Hi Swistle

Back in 2014, I emailed you for some help naming our then-gender-unknown child – if a boy. We went on to have our little girl – Ev@ Jorge (pronounced like the Western version, or the royal baby). Thank you again for your suggestions!

We are now expecting our second child, another girl, and are looking for “the” name. Ev@ was “the” name even years before she was conceived, but this next one is much more tricky.

My husband loves the name “Sabriel” – a character from a book he likes. I’m not a fan, as to me it sounds too much like “Gabrielle” – which is nice but doesn’t do it for me – and also sounds a bit made-up, especially next to a more classic name like Ev@.

So we’ve negotiated S@brina, which I do think is lovely, except…

(a) Does the “a” at the end of Ev@ and “a” at the end of S@brina sound too rhymey?

(b) Is the recent revival of S@brina the Teenage Witch on Netflix an unfortunate or negative association to have? I primarily think of the Audrey Hepburn movie myself, but…I was also brought up with the old Sabrina show and that springs to mind too.

(c) Are there better choices out there that go wonderfully with Ev@ that I might not have thought of? I love the names Ele@nor and Eliz@, for example, but husband isn’t convinced and I’m still not sure if two daughters starting with E sounds too matchy or cutesy.

Any ideas or thoughts would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

I don’t think an -a ending is enough for a rhyme; I think Ev@ and S@brina together have at most a very slight sing-song quality that I would not at all allow to rule out the name. I think the two names are great together.

I don’t think it’s too matchy to have two kids with the same first initial. I probably would avoid another name that starts with E- AND ends in -a, but that’s a very subjective line and I wouldn’t think it was wrong if you were on the other side of it. If you were planning more children, I might add that we get a fair number of letters from parents who feel painted into a corner after using the same first initial twice; but if you’re stopping at two, this isn’t an issue.

I do think of Sabrina The Teenage Witch, but for me it’s a positive association: I liked that show and the character. And I have plenty of other associations with the name, so it’s a diluted association as well as a positive one.

More names I like with Ev@:

Audrey
Beatrix
Bianca
Camilla
Celeste
Claudia
Eloise
Fiona
Greta
Louise
Lydia
Mae
Margo
Meredith
Nadia
Noelle
Rose
Ruby
Simone
Willa

Dear Swistle,

I am writing you regarding my 16 months old little boy’s name. I come from another country and together with my husband, we chose a name coming from that country.

I have felt quite a bit of regret about the name since he was about 4 months old, as I had assumed that it would be easier for people to pronounce and deal with a silent letter. Life happened and we did not change the name, and while I thought about using his middle name instead, it would not have solved the problem as it is also a foreign name (Yes, he has two foreign names. I blame pregnancy hormones, and my husband was not particularly bothered by the idea I guess). Anyway, I now worry that my child is going to struggle with his name.

It is too late to change his name at this point, but I have been thinking about two possibilities that involve adding a more common name (either middle or first):
– Either adding a second middle name to my child’s name, in the event that he prefers later to have a name that is easier to deal with daily,
– Or adding it as a first name, and moving his current first name in the middle spot. If he wants to keep using his foreign name, he will have to specify it. That does not sounds quite fair though and I am not sure my husband will be on board.
Which option do you think is best?

We are thinking of:
– Noah, which is pretty common for his birth year, but not so much in his state,
– Hugo, which is keeping a euro-style but might be too rare,
– Elliott.

Either way, if he prefers to change his name, I think using a middle name would be easier on him than figuring out a new name which is why I want to add one now.

I want to let him know at some point that it is totally ok if he wants to change his name, but I am not sure at what age it is appropriate to do so? I imagine that as he grows and possibly ask questions about this we will figure it out, but I wonder if you or your readers have any advice about how to go about it?

I have discovered your blog after I named my baby (wish I discovered it before) and I like your and your readers’ approach to naming so I hope I am not sounding too crazy and you have an opinion about this.

Thanks for reading me.

