Hi Swistle!
I wrote to you when we were pregnant with our second (baby boy, Theodore). We are currently expecting our third in September, and we are fairly certain of the baby’s first name for each gender. However, I wanted an opinion on the middle.
Our 4 year old daughter is Adeline Elizabeth (Elizabeth for my middle as well as my mom). Our 2 year old son is Theodore (nicknamed Theo) Justus (for my dad and my grandpa). When we were pregnant with Theo, my husband didn’t want a namesake (other than giving our kiddos his surname). Since then, he’s changed his mind and would like to pass down his name (Ryan) as a middle. I’m completely fine and supportive of that. If it’s a boy, his name will be Henry (nicknamed Hank) Ryan.

My question is do you think, if this baby is a girl, would she mind having Ryan as a middle name? Her first name would be Eloise. So, full name would be Eloise Ryan.

When I try to imagine having Justus (my dad’s name) as my middle name, I’m not sure if I’d like it (I’m actually fairly certain that I wouldn’t like it). However, Ryan seems to be an easier name for a girl to carry than Justus. We’ve always preferred traditionally feminine names for girls, so maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time with this.

We would like more kids (ideally 4 total), so it’s possible we could get another future son. However, nothing’s guaranteed, and this is important to my husband. What do you think? Should we use Ryan as a middle regardless of gender for #3?

Thank you for any advice or opinions,
Katie

I think part of the issue is that Ryan is an easier name for a girl to carry than Justus (though I think Justice would work nicely for either boys or girls), but I think an even bigger part of the issue is that naming trends have changed to better allow for it. When I was a child, I would have been fairly appalled to have a “boy name” as my middle name, but then as I grew up there was that whole fad of girls on TV being called Sam and Alex and Teddy and Frankie, and then the whole thing felt different. I think NOW if I had a “boy name” as my middle name, I’d think it was pretty cool—depending on the middle name (e.g., Wesley yes, Robert no, James yes, Paul no). In any case, the name Ryan is familiar enough for girls that it wouldn’t surprise me at all as a middle name even WITHOUT the honor name situation, and I think it sounds nice with Eloise.

But if you’re quite sure you’d like to have another baby after this one, I think I would save the name Ryan. My reason has less to do with whether Ryan works for a girl, and more to do with keeping sibling names comparable. If Adeline Elizabeth has a fully feminine name with honor names after women, and Theodore Justus has a fully masculine name with honor names after men, it feels most pleasing to me that a baby girl named Eloise should have a fully feminine name with honor names after women. (I suggest Katherine, so that each daughter has one of your names.) I’m not saying it’s crucial, or that I think it’s a huge big deal—only that it would be my own choice because of being pleasingly consistent. If this baby is a girl, and then you are expecting a fourth child who will likely be your last child, THEN I’d say use Ryan as the middle name no matter what—because at that point, the part about being pleasingly consistent loses out to the priority of getting to use the name.

Name update:

Hi Swistle!
Thank you for your advice and everyone’s input on our middle name question. We decided to go for it and use my husband’s name regardless of gender. We did end up with a little girl, so Eloise Ryan was born on September 26. We all like her a lot. :)
Thanks again!
Katie

Hi, Swistle! I love, love, love names and am excited to finally be able to write to you! Apologies in advance for going on at great length.

I’m Stephanie (usually Steph to people who know me well), he’s Jacob (Jake to everyone except government authorities); our last name sounds like Angle, but with an E instead of an A. We’re expecting our first child, a boy, in April. We’re lucky in that we seem to have generally similar name tastes—we like established, traditional-but-not-too-boring, old-man-but-not-TOO-old-man names. But doesn’t everyone these days? My taste leans slightly fustier than Jake’s—his initial favorites were Jack and Joseph, which are perfectly lovely, classic names but just don’t sound very fresh to me anymore.

After lots of negotiation, we’ve narrowed down our list to four first names:

August: By far J’s favorite. My least favorite (though I do like it quite a bit, or it wouldn’t be on the list at all!). J thinks he can sway me with the fact that this is a “family name” on my mother’s side—well, yes, it does appear in my family tree, but the most recent relative named August was my grandfather’s grandfather, so the association is pretty diluted by this point.

Simon: I love it, but I think I love Theodore and Wesley more, so this seems likely to get dumped.

