Dear Swistle,

We just found out that our fourth (and last) daughter will be delivered almost a month early, and we still have not found a name for her. Part of the problem is that we LOVE our other three daughters’ names! Our oldest is Mabel Kaye (initials M and K to honor my sisters), and our twins are Gemma Grace and Alice Devon (after my great aunt, Emma, and great grandmother, Alice). It is proving an impossible task to find a name we adore that goes well with Mabel, Gemma and Alice. In fact, most of the rules we originally considered have gone to the wayside, with only two remaining. We would like for this baby to have her own first initial and would also like her name to have a positive meaning. I worry about using a name with the letter R in it, as our last name is Write (spelled differently). Our three daughters all go by their first names, but we have a variety of nicknames for each, so this is an important consideration in choosing a name for our baby.

Names I like:
Colette
Sicily/Cecily
Rose- too short with last name? Too much with the double R sound?
Claire- a good friend has a Claire
Louisa- I worry people will pronounce it with a “z” sound
Blythe- too clipped with one syllable last name?
Libby- more of a nickname, but I can’t think of a full name I like to get to this

Names my husband likes:
Vivian
Lucy- too common?
Rosemary- too much for a child?
Violet- not sure how well this works for an adult and it’s become more popular
Edith- dislike the nickname Edie
Eleanor- we often call Alice “Ali” and know we’d shorten this to Ellie
Cora- “ruh” sound blends into last name

Names we like but feel we can’t use either because of a family/friend with this name or because it is too close to one of our girls:
Sybil
Clara
Lilah
Tessa
Matilda
Karis
Stella

Help! If this was your daughter, what would you name her given the names of her sisters? Please share any thoughts on the names we have listed and any suggestions you may have for other names!!

Thank you so much!

Tracy

P.S. My c/s is scheduled for August 23rd, so I am losing sleep trying to decide on a name! I am so worried we will be sitting in the hospital three days after our daughter is born still debating her name, or worse– choose a name we later decide we don’t love/doesn’t fit her! Please help! I promise to update with a picture!

Asking me what I’d choose if this were my daughter was a riveting question. Immediately I had a different way of approaching it: instead of working from your lists, I only looked at the names of the first three girls, and then I got out my name book. Mabel, Gemma, Alice, and…

Beatrix
Camille
Claudia
Cleo
Cordelia
Eliza
Felicity
Fiona
Frances
Imogen
Ivy
Juliet
Lydia
Olive
Philippa
Rosalie
Rosamund
Ruby
Simone
Violet
Winifred

Winifred is the one that particularly electrified me when I came to it. If I were reading a book about four little girls having adventures, it would be about Mabel, Gemma, Alice, and Winifred.

I found I didn’t mind a repeating R sound with the surname. It sometimes hit my ear as not-ideal, but not as enough of an issue to rule the name out. Well, I did cross out Pearl, but that was more because of an issue I was having going from a -rl sound to a R- sound.

I found myself inclined to rule out names that started with the final sound of Alice, especially if they also had an L sound: Celeste, Cecily, Celia, etc. (Celia is in fact the same letters of Alice arranged differently.) But of course that is only an issue if you’re saying the names in order. Still, I found myself not adding them to the list: Alice and Cecily sound so similar to me, even though they’re quite different names.

Simone is one that stayed, in part because of the visual advantage of starting with an S instead of a C, and in part because it has no L sound. I would expect this name to get more popular after this year’s Olympics, but it’s hard to tell: sometimes parents rule out a name for just such a reason. I remember when the new baby prince was named George, and people were writing saying now they couldn’t use the name George.

Now that I’ve made my list, I’ll go though yours. Rose Write is distinctive in a way that will come down to personal preference: some people will find it snappy and memorable, and others will feel it’s too much R or too many word names. Same with Ruby Write from my list, I think.

Blythe Write is a little hard for me to say: the -the of Blythe wants to blend right into the R sound of the surname. Not enough to cross it off the list, but it knocks it further down the list for me. The same thing happens for me with Edith Write: I get a -thrite sound.

I think spelling it Luisa would increase the success rate of getting the S pronounced softly, but that spelling doesn’t seem as good with the sibset. I do think part of the package deal of the name Louisa would be hearing it often with a Z sound.

I don’t think the name Rosemary is too much for a child, and I think it works nicely in this sibling group.

Violet was the very first name I added to my own list. I then wavered, and then decided to cross it off, and then left it on. I think the name works very well for an adult, and I think Vi is a great nickname, or there’s Lettie. But I find I persistently associate the name with the word violent in both sound and appearance. It’s not as strong as the sweet little flower association, and yet it persists. I wish I didn’t have this association, and so I have left the name on the list.

Name update:

Dear Swistle,

Thank you so very much for your help with our baby’s name!  I really appreciate your suggestions for a name for our fourth daughter.  I was also blown away by the thoughtful responses from your readers!  I reread their comments many times, including during the two days after our daughter was born when we still couldn’t commit to a name.  My husband and I had never considered, but immediately loved, the name Sylvie (suggested by your readers).  What a cool name!  In the end we worried about it being confused with Sylvia and how annoying it would be to have to explain her name was “just Sylvie”.  After lots of back and forth with Sylvie and Lucy, we went with the name my husband had suggested from the beginning– Lucy!

