Hi Swistle!

My husband and I are expecting our first baby in mid June. We’re both from large families and are hoping for around 6 of our own.

We’re fairly traditional in terms of taste in names, but like the more unused classics. I’d say that our theme is “British Parliament:” names that sound like they could belong within old, established English families. Our last name is English/Scottish and rhymes with Eaves, starting with R.

The problem is that we’d like to name the baby after my husband, if he’s a boy. His name is Tyler James, and though I’m okay with having a junior, I’m having trouble deciding what to call him so he’ll fit in with the names we’d like to give future children (i.e. a brother named Winston). Tyler is too ’90s to me, not to mention confusing around the house but I’m not a big fan of calling him James, because of a negative association and because of the double S sound when you add in our last name. I’d be okay with nicknames for James, just not TJ or JT.

Would love your thoughts and advice- chances are, even if this baby is a girl, we’ll run into our “junior” situation one day!

All the best,

Madeleine

The more I work on baby-naming questions and issues, the more I notice that SO MUCH of choosing names boils down to making choices that eliminate other choices. On one hand, of course that’s what it boils down to: when you choose one name, you are not-choosing all the others. But it took me a long time to realize that the same thing happens with preferences, and with style categories, and so forth: certain choices rule out other choices.

Your letter is an excellent example: you want to use traditional/British/classic names, AND you want to have a junior, AND you want sibling names to coordinate. Because your husband’s name is a modern surname name and not at all traditional, British, or classic, something’s got to go: the three preferences can’t all be met. You can have a junior, and also give the rest of your children British Parliament names, if you give up the preference for sibling-name coordination. Or you can have sibling-name coordination and British Parliament names, if you give up the preference of having a junior. Or you can have sibling name coordination and a junior, if you give up the preference for British Parliament names. The trick is to choose which element of the three is least important to you.

Doesn’t that sound simple? But we know it isn’t, not at all. For one thing, the desire for a junior may not be evenly spread between you. You mention that “we’d” like to name the baby after your husband, but then you say you’re “okay with” that. So it may be that of the three elements that can’t co-exist, your husband would rank “having a junior” as most important, and you would mark it as least important.

The proposed solution seems to be to give your husband a junior—but then never call the child by any of his own names, because those names are not your style and/or have negative associations. This is where I start to ask just how important it is to have a junior, and WHY it is so important: at the point where you are giving a child names you don’t like and won’t use, the price of having a junior seems too high for the value received. At some point I think the line needs to be drawn: “We wanted this, and under different circumstances we could have had it, but in these actual circumstances it is not going to work even if we try to force it. It is sad, but there it is.”

It is probably increasingly clear that my own vote for least-important element is the junior. But if there is no getting around that, then my vote is to name him Tyler James and call him James. James goes just fine with names such as Winston: it may be plainer and/or more common than you’d prefer, but the style coordinates and doesn’t clash. The concern about the repeating S sound seems so minor compared to the other issues at stake here, I think it’s a well-worthwhile trade: a minor preference abandoned so that you can keep all three major ones.

Only you know if you can get past the negative association you have with the name James. But it seems to me that if you don’t like the first name and you have a negative association with the middle name, that brings us back to the idea that sadly it is just not going to work to have a junior in this situation. Perhaps your husband could be mollified by using Tyler as the middle name for one child and James as the middle name for another.

Name update:

Hi Swistle,

You (and your incredible readers!) helped us out on your December 28th ’15 post. We had our baby boy on June 21st and named him Tyler James. So far he’s being called Jay and James and we’re both happy with our choice!

You eloquently explained the issue of conflicting preferences in names and led us to some meaningful discussions for priorities in naming our brood, so thank you for that. We are also planning on using some of the terrific suggestions for names in the comments for future kids, so thanks to all!

Madeleine

Hi Swistle!

I have been reading your blog for years, and my husband and I are thrilled to be expecting our first baby in May – a girl! We compiled a large list of names and have narrowed it down to five, but none seem to stand out.

If we were having a boy, his name would be William. The popularity of the name bothers me a bit, but it is a family name, so I feel we can make an exception. I also like Charles. We would like to keep William as an option for a future boy, and we hope to have two to three children, although after IVF we know nothing is guaranteed.

Our finalists are:
Margaret
Camilla
Eleanor
Juliet
Rosalie

Names I love but my husband vetoed include Anna, Grace and Lydia. Names my husband loves but I vetoed include Eliza and Amelia. Our last name is Peters@n.