Hm. I am not sure what I think. My first thought was that it seemed simplest and best to add another middle name, and that you should pick whichever one you liked best: sort of a do-over of the naming process, but this time for a potential future back-up name. Easiest to do, easiest to explain (you wouldn’t even have to tell most people you’d done it), and covers the just-in-case without making a dramatic and potentially unnecessary change. I went to school with a kid who had a difficult and unusual first name, and he Made It His in a way that made him much cooler to the rest of us. Teachers struggled with it on the first day of class, but all the kids knew it from years of being in school with him. But kids have different temperaments, and one kid’s Rocking It is another kid’s Self-Conscious, so having a middle name he can fall back on seems nice.

My second thought was that you wouldn’t even necessarily need to do a legal name change to have another name he can go by. I went to school with a Gary who went by Jay: it wasn’t part of his name, he just…went by Jay. On the first day of class, we were all reminded that his name was actually Gary, but the rest of the year he was just Jay to everybody. Your son could choose his own name, or you could right now start using another name as a nickname, without doing anything formal.

My third thought was about possible future siblings. What you do with your son’s name now may affect what you want to do with his siblings’ names, if he will have siblings. It doesn’t HAVE to affect it: many people use a different style of name for a firstborn, sometimes because of honor names, or sometimes because their style changes after they have a real-life baby in their lives. Still, this is something I’d want to think out ahead of time. For future children (if you’re planning any), do you think you will make different style choices with their names? And would you prefer their names to coordinate with your son’s, or is it fine if they’re different? This may influence whether you’d prefer to go with FirstName NewMiddle Middle or NewFirst Firstname Middle.

My fourth thought was a favorable feeling toward changing the legal first name while continuing to call him the name you’ve been calling him. This would be the highest level of hassle: his name would need to be changed at the doctor’s office, on insurance forms, on his Social Security card—everything. And then after that it would be a regular small hassle: remembering to say his legal first name when you arrived at a doctor appointment, explaining to the preschool that he goes by his middle name, calling the health insurance company once again to explain that the referral was accidentally written with your son’s middle name, etc. But many, many kids go by their middle names, and it seems like the kind of minor hassle that becomes routine with time. Overall, though, I keep balking at this plan, mostly because I remember approximately how tired I was with a 16-month-old child, and the thought of handling court and documents and Social Security at a time like that makes me feel retroactively overwhelmed.

My fifth thought is maybe he could go use his first and middle initials as a nickname.

My sixth thought is to wonder whether we could just let this whole thing work itself out. Right now you’re in a stage of life where your baby is meeting a whole lot of people for the first time, so his unusual name is an issue again and again. But pretty soon he’ll be encountering the same people again and again: the same teacher, the same classmates, the same pediatrician. Maybe then it’ll be only an occasional issue, and will seem less in need of a solution. And as the child gets older, you’ll start to get an idea of what HE thinks of it: maybe he’ll complain about his name, or maybe he’ll love it, or maybe a nickname will evolve on its own. If he complains, you have some solutions all set to go, and he can pick what he likes best; if he loves his name, and/or a nickname chooses itself, you won’t have gone to a lot of trouble for nothing.

As to the question about when to introduce the concept of a name change to him, I’d let that happen naturally too. One of my kids had the opposite issue: a name much more common in our state than nationwide, so that there were three boys with his name in his preschool class. All three boys went by the name plus a surname initial; in my son’s case, saying those together fast sounded similar to another name, so that sometimes someone would think that other name was his name. At some point, maybe the next year during enrollment when I was filling out the “prefers to be called” part of the registration form, I asked him casually if he’d prefer to be known by that other name, and he said no, he thought it was fun to belong to “the club” of people with his same name. He was about four or five years old then, and was able to consider the topic. My point is that I don’t think you’ll need to pick a time to tell him it’s fine if he wants to change his name; I think it’ll come up naturally, and that he’ll know how you feel about it by how you talk about his name in general and how you respond to the things he says about his name.

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Hi Swistle,

Please help with our third baby girl for last name sounds like foyle with a d.

We have a Z0e Cecili@ and a Penel0pe Pe@rl who we have nicknamed Lulu.

My husband and I can’t decide on the perfect name as we like too many but don’t “love” any.

