Hi Swistle!

My husband and I are having a hard time deciding on names for our baby who is due in late April 2019. We don’t plan on finding out baby’s sex so we need to be prepared for a girl or a boy (although big sister insists this is going to be her baby sister.) Our daughter is Rose Elizabeth and our son is Nolan David. Our last name rhymes with Mask.

We like old fashioned names but preferably not top 100 in popularity. Some girls names considered and not ruled out are: Juniper, Pearl, and Willa. Some boys names that we like are Samuel, Samson, and Lincoln. None of them feel just “right” though in the way that our other two kids’ names did. Rose is named after my very close cousin who passed away. Nolan is named for his dad’s favorite baseball player. My husband also says we “wasted the good name on the dog.” Harmon, which I actually agree with him on. I feel like it could have been a contender if it wasn’t already the dog’s name.

This is most likely our last child. We don’t have any middle names in mind but I feel like we could come up with one more easily once we have a first name chosen.

Thanks for your help!

Would Harvey work for a boy? I love that name and would love to see it used more.

If you’re trying to avoid the Top 100, I think you would find any Sam- name too common for your tastes: Samson was only #608 in 2017, according to the Social Security Administration, but Samuel was #21—and has been in the Top 50 for the past 30 years, and hasn’t been out of the Top 100 since the earliest online Social Security search results starting in 1900, so there are lots of Sams of many ages.

Lincoln is more recent: it hit the Top 100 in 2013, and was #41 in 2017. If I had to guess, I’d guess it would continue to rise.

More possibilities to consider:

Rose, Nolan, and Aidric
Rose, Nolan, and Alistair
Rose, Nolan, and Archer
Rose, Nolan, and August
Rose, Nolan, and Branson
Rose, Nolan, and Davis
Rose, Nolan, and Declan
Rose, Nolan, and Desmond
Rose, Nolan, and Edmund
Rose, Nolan, and Elliot
Rose, Nolan, and Everett
Rose, Nolan, and Ezra
Rose, Nolan, and Franklin
Rose, Nolan, and Garrett
Rose, Nolan, and Gilbert
Rose, Nolan, and Grant
Rose, Nolan, and Harris
Rose, Nolan, and Holling
Rose, Nolan, and Keller
Rose, Nolan, and Louis
Rose, Nolan, and Malcolm
Rose, Nolan, and Merritt
Rose, Nolan, and Miles
Rose, Nolan, and Reid
Rose, Nolan, and Rhett
Rose, Nolan, and Simon
Rose, Nolan, and Thompson
Rose, Nolan, and Wells
Rose, Nolan, and Wesley
Rose, Nolan, and Zane

A few of those are Top 100, and a few more are flirting with the line and may cross it in 2018.

I like all three of your girl-name choices in different ways. I think Pearl and Willa are my two favorites, mostly because Juniper feels more contemporary to me: it didn’t enter the Top 1000 until 2011, while little girls named Rose and Pearl and Willa have been in classrooms together for at least the past century.

I got sidetracked here because I was interested: Juniper feels more contemporary to me, but is it? It certainly seems as if it could have been a companion of Ivy and Hazel, and I have been surprised by names before. I checked the Social Security database that goes back to 1880 (unlike the online search which only goes back to 1900) and includes all the names given to five or more infants of that sex that year (unlike the online search which only includes the Top 1000 names). I wanted to see if Juniper was in use way back then, but maybe just uncommon. In 1880, there is no entry for Juniper, which means fewer than five babies were given the name that year. In 1890: no Junipers. In 1900: no Junipers. In 1910: no Junipers. None in 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960. Finally in 1969: 5 new baby girls named Juniper. From there, here are the number of new baby girls given the name Juniper in the United States, at five-year intervals:

1969: 5
1974: 23
1979: 9
1984: 6
1989: –
1994: 7
1999: 14
2004: 33
2009: 170
2014: 643 (plus 9 new baby boys named Juniper)

And in 2017, there were 1,033 new baby girls and 6 new baby boys given the name Juniper. In Juniper we have an interesting thing: a contemporary name that fits well with the vintage revival botanical names such as Rose, Violet, Rosemary, Hazel, and Ivy, while also sounding similar to and going well with names such as Harper and Piper and Skylar and Paisley. The Wikipedia article on the name suggests some possible sources for the recent usage: a song called Jennifer Juniper in 1969; the movie Bennie & Joon in 1993; the book Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary in 1998; and a cartoon series called The Life and Times of Juniper Lee in 2005-2007.