Our top joint picks from this list would probably be Eleanor and Camilla. We both love Eleanor but I am quite concerned about it’s rapidly rising popularity. Camilla is nice as well, although perhaps a bit too “royal” with a potential brother named William? I love Margaret (nn Greta), but I don’t know that I can get my husband fully on board. He has a negative association with another common nickname for Margaret.

We would love the opinion of you and your readers. Nothing seems as perfect or obvious as William for a boy!

I do think Camilla with William has a strong royal feeling—particularly if you may also want to use Charles. William itself is so diluted through common usage that it doesn’t seem too royal on its own (even, I think, with another common-and-also-royal name such as Margaret or Henry), but for many of us, royal Camilla is a strong association. In addition, Camilla and William have a lot of shared sounds, including the entire -ill- sound. In fact, each name has only one unshared letter.

I wonder if you’d like the name Millicent. It’s similar to Camilla, but loses the royal association and gains some different sounds. It has the sweet nickname Milly/Millie.

Felicity is another option, and seems similar in sound and style to many of the names on your list.

Or Cecily.

Margaret and Juliet make me think of Violet.

If possible, I think you shouldn’t let the increasing popularity of the name Eleanor scare you off. It’s a lovely name, and I think it goes very well with your surname and with potential future brothers William and Charles.

Would you like Eloise? It’s similar to Eleanor and Eliza.

Name update:

Swistle,

I have been meaning to write as our little one is over five weeks old! We went with Eleanor, despite the rising popularity. I only had a mild meltdown when the 2015 social security list was released and Eleanor continued its rapid ascent. :) We are calling her Eleanor or Leni, which helps alleviate some of the popularity of Elle, Ellie, and Nora.

At the end of the day, Eleanor was the name we truly loved, and if we are lucky enough to have more children, I feel it pairs well with William and our other top choices. Thanks to you and your readers for your thoughtful comments!

Hi Swistle!

I have always loved thinking of baby names and have always been the person analyzing other people’s choices. Usually, I say, that’s so plain-Jane, so normal/overused/(s)he’ll be the 5th kid in class with that name. Now that I’m expecting for the first time and I actually have to come with up with real names, I’m finding it very difficult. To make it difficult further, my husband and I are expecting twins sometime in February 2016 and we aren’t finding out the gender, meaning we need 4 solid name choices that we love – two boys, two girls.

Our last name is long and mispronounced/misspelled 99.9% of the time – it’s French, though we have mostly Irish heritage. It’s pronounced Dee-Rose-Shures. My first name is Eileen and my husband is Kyle.

So far, for one boy, we love the name Sutton. We’ll probably use James as a middle name to honor my grandfather. Sutton James, I really like this name. I know people are using it for girls now, but I prefer it on a boy. I just hope there aren’t other Sutton’s in his class, but I think it’s getting more and more popular.

Other boy names on my list are:
Keegan (husband likes)
Boden (husband likes)
Brecken (husband doesn’t like)

Girl’s names are hard for me. If I had to pick two boys names today, I could. I don’t feel like I could for girls though.

If I had to pick one right now, I’d pick Delaney. My husband likes this name, too. We’d probably name her Delaney Jane, Jane is my mother’s middle name. Delaney Jane.

Other girl names on my list are:
Henley (my maiden name starts with Henn – I like that Henley shares the beginning of that, but I’ve been getting negative reactions from some, and positive reactions from others. My husband likes it but I’m not sold 100% on it)
Arden
Emerson (but too popular?)
Madigan (again, husband and I both like it but I’ve seen lots of bad reviews on it – “it sounds like MAD AGAIN” “it sounds ugly” “it means little dog”)

I feel all over the place with my girl names, but what it comes down to is I prefer stronger names for my girl(s), not girly-girl names.

Then there’s the issue of matching a boy name with a girl name if we have a boy and a girl. I feel overwhelmed! Help!

Thank you!

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

I wrote you a while back for advice on naming our gender-Unknown twins and got some great feedback from your readers. I ended up giving birth at 37 weeks to two healthy fraternal twin boys!

Naming them was quite easy as we had decided we really had our two top boy names that we absolutely loved. If they had been girls I don’t think we would have had such an easy time naming them.

We named our baby A, Sutt0n James and our baby B, Keeg@n Patrick (Patrick is my husband’s middle name and they share the same initials!)

We are so happy with their names and we think they fit these boys perfectly. I had a really rough pregnancy and swore off any other pregnancies throughout but the second our boys were born I knew I wanted to have more! I’ve already been thinking about names to go with these boys in the future, hopefully someday in the future I’ll be writing back to you to name their sibling!!

Thanks!