Theodore: One of my favorites, maybe even slightly more so than Wesley. I adore either Theo or Teddy as possible nicknames (not so much Ted, but I can live with it if he chooses it himself when he’s older). One tiny issue is that my father’s beloved cat is named Teddy, but at the risk of sounding heartless—the cat is almost 13 years old, so I don’t really think it will be an issue for too much longer, you know?

Wesley: My other favorite. Extra special because it was my grandfather’s name, although that’s just sort of a nice bonus—there’s no particular reason to honor this grandfather over anyone else. Problems: J tends to pronounce it Wezley, whereas I prefer Wessley (he says he can train himself to pronounce it my way…); J can’t stop quoting “Shut up, Wesley!” from Star Trek.

For a middle name, I’d really like to use my maiden name (now my own middle name), @nderson. My parents gave me my mother’s maiden name as my birth middle name, so it feels like a meaningful continuation to me. However, J isn’t crazy about surnames as anything but surnames (I don’t care for them as first names myself). I think if I “let” him have August as the first name, he would let me use @nderson in the middle; ironically, I don’t love the combination August @nderson and would probably be more inclined to choose something else to go with August. If he “lets” me have Wesley, I’ll probably have to give up @nderson as a concession, since Wesley is already a family name for me. Other family names (from both sides) that we would consider as middle names are Miller (my mom’s maiden), Jack (J’s paternal grandfather’s middle), Joseph (J’s dad, also J’s maternal grandfather’s middle), and Eric (my dad—I don’t really care for his name, though, unfortunately). We don’t want two middle names.

Other boy names that made our original list but were rejected for various reasons (mostly because J liked them a lot less than I did!): Basil, Caleb, Calvin, Colin, Felix, Gabriel, Gideon, Henry, Hugo, Leo, Liam, Lucas, Luke, Milo, Noah, Oliver, Oscar, Owen, Philip, Sebastian. We actually LOVE the name Basil but ultimately decided against it, mostly because I really don’t like the sing-songy matching endings in Basil Angle. I also love Jacob! But neither of us wanted a Jake Junior, not to mention the fact that the extreme popularity was a concern. And I ruled out a lot of E names because I generally don’t care for the alliteration with our last name, and any name ending in s because it would honestly drive me crazy to see people constantly misusing apostrophes with it!

We’re hoping to have one more child eventually. We found out this baby’s sex quite early, so we never really even discussed girl names, but for reference, some of the girl names I love are Amelia, Cora, Eleanor, Elizabeth or Elisabeth, Jane, Julia, Margaret, Mary, Miranda, Penelope, Rose or Rosemary, Simone, Sylvia or Silvia… If I had to choose right now, I would probably push for Margaret, to recall both my mother’s name (Martha) and her mother’s (Margery). And J would probably end up conceding, since my mother passed away when I was only in my mid-20s and he knows how important honoring her is to me. (I really, really wish I liked the name Martha itself, but even my old-fashioned leanings only go so far.)

Well! That was a lot of information—I hope not too much! Just typing it all out has helped me realize that I think MY number one choice would be Theodore @nderson Angle-with-an-E. But if J doesn’t go for that, what other combinations would you or the readers suggest? Are there any concerns with any of our names or combinations thereof that I haven’t thought of? Do any other amazing names that we’ve overlooked come to mind?

Thank you so much for your time! I so appreciate your thoughts, and I promise to write with an update after he’s born!

Cheers,

Steph

I will start with this: that your email has set off in me a giant tower of flame on the topic of men who confidently use their own family surname for every single child, but act all MEH about using the wife’s family surname even as a middle name for one child. HOLY BATS. Do I understand correctly that (1) you have given up your own family surname in order to take your husband’s family surname and (2) you have further agreed that all of your equally-related-to-both-sides-of-the-family children will have HIS family’s surname? I am about ready to PASS A LAW saying that men in this situation should BEND OVER BACKWARDS to make concessions that allow the wife’s family surname (and/or other family honor names) to be used in some way. (And I hope you will all forgive the usage of words such as husband and wife and man and woman in this rant, since obviously this is an issue that can happen to any set of parents, but BOY it really feels to me as if this is a HETERO MALE HUSBAND issue more than anything else.)