Anyway! More possibilities to consider:

Rose, Nolan, and Ada
Rose, Nolan, and Alice
Rose, Nolan, and Cecily
Rose, Nolan, and Clara
Rose, Nolan, and Cora
Rose, Nolan, and Eliza
Rose, Nolan, and Fern
Rose, Nolan, and Iris
Rose, Nolan, and Ivy
Rose, Nolan, and Josephine
Rose, Nolan, and June
Rose, Nolan, and Lois
Rose, Nolan, and Louise
Rose, Nolan, and Lydia
Rose, Nolan, and Mabel
Rose, Nolan, and Marilla
Rose, Nolan, and May
Rose, Nolan, and Molly
Rose, Nolan, and Stella
Rose, Nolan, and Sylvia

Name update:

Our daughter was born in early April 2019 and we named her after my husband’s grandmother, Grace. Her name is Grace Evangeline, and it suits her well.

Swistle,
We really need your help in thinking of a name for our son, who is due in a few weeks.
Our first son’s name is James Nolan, so ideally it would be a name that went with James (but what doesn’t?).
We are stuck between Ford, Shepard, and Elliot. Eliot is a family name – I always thought I would save it for a girl, but what if my third and fourth babies are boys as well?! Better to use it now? It’s my mother-in-law’s maiden name, who passed away, but we named James after her – so I don’t feel like I HAVE to do a double honor. I’d rather give my family a shout out since we did not for our first baby. The middle name we want to use would be to honor my beloved stepfather, whose name ironically is Richard Burton. So we could do Ford Richard, Shepard Burton, Elliot Burton…some cool options there with a name like that!!!
My problem is that this baby doesn’t really feel like any of those names. How do you name a baby if you can’t get a sense of their personality? Do we wait? I hate game time decisions.
Are there any names along those lines we should consider?
I’m fine with you putting our last name because as you can see – it’s a doozy. It rhymes with HELLO.
Any help you could give that could help us name this baby before we enter divorce court (my husband suggested the name Doug last night. DOUG. Which is lovely but not the name of my child)….would be so appreciated!

Let’s look at each of the three options with the older brother’s name:

James and Ford
James and Shepard
James and Elliot

To me, Elliot is the most natural fit of the three: Ford and Shepard both look to me like jumps away from James in style and popularity (though definitely not style clashes). But if you think you’d be considering names more like Ford and Shepard for all the rest of the children, then I don’t want to make any effort to bring you away from that. Elliot would make a nice bridge name: a James, then an Elliot, then on to Ford and then Shepard.

I found when I was proof-reading that I had a change of mind on Ford: it fits well with James, I think, but changes the spin. James and Elliot are two classic gentlemen names. James and Ford are two one-syllable surname names. But I am not sure about Ford with the surname: not only do the -d/D- sounds bump/blend into each other, but it made me think of the possibly-too-obscure-to-matter word “bordello.” I notice Shepard, too, has the -d/D- issue. Even Elliot has a similar issue: the -t/D- does something similar when I say the name aloud. I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker, but it’s something I like to think about ahead of time.

I think I might like to see what other end-letters do with the surname. The -s (-z) of James is nice with it. Charles would be similarly nice. But I am not as drawn to a soft -s such as Thomas or Louis: the soft -s starts sliding into that D- to make a -st- sound.

Henry would be nice. Henry Burton Dall-low.

Or Philip. Philip Richard Dall-low.

