Dear Swistle,
Longtime highly devoted reader of all things Swistle. I have a two year old daughter named Penelope Jane, and am currently pregnant with a boy, due April 22nd. Penelope’s nicknames are numerous and varied, but she primarily goes by Penelope or Pip. She refers to herself as Ell-uh-pe, which is very cute. We liked Penny as a nickname, but didn’t like it with our last name, which sounds like Hearty but spelled differently. I didn’t like the double “y” sound when saying them together.
(This is unrelated to the current situation, but for anyone considering Penelope but fearing their child will always be called Penny, it really hasn’t been an issue for us. People will ask if she goes by Penny and we say: “No, we mostly call her Penelope” and that’s usually the end.)
I am pregnant with my second, this time a boy. My daughter’s name was fairly easy, one day I said the name offhandedly and my husband liked it, and it went on the list. By the next day it had become THE NAME in my mind, and stayed that way throughout the rest of my pregnancy, and I maintain high levels of satisfaction bordering on smugness to this very day. Her middle name is Jane after my beloved grandmother. Because our children will have my husband’s last name, it is important to me that they have a family name from my side to provide some balance. My husband is on board with this.
Names we are considering:
Henry
Carter
Calvin
Grant
Henry Carter Hearty. I like this combination, but worry that Henry Hearty is too matchy matchy. I actually kind of like the matchiness, because it makes him sound like a comic book character. This is actually the only reason I chose to go by my husband’s last name. But just because I like it doesn’t mean that my son will. How much of an issue do think this is? I’ve also had many people tell me this name is too popular. That doesn’t bother me.
Carter Henry Hearty. This is my top choice. Carter is my dad’s name, and I’ve always loved the name, and conveniently also love my dad.
Issues:
1) I originally didn’t like the combination because of the repeating “ar” sounds in the first and last names. Car Har sounded too harsh too me, I didn’t like the flow of Carter Hearty. Now it doesn’t bother me anymore, and I can’t tell if its because the flow was always fine, or because I’ve just gotten used to it. Is the flow weird? What are your thoughts?
2) My husband feels uncomfortable giving our son the first name of a living relative, because he thinks it is confusing to have two people with the same name in one family, and that it puts a lot of pressure on the relationship between the two. No one in my immediate family shares a first name, but many people in my extended family do, and neither thing has ever been a problem as far as I can see. I think it just feels normal to me because it is common in my family, and unusual to him because it is uncommon in his. Even though I have arrived at this very logical and well reasoned conclusion, it doesn’t seem to have changed the reality of our preferences.
3) I worry that it will feel less special to my daughter to have a family middle name if my son has a family first name. I especially don’t want her to think it was because she is a girl and he is a boy. The only reason that I didn’t choose Jane as her first name (and for the first half of my pregnancy that was the plan…well MY plan) is because I felt so zingy about Penelope. But I feel equal amounts of love and affection about using each name.
4) Although I feel like passing down the last name is a pretty big deal already, I wouldn’t want my in-laws to feel slighted by not having my father in law’s name used. My husband does not think this is an issue at all.
Calvin “Middlename TBD” Hearty
With our first, our boy name was Calvin. Obviously Cal is the cutest.
Issues:
1) With this pregnancy, Calvin has lost some luster for me. I still like it, but I don’t feel the same heart eyes that I did two years ago. My husband still likes it quite a bit, it dipped for awhile but is probably back to number one for him.
2) I don’t know what his middle name would be. Calvin Carter makes me think of Calvin Klein, and I’d like to avoid naming my son after underwear. There is literally no other male family name on my side that I want to use. My grandfather’s name was Haze, which could maybe work, but there are so many Hazes in my family at this point it feels a little redundant. So to use Calvin, I think I would have to give up using a family name, and that makes me really bummed. (I just had my husband read this and he has surprised me by saying that he likes Calvin Carter as a middle name.)
Grant Carter Hearty
This name is fine. I like it. I’m not zingy about it. My biggest issue is that Grant is a family name on my husband’s side, so my son would have two family names and my daughter would only have one. Is that a big deal?
Had this baby been a girl, her name almost certainly would have been Juniper Bess. Other girl names we like: Tabitha, Willow, Clara. There is a 90% chance that there will no more children.
I feel like I have a lot more to say, but its mostly just additional hand wringing around the same issues.
Sometimes when I read a letter I have an immediate Very Strong Opinion, and my main struggle is with moderating the communication of that opinion so that it does not come across too forcefully. It is clear to me that the point of this blog is not for me to choose MY favorite name from another family’s list (though I enjoy voting, and so I go ahead and do so), but for us to help THEM to choose THEIRS. But something about the tone of your letter makes me think I can trust you not to feel overly pressured by my opinion or to think that I would think you SHOULD feel pressured by it, and so I am just going to go ahead and try to talk you into my far-and-away top choice, which is Calvin.