Now that we’ve gotten to know her, Lucy Rose suits our girl perfectly!  As a bonus, my great aunts were named Lucia and Rose, so my family was quite pleased.  We are so happy with our decision and love the nicknames used by her sisters (Lucy Goosey, Baby Lou, Lulu, Luce).

And so our family is complete– Mabel, Alice, Gemma and Lucy.

Thanks again!

Tracy

Hi Swistle,

My husband and I are expecting our first child (a girl!) after four years of IVF treatments and are thrilled! Back when we were naive and thought we would conceive right away, we picked out names for a boy and a girl, basically ruling out anything/everything else:

Colton Mark (nickname Cole, Mark is my husband’s first name and a follows a naming tradition in his family of giving the father’s first name as the son’s middle name)

Kyla Morgan (Morgan is a family name on my side)

We’ve been calling the baby Kyla since we found out it was a girl and decided not to tell anyone the name until she is born because we don’t want to hear people’s opinions on it. That lasted about five minutes and we ended up telling a friend of ours who later referred to her as “Baby Kayla”.

I recoiled in horror and have been second-guessing Kyla’s name ever since. I do not like the name Kayla – it screams 80s to me, and not in a good way. My husband is full steam ahead on Kyla still, but I am not-so-secretly compiling a list of alternative names.

My first question to you and your readers: have you heard the name Kyla before? Is it too close to the more-familiar Kayla that she will get called Kayla all the time?

Second question: are there better names out there?! Am I settling too soon on a name I picked out literally four years ago?

Here’s what else is on our/my list:

Morgan – as a first name instead of middle
Madelyn – too popular?
Nicole – my middle name, but is it too 80s?
Natalie – the only name my husband has said he likes
Linnea – a childhood obsession of mine from the book Linnea in Monet’s Garden but my husband hates it
Liliana – husband hates it

Corinna Noelle – this is the name I named all of my dolls as a child, then daydreamed naming the daughter I would one day have with my crush as a 13 year old. My sister recently reminded me of my obsession and I, oddly enough, don’t hate it and maybe kind of like it?

Our last name is Polish, full of consonants, starts with Skr- and ends in -ski. I think I lean towards more feminine names to offset the heavy surname.

Help?!

Stephanie

Oh, yes, I know that feeling, where two names are theoretically similar, and yet one is the name that lives in your heart and the other is a name that makes you shudder. Well. I talk a lot on this site about the “package deal” of a name: that is, every name comes with its own set of upsides and downsides and complications. Some names come with a LOT MORE upsides/downsides/complications than others, and some downsides/complications are much more serious than others, and some upsides are more worth the potential downsides/complications, etc.—and so it can take some considerable effort to figure out how things shake out on the balance scale. And because all that balance-scale work is very subjective, other people’s votes may or may not be much use.

I think that yes, part of the package deal of the name Kyla is that it will sometimes be mistaken for the more familiar Kayla. However, I think that everyone who is a regular in her life will know it is Kyla, and the mistakes will come almost entirely in situations where it doesn’t matter: for example, the Taco Bell clerk may call out “Kayla?” when her order is ready, or the school secretary might call down to ask for Kayla to be sent to the office to pick up her forgotten lunch box.

My vote would be to persevere with the name Kyla. But I also don’t think there’s any harm in considering other options, if that would be fun: it can a little bit of a bummer to go into a pregnancy with all the fun name decisions already made.

Glancing over your list, the only name that catches my eye is Linnea—but your husband hates it, so I don’t think that’s worth pursuing, unless you think he dismissed it without really thinking about it. Nicole does seem too 1980s to me, or even too 1970s, and also seems too similar to Colton/Cole.

I love Corinna Noelle. How does your husband feel about it? It might be necessary to first get him in the right frame of mind: if he’s full-steam-ahead with the name Kyla, he might not be seriously considering new candidates. You’ll know better than I will the right way to reset his thinking, but with Paul I would say, “I know we pretty much decided on Kyla. But it’s been awhile since we decided on that, and I will feel more certain about it if we can first seriously consider other options. So what I’d like us to do is act like we have NOT decided on Kyla, or even pretend that something happened and now we CAN’T use the name Kyla, and give some serious thought to other options.”

A name similar to Kyla (though perhaps, as with Kayla, similar in ways that don’t appeal) is Lila. And that makes me think of the other rhyming options: Isla, Myla, Nyla.

Another similar-but-maybe-in-the-wrong-way option: Kaya. I think the spelling/pronunciation issues might be a bit of a headache.

My daughter is friends with a Kyra, but that one is constantly mispronounced (KY-ra or KEER-a?) and misspelled (Kira).

And another in this same theme of similar-but-maybe-in-the-wrong-way: Kiley.

Clara is an option that shares a surprising number of sounds with Kyla, considering how different the two names are.

I wonder if you would like Brielle? I thought of it when I saw Noelle and Nicole.

Name update:

Hi Swistle!

So I have a three-months-late baby update for you. Baby Kyla Morgan was born on December 22nd at 12:02pm, weighing in at 7lbs 12oz. We decided to keep Kyla Morgan as we had originally planned because after so long Kyla just felt like our baby.

That being said, we have definitely heard “Kayla” a few times. Most notably, my mother-in-law and father-in-law called her Kayla multiple times over the first couple days of her life! I gritted my teeth and my husband firmly corrected them and we haven’t heard it from them again.

Thanks to you and your readers for mulling this over with me!

And of course, attached is a photo of Kyla Morgan at three months old!

Stephanie