Wait, is the name more like DELL-lo or more like dell-LO? It occurs to me that I’ve been saying DELL-lo, but that dell-LO is more likely. If the emphasis is on the first syllable, I find some names have a whimsical bouncing rhythm: Simon DELL-lo, for example, is the rhythm and sound of limoncello or lemon Jell-o. But if it’s more like Simon dell-LO, it loses nearly all the whimsy. Caleb DELL-lo is a little bit funny for a reason I have yet to put a finger on, but Caleb dell-LO is nice. And Ford dell-LO is not nearly as close to bordello as is Ford DELL-lo. And even a lot of the -d/D- and -t/D- and soft -s issues are considerably lessened if the rhythm is dell-LO: I go from thinking Louis DELL-o is not great to thinking Louis dell-LO is pretty terrific. Which makes me think it is probably dell-LO. And also the more I look at the three options, the more I think all three go well with James.

Well. I should probably delete everything and re-write, but instead I will soldier on and put down some more names I think sound nice with at least one version of DELL-lo/dell-LO.

Alexander
Anderson
Benjamin
Calvin
Clark
Frederick
George
Grant (-t/D-)
Ian
John
Louis
Oliver
Paul

To help decide whether to use Elliot for a boy or for a girl, I’d look at your other girl-name options: if you were to have two girls after two boys, what sorts of girl names would be on your list? Elliot is a unisex name with usage currently leaning more heavily towards boys in the U.S.; here are the 2017 numbers from the Social Security Administration:

Eliette: 50F
Eliot: 32F, 173M
Eliott: 72M
Elliette: 104F
Elliot: 493F, 2416M
Elliott: 575F, 2421M
Elliotte: 56F

Are your other girl-name options similar to Elliot? That is, do they lean toward Harper and Avery, Quinn and Riley? Or are your other options more like Margaret and Katherine, or Amelia and Charlotte, or Penelope and Cecily? If I think of siblings named James, Ford, Elliot, and Cecily, I assume James, Ford, and Elliot are boys; if I think instead of siblings named James, Ford, Elliot, and Quinn, I know I need more information before I can make a guess.

Name update:

Swistle, thank you so much for your help! Your readers’ input really helped us name our sweet boy, who came on December 12th! This is Ford Richard :)
He has such a stoic, sweet personality – Ford was the perfect name for him.

Dear Swistle

We have a toddler named Edward Felix Sounds-like-silver, who goes by Teddy. I love his name so much that I still sometimes get a thrill of satisfaction thinking about it.

Our next child is due this spring and if it’s a girl our top choice is Beatrice. However I’m slightly concerned that ‘Beatrice Silver’ is too sibilant. Or that it might become Beatrissilver in speech (not sure if that’s a problem though?). Please help, I think I might be overthinking this but I can’t tell.

We also would welcome any boy name suggestions. Names I like that my partner inexplicably does not:
Rupert
Oscar
Arthur
Hugh nn Hugo

Names my partner inexplicably likes that I don’t:
Paul
Mark (partner is not a Christian, I’m not sure where this New Testament theme sprang from)
Allen (‘with two Ls’, ok buddy)
Callum
Andre
David
Martin
Nathan
Ray
William (I like William by itself but not with Sounds-like-silver)

Any input much appreciated!
Kate x

I just said “Beatrice Silver” a dozen times out loud, and I can’t decide. Here is where I think this kind of issue falls: into the area known as It Doesn’t Really Matter At All, Unless Of Course It Matters To You. Beatrice Silver is a little sibilant, and the -ce runs into the S- a little bit. But it doesn’t make an undesirable word/phrase (such as in the famous example of Ben Dover) or cause a misunderstanding (the way, say, Liam Mason could sound like Leah Mason or vice versa). And I think what usually happens in these cases is that everyone gets accustomed to putting a pause-and-a-half between the first name and surname, instead of the usual pause: “This is Beatrice. Silver. She has a 9:00 appointment.”

My usual prescription for this sort of thing is to suggest the parents browse through a yearbook, or watch all the credits of a movie, and notice how many names fall into this same IDRMAAUOCIMTY category: it’s so many of the names! I was looking through my son’s yearbook the other day to see what a typical senior picture looks like, and I noticed name after name that has similar slight issues—and it really doesn’t matter at all. UNLESS, of course, it eternally bugs the parents, in which case it matters and they shouldn’t have done it. But my guess, my GUESS, is that that is rarely if ever the case.