Our number one choice was Amelia with the nick name Millie but am worried about the popularity of Amelia and whether it is special enough.

Names I like but my husband doesn’t are:
Daisy
Camilla
Mila
Mabel
Remy
Scout
Indie
Imogen

Ones my husband finds okay are;
Evie
Isabel

Names I love but can’t use
Polly
Poppy
Jemima

Looking for something unique and beautiful but not strange.

Thank you – we are lost.

The Social Security Administration reports that in 2017, the name Penel0pe was the 24th most popular girl name in the United States; Z0e was 41st, but it’s a little complicated because the spelling Z0ey was #29 and would contribute to the perception of how common the name was; and Amelia was #8. Those rankings put the names all within reasonable range of each other, and I think the name Millie helps give the name an extra freshness. If Amelia is your number one choice, and you both agree on it, and you are feeling lost trying to come up with anything else, then I think you are all set: you have already found the name you both like best. If you would find it enjoyable to continue looking, we can do a little of that, with the comfort of knowing you already have a good name lined up if the exploration is fruitless.

I suspect that the reason the name Amelia is not sitting quite right with you is that the names Z0e and Penel0pe are more recent to current usage: the name Z0e didn’t settle comfortably into the Top 1000 until 1983, and only hit the Top 100 in 2000; the name Penel0pe had a more rapid and even more recent rise, getting back into the Top 1000 in 2001 and the Top 100 in 2013. By comparison, the name Amelia hasn’t been out of the Top 1000 a single time since the SSA online records start in 1900, and in fact it’s never been out of the Top 500. That kind of long-term familiarity can make a name feel less exciting than a name that still has a smack of surprise. Still, I don’t think that’s enough reason to take it off the list, especially when you are struggling to agree on anything else.

To try to add more possibilities to the list, I would look for other names that have come back into style more recently. Bonus points for names with something a little interesting about the spelling/pronunciation, as both Z0e and Penel0pe have with their Greek endings, and as Z0e has with the interesting initial Z, and as they both have by being fun to say.

Annabel
Aria
Beatrix
Calista
Camille
Celeste
Cleo
Eleanor/Nora
Eloise
Esme
Felicity
Fiona
Genevieve/Evie
Hazel
Iris
Isla
Ivy
Josephine
Juliette
Lila
Lydia
Phoebe
Ruby
Stella
Violet
Vivian

I left in some options I’m not sure about: some might be too big a popularity gap with Z0e and Penel0pe; and I’m not sure about the ones that duplicate the surname’s ending L-sound; and names like Lila and Isla and Ruby are not great with Lulu. But this is the kind of list I’d be looking at.

One of my top choices for you is Annabel. It’s fun to say, and its current level of popularity (along with the similar Annabelle, Annabella, etc., as well as the El-/-elle/-ella sounds in general) is relatively recent. Z0e, Penel0pe, and Annabel.

I also like Genevieve. It’s familiar but retains a freshness, and it gives you the nickname Evie from your husband’s list. Z0e, Penel0pe, and Genevieve; Z0e, Lulu, and Evie.

If this will be your last child, I might suggest going all-in with Phoebe. (I would also have suggested Daphne, but the alliteration with the surname seemed one notch too far.) Z0e, Penel0pe, and Phoebe. Visually, though, it bothers me how close it is to Penel0pe.

I like how Fiona splits the difference between Z0e and Penel0pe, syllable-wise, and echoes the long-O of Z0e. Z0e, Penel0pe, and Fiona.

Josephine, too, is three syllables and repeats the long-O sound. Z0e, Penel0pe, and Josephine; Z0e, Lulu, and Josie. But Josie may be too similar to Z0e.

I like how Ruby brings out the sass of all three names, and repeats the long-E ending in sound while using a different letter to achieve it. Z0e, Penel0pe, and Ruby.

I like the way the middle D-sound of Lydia is echoed in the surname, and it’s fun to say.  Z0e, Penel0pe, and Lydia.

Eloise, too, I find fun to say, and this is another option that repeats the long-O sound. Z0e, Penel0pe, and Eloise.

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