Now I will tell you why—though still with the understanding that I am talking here about my own preferences, and not what I think yours should be. I will put these reasons not in order of importance, but in the order that they occur to me as I am typing.
One: Calvin is my favorite with Penelope for popularity and style. Both names are familiar, yet unusual in my personal experience at approximately the same levels, and they give me similar reactions of surprise and interest. I also do love the style of Henry with Penelope, but this brings me to reason two.
Two: Calvin is my favorite with your surname. I can see the charm of Henry Hearty, but not quite to the extent that I would want to use it myself: the beginnings AND endings of the names match, AND they have the same number of letters and syllables, AND they both have an R sound in the middle. The not-quite-repeating art/ard sounds of Carter Hear(t)y bothers my ear and tangles my tongue. Grant Hearty is fine (though I don’t love two word names in a row), and is my second choice of the four candidates.
Three: Calvin Carter is my favorite of all the options for including your dad’s name, and I really like the idea of you using your dad’s name.
Four: I love the nickname Cal.
Five: Calvin Carter doesn’t make me think of Calvin Klein. It’s making me think of something else, but I can’t put a finger on it. Oh, actually I think I’ve got it: it’s just that both are presidential names, so that’s ringing that bell. Or maybe it’s that Calvin (Klein) and Carter’s are both clothing companies? In any case, it doesn’t make me think of underpants at all. And even if it did, I wouldn’t be bothered by that in a middle name. I also think Calvin Grant Hearty is nice, but it bugs me that then it’s two names from your husband’s side and none from yours.
Six: I just like it best, OKAY??
But! I know what you mean about the luster wearing off a name, and that could indeed end up being the dealbreaker. Unless SWISTLE’S FORCEFUL OPINION might renew the luster a bit? Well, I will hope.
In the meantime, I am going to brush away a bunch of concerns. Again, this is about how I feel, not about how you feel or how you should feel (though feel free to find my arguments persuasive).
One: Even though I love things to line up tidily, I don’t think it generally matters if one kid has a family first name and one has a family middle name. I also don’t think it generally matters if one kid has two family names and the other has one. I do acknowledge that there are tons of situations where I would be advocating that an attempt be made to adjust things in a particular situation (like when one kid has two super-important-and-sentimental family names but the sibling-to-be is getting none, or when three sons have been given double family names but the daughter-to-be is getting none), but nothing is setting off red lights for me with your various options. I guess it does seem slightly non-ideal to have the first name be one that is also a closer family member. But I think a lot of that can be spun using casual tone: “Oh, yes, well it was down to either Penelope Jane or Jane Penelope, and in the end we preferred Penelope Jane,” or “We knew we wanted to use Carter as either a first or middle name, so we just played around with names until we found the combination we liked best.”
Two: I don’t think it ends up being particularly confusing to have a grandparent and grandchild sharing a first name, especially when the surname is different. Or at least it has not mattered in my family, where one of my sons is named after my dad. What we noticed is that there’s hardly anyone in the family who would call both of those people by the same name. I call my dad Dad, I don’t call him by my son’s name. My kids call my dad Grampa. My mom calls them both by their first names, of course, but when she’s talking to me she refers to my dad as Dad, and when she’s talking to the grandkids she refers to him as Grampa. On the very few occasions where it could be confusing, such as when my mom is talking to her friends, it has not been difficult or problematic or sitcomesque to communicate or understand which one is being discussed. Really, a non-issue. With you and I BOTH seeing things this way, I don’t see how your husband can fail to find his perceptions changed. …However, I am still not in favor of the sound of Carter Hearty, so on second thought I take back this whole paragraph.
Three: Zinginess is nice but in the long run I have not found it MUCH different than non-zinginess. That is, I have felt Quite Zingy about two of my five children’s names, and I still enjoy DISCUSSING and THINKING ABOUT that zinginess all these years later—but with the other three names I felt something more like Settled Satisfaction, and in the long run I am not even sure which I’d rank higher. It was really fun to choose the zingy names, but I also found it a little extra stressful. It was a little less exciting to choose the less zingy names, but I also found it a little extra peaceful. And aside from wishing OTHER PEOPLE had chosen one son’s name at a lower frequency, I don’t wish in any of the five cases that I had chosen something more zingy or less zingy: all seem Just Right. So if it’s a little disappointing not to have Zing this time, you may indeed want to seek it out; but if you are similar in temperament to me, I don’t think it’ll matter much in the long run. But of course I say that in part because the name Calvin has zing for me.
So! Are we settled? You will name him Calvin Carter Hearty, and we will all be happy. *brushes off hands with zingy satisfaction*