We had a couple of things like this with our own kids’ names. One kid’s name blends a little with the last name to make a mildly undesirable word such as weep or sulk; I never notice it now, and no one else has ever mentioned it, and I only thought of it now when I was trying hard to think of examples. It only mattered to me during the naming process, and then never mattered again.

I just re-read and realized the surname SOUNDS LIKE Silver, so I used Blogger Privilege and went back to the email to check out the real surname, and I’d say the issue is even less with the real surname than with the stand-in: the sounds of the real surname offset the sibilance even more than the softer sounds of the stand-in.

Can you tell I want you to use the name Beatrice? I want you to use the name Beatrice. But I’m leaving room in case the -ce/S- thing really bugs you, and continues to bug you.

Okay *brisk clap*: boy names. With Edward/Teddy, nothing stands out to me from either of the two lists. It’s not at all necessary, but the FUN solution would be to find a full-name that goes with Edward, plus a nickname that goes with Teddy. Or else a name that goes well with Edward AND with Teddy. Actually, the name Paul would be pretty good for that: Edward and Paul; Teddy and Paul.

Before I start making a list, I would like to note something that seems to be happening in my area: the return of Older Nicknames. Do you remember in the 1990s when suddenly Sam and Max and Charlie and Joe started sounding fresh an in old-man kind of way? It’s almost hard to believe those names used to sound impossibly old-mannish/old-fashioned/stodgy, but they DID, and I REMEMBER when they did. And then they started to sound amusingly quirky, the kind of name you might give a dog, or might CONSIDER for a child but in a humorous, counter-culture kind of way (“What if we just name him MAX? or JOE?” “Honey, come on, you have to HELP with this”). And shortly after that, everyone was looking for long forms of those names so they could use them for their kids. And now they’re just ordinary names.

We have also recently been through a stage of No Nickname Required or Desired, where parents say things like “We want to name him William—but will people call him Billy?” and “We want to name her Elizabeth—but will people call her Beth?” and we have had to say again and again that not only can a kid get away without a nickname in this particular time period (in a way they COULDN’T, really, when some of us were growing up), but even if they DID get a nickname it certainly would be Will or Ellie rather than Billy or Beth.

ANYWAY, my point is that I have been hearing the next wave of Nickname Revival: names such as Johnny, Billy, Marty, Mickey, Pete, Tommy. The nicknames parents were avoiding are starting to come back into style. Most tellingly, some of my kids’ classmates are nicknaming or re-nicknaming themselves: a Charlie now wants to be known as Chuck; a Thomas wants to be known as Tommy; a Jack now goes by Johnny. Before long we may be receiving letters from parents saying “We want to name him William—but we don’t want him called Will or Liam” and “If we’re going to call him Billy anyway, should we just name him that?”

Now that you will understand why I am putting James/Jimmy on the list rather than James/Jamie:

Albert/Bertie
August/Gus
Charles/Charlie/Chip
Desmond/Desi
George
Harvey
Henry
James/Jimmy
John/Johnny/Jack (too Kennedy with Teddy?)
Oliver/Ollie
Phillip/Pip (possibly too whimsical with surname)
Robert/Robbie (I’m not quite ready for Bobby, but I believe it’s on its way)
Wesley/Wes

Name update:

Hello Swistle! Baby Boy Sounds-like-silver was born this Saturday. We’ve named him Albert Ernest (“Albert” isn’t quite as bold a choice here in the UK as it would be in the US) and are calling him Al. Thank you to you and the commenters for your help!

Hello,

I’m due with our second child in March. We do not know the gender yet. My husband and I have a girl’s name picked out but we are struggling to pick a boy’s name. Our first child is a boy so I think that’s why it’s been harder to decide on a baby boy name for our second.

Our son’s name is Judah Thomas. Judah holds significant meaning for us as it means “praise.” And Thomas is my husband’s middle name as well as a family name on my side.

We want our children to have names with significant meaning to us. We plan to have at least three children. And I want our children’s names to sound good when said together.

I also don’t like nicknames. I don’t want to name them something and then hope they will go by a shorter name.

The girl name we have decided on is Mae Elise. My birthday month is May and the Hebrew meaning of May is “gift from God or wished-for child.” My husband chose the middle name Elise and I like the flow of the name Mae Elise Beadle.