I’d like to say /rant, but I’m not sure I’m done. I am not sure why this particular letter is the one that pushed me right over the edge; it’s a matter of accumulation and timing rather than specific content. I am so annoyed that anyone who gives up such a GIANT PIECE OF FAMILY IDENTITY would have to fight AT ALL to get a LITTLE BIT of it passed on to her OWN CHILDREN. Oh, your husband doesn’t LOVE the style of surname-names? SUCK IT UP, HUSBAND BUTTERCUP.

This is not “a surname name,” it’s YOUR FAMILY SURNAME. You should not have to give him his family’s surname AND his first choice of first name in order to get your family surname included anywhere at all.

Here, I have a suggestion, and this is easy since you’re on Baby #1: if he dislikes surname names SO MUCH that your family’s surname cannot be used even as a MIDDLE NAME for ONE child without bargaining and negotiation, then let’s switch over to YOUR family surname. He can take your family surname for himself too if he likes, his choice, but all the children will have YOUR family surname. There! That can be the deal: he gets his preference for no surname names in the first/middle positions, and you get your preference for your family being included in SOME TINY WAY. AAAGGHHHHHHHHH I AM SO ANNOYED RIGHT NOW

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All right. All right. I have had a cup of coffee and a raspberry danish, and I am ready to address the rest of the letter.

Let’s just start by saying I kick out of the arena his “Wah, but I don’t really like surname names” objection. Really. I don’t want to hear any more about it. I’m surprised he can make himself say the words at all. I’m surprised he isn’t the one who CAME UP WITH the idea to use your family surname. “Oh, honey, no, don’t give up your surname just to honor the patriarchy. …Oh, you think it’s the best of the bad options? Well, if you really think so. But then I think we should AT LEAST use your family name as a second middle name for all the kids—and let’s choose honor names from your side of the family. And also please allow me to express my immense gratitude at this sacrifice of

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Okay, cool washcloth applied.

From your list of four, it looks to me as if Theodore is the best choice: most loved overall, fewest issues overall. If you choose August just to get your family name as a middle name, I QUIT. I QUIT THE WHOLE NAMING BUSINESS. I QUIT ALL OF LIFE. I

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Wesley is a great choice, and if it was the top favorite for both of you, I’d say go for it. But I’m remembering when I loved the name Hope, and within thirty seconds of me mentioning it, Paul had made about eight hope-related jokes/references, and I thought “We can’t live this way.” I would want to keep Wesley on the contender list, but your husband’s surname honors your husband’s family, so I don’t think using Wesley should rule out using your surname as a middle name. In fact, I don’t really think at this point that ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD should rule out

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I agree with you that the cat-named-Teddy thing is just fine. We had an older cat named Oliver when I was pregnant with my youngest, and Oliver was a name high on our both-love list. We both thought that would be fine—a little funny, but that’s all. You’ll take a few pictures of “Teddy and Teddy,” and it will be adorbs. Theodore @nderson Angle. Lovely.

Another thing I like about it is that all the other names on your list go so well with it. Perhaps the name August will grow on you even more, and a second boy could be August Wesley. Teddy and Gus (*HEART EYES*).

The only only only reason I can think of for not using your family surname as this baby’s middle name is that you might prefer to save it in case the second child is a girl. It feels particularly sweet to me to pass on that tradition: you have your mother’s maiden name as your middle, and your daughter would have yours as hers. Theodore Wesley Angle and Margaret @nderson Angle.

Name update!

Hi, Swistle! I’m able to send you an update much sooner than I’d expected, because Baby Boy Angle-with-an-E decided to surprise us by arriving on March 25, a full month before he was due! We hadn’t made much more progress on his name by that point, so we took our list of four to the hospital and spent a day and a half trying to figure out who he was. But none of those four felt quite right, so we scrapped them all and started over again.

Eventually it occurred to us that March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation, which inspired us to take another look at Gabriel–which had been on our original long list but gotten tossed for trivial reasons back when we were tossing just for the sake of narrowing down the options. And since our last name even means “angel” in German, it seemed meant to be (although hopefully subtle enough to not be obnoxiously cutesy!). So our boy is Gabriel @nderson Angle-with-an-E, and we love it. (The initials GAE did give me pause for a moment, but the name feels so perfect otherwise that we decided to not care–it’s a statement *against* homophobia, anyway, because “gay” isn’t an insult. :) )

Thanks so much again to you and the commenters for all the fun conversation!

Cheers,
Steph