the U.S. in 2018. Well. That does change things for me.

I am not the name police and I am not the boss of you, but you have asked for my own opinion on this, and my own opinion is that no, you should not name her Mila and ask for it to be pronounced Myla. I think your choices are: (1) spell it Myla or (2) choose something else. (But I am bearing in mind that there is a third choice: saying “Heck with that, we’re doing what we want.”)

Looking at your list of other options, I wonder if you have already considered and rejected Clara: it’s like Cora plus Claire minus needing to find a different middle name. Clara Kershmen; Clara Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Clara.

Similar to Myla, I wonder if you’d like Lila. (If you are feeling it’s unfair that Lila looks just like Mila and yet they do not rhyme, I am with you and you have my sympathy.) Lila Kershmen; Lila Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Lila.

Let’s keep going with rhymes. Twila is pretty and underused. Twila Kershmen; Twila Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Twila.

Or Isla. Isla Kershmen; Isla Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Isla.

Maybe Dahlia or Delia? I recently encountered Delia in the wild and liked it more than I’d realized I would. Delia Kershmen; Delia Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Delia.

Or Maya. Maya Kershmen; Maya Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Maya.

Or Nadia. Nadia Kershmen; Nadia Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Nadia.

Or Ivy. Ivy Kershmen; Ivy Blake Kershmen; Brady, Walker, and Ivy.

 

 

 

Name update:

Hey Swistle,

Thanks to you and your readers for all the comments and name suggestions. I read through them several times throughout my pregnancy. In the end, we welcomed a precious boy and our indecision on a girl’s name did not matter! Here is our third boy, Davis Blake. We are in love <3  

Changing Endings To Change the Baby Name

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You remember we talked about names passing the mall test: you’re out and about, you hear a name unexpectedly, and hearing it like that makes you realize you like it when you didn’t know you liked it.

I had a name pass the mall test the other day, and it surprised me because it’s a name outside my usual style: Kailen. It takes the name Kayla and updates it with a fresher-sounding ending.

Similarly, I read a book with a character named Connell, and thought that if it weren’t for Mitch Mc, I’d be recommending that name as a nice update on Connor.

Changing the endings is a common way to make names sound new: Laura becomes Laurie becomes Lauren. I am wondering if you’ve encountered any recent examples lately, OR if you can make some up on the spot that you think would sound nice. (I tried this for a few minutes and was reminded that I am not good at making up names. Sophiella! No. Abigade! No. Olivian! No. Emman! No.)