For boy names, I like strong but shorter, two-syllable names. I also prefer names with a “soft” sound like Judah as opposed to a name like Zeke. The middle name will be James (after my grandfather). Here is the list we are considering:

Milo- This is my husband’s favorite and while I like it, I’m afraid it’s becoming too popular. I’m also not sure of the combo of Judah and Milo.

Ezra- A Biblical name that means “helper.” I’m concerned the pair of Ezr(a) and Jud(ah) sounds alike but the endings are spelled differently which bothers me. Also, will our third child need the -a or -ah ending?

Asher- Another Biblical name meaning “blessed, happy.” No concerns about the name I’m just not sure if I’m sold on it.

Boden- Both my husband & father-in-law have the double B (first & last). My husband’s name is Benjamin Beadle. We like the idea of having a double B name to keep the tradition.

Lennon- My father’s name is Leonard (called Lenny) so we like the idea of honoring my dad with the first name. My concern is people may associated Lennon Beadle with John Lennon from the Beatles (which sounds like our last name). We were a bit worried about this with our first son also with Judah being close to Jude (“Hey Jude” by the Beatles) but no one has made that connection.

Thank you for your help! I look forward to your thoughts.

Sincerely,
Sadie Beadle

Generally I don’t turn my hand to questions that emphasize the meanings of names: it’s not a subject I know much about. But I realized this morning that then commenters who DO know a lot about name meanings hardly ever get to talk about them.

I did want to say that Mae Beadle sounds in my head like May Beetle—similar to June Bug. It’s a whimsical connection and perhaps not one that would be common for people to make, but it’s a potential hazard with noun names.

Name update:

Hello,

Just a follow up!

Asher James was born March 22, 2019 at 4:01 am. Thank you for submitting my original post. The feedback was helpful & we think Asher is the perfect name for our second son.

Hello,
Thanks in advance for your help. My husband and I are expecting a baby girl at the end of October and we are totally stuck for a name and it is really stressing me out.

We have a 3 year old son Jack, a name we absolutely love. Our last name is Murrie. Our girl choice for him was Fiona, this is still my absolute number 1 pick for a girl but my husband feels that it is “used” now and we need something new for our next child.

I am from the UK and have an unusual first name and it is important to me that our daughter not have to spell her name for people her whole life. I like the typical top 10 names but don’t want her to be one of 4 Charlotte’s in a class.

I like Kit as short for Katherine but Katherine is my MIL’s name and I don’t want to name my daughter after her, I think it will alienate my family. Likewise I think Elizabeth is lovely but it is already taken in the family.

I like Fiona so much because it is not at all common but it is not unusual and it doesn’t have multiple possible spellings. I really like Maggie and Molly but with out last name feel too limericky to me.

Do you have any suggestions to help us out?

Kind Regards,

The Murries

Fiona seems great to me. I understand it’s not uncommon for parents feel a name is “used” if they had it in mind for an earlier baby, but I think it’s worth putting in some mental effort to get past this if at all possible (I realize it will not always be possible). The name Jack is now used, but the name Fiona was not used last time because it was not needed. Could your husband find a way to think of the name Fiona as the name the two of you chose for your first daughter, as opposed to thinking of it as the name you would have used if Jack had been a girl? Then the name is not only still available but in fact has been specifically set aside for this upcoming child.

I wonder if it is the alliteration of Maggie and Molly that makes them not quite right with the surname, or if it is the matched endings, or if it is both. Let’s look for some names that match only beginnings OR endings, and also try to find some that match neither; let’s also look for some names that are more like Fiona:

Ada
Anna
Annabel
Annie
Bianca
Cassie
Clarissa
Claudia
Cleo
Daisy
Delia
Eliza
Elodie
Eva
Greta
Gwen
Josephine/Josie
Karenna
Kate
Lainey
Louisa
Lucy
Lydia
Mabel
Marlo
Matilda
Mika
Penelope
Polly
Sabrina
Sally
Sadie
Simone
Sylvia/Silvia
Tessa
Vivian
Winifred

Name update:

Thanks so much for your help, baby arrived last week and we did go with Fiona in the end after narrowing it down to Fiona or Katrina. I’m thrilled of course.