Dear Swistle,

I’m Kristy Mitchell, and I’m currently pregnant with my first child. I’m taking a different path than most, as I’m 35+ and single, and this pregnancy is the result of many (intentional) tries, eventually needing medical assistance using donor sperm. I’m due around Thanksgiving, and am waiting to find out the sex of the baby at delivery.

It’s early, but I love names, and am enjoying thinking about what names might be great for this child. If it’s a girl my current favorites are Matilda, Magdalene, Greta, Hazel and Calliope, likely paired with the middle name Louise, a family name. I haven’t had trouble with this list but I’m stumped for ideas for a baby boy – and bounce wildly between things that seem great one day, and then sound awful the next.

I like Oscar, Barnaby, Julian, Calvin and Ezra, but they don’t seem to hit me the same way day to day. Benjamin, Samuel, Owen and Cedric also keep coming up, but something about them keeps them from coming to the top of the list. The current front runners for a middle name are Linwood or Samuel, family names.

I have two firm requirements, though they may seem a bit odd. Mitchell seems like it’s as common a first name as it is a last name around here, so I’d like to avoid a name that is “a last name first” because the idea of a kid trying to correct someone about which name is his first/last name seems like it’d be a pain. And, as someone who sees a lot of names in my work, I sometimes fear I’ll mix it up and say the wrong name first. (Ross Mitchell or Mitchell Ross?) The second is that I’d like it to be googleable, meaning that I want to look it up and see that someone else already has the name. I know that I like being able to be somewhat “hidden” in the world of social media and so I’d like to avoid something so unique that he’d be the only one. (That there already is a Barnaby Mitchell was a pleasant surprise!) (I’d got with Barnaby in a heartbeat, but I hate the nickname Barney, so it’s not as ideal as I want it to be.)

Do you or your readers have any thoughts for additional names to add to my list?
Thank you!!!

Normally I am pretty set on the idea that if the parent hates the nickname for a name, the name may not be a good choice: nicknames are easier to avoid than they used to be, but the child might still choose to use it. I think fairly often of my friend Liz, whose parents named her Elizabeth so they could call her Beth; they hated (and still hate) the nickname Liz, and she feels 100% like a Liz and 0% like an Elizabeth or a Beth. It’s a problem.

But I don’t think of Barney as a nickname for Barnaby. Perhaps it IS. Perhaps I will look it up right now and see that Barney in fact originates as a nickname for Barnaby. But I’d never connected the two names. I think of them as having sounds in common, but being as separate as Harvey and Harry, or as Isabella and Isla, or Belinda and Bea, or Georgiana and Gena, or Randolph and Ralph, or Archibald and Arnold.

Well. Indeed, looking it up in The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, I see Barney listed as a pet name of Barnaby/Barnabus, so it IS just that I personally didn’t connect them, and not that they’re not connected. This is like the other day when Hank Green realized for the first time that Barbie’s full name was Barbara. This is an upsetting turn of events. I’m not sure what to advise. I suppose for now, we will move on to other choices.

I think it’s possible that one or more of the names on your list WILL rise to the top as the months go by. But here are the names that the names on your list make me think of:

Alistair
Edmund
Elliot
Emmett
Everett
Felix
Franklin
Frederick
George
Harvey
Henry
Hugo
Ian
Isaac
Joel
Karl
Leo
Louis
Malcolm
Milo
Nolan
Oliver
Sebastian
Simon
Theodore
Wesley

Some of these may be too last-name, but it was hard to find the line (Calvin is also a surname, for example), so when in doubt, I included it.

Name update!

My daughter arrived a month ago, and though I’d spent the last few weeks of my pregnancy referring to the baby (to myself) as a Greta or Gus, it was clear that she wasn’t a Greta. 36h of trying names on, looking through your site and others, and fending off lots of hospital staff and well meaning friends who wanted to know what her name was,  I settled on Maggie Louise – which fits her perfectly.

If you’d told me that it would have entailed all of that (the process, the time) I would have denied it and laughed,  but my indecision surprised me. It was worth it though – I don’t regret keeping my selections to myself and picking a name that wasn’t on my original list.

Thank you for your advice and for all of the comments – they were invaluable!

Dear Swistle,

We are currently expecting our third, a little girl, who is due at the End of August. We already have two boys, Wayne Morrison is six and Jerry Wyatt is four years old. We are very happy with our name choices. We like that both Wayne and Jerry are familiar, but so rare that we never encounter them in their age group. Only occasionally someones grandfather or great-grandfather will go by these names.

We liked the name Mary for both of our kids if they had been girls, but now it is out because it is too similar to Jerry. We also liked the name Ella back then, but now realize that it is hugely popular at the moment. We like old-fashioned names, and apparently everybody else does, too! So I think we were very lucky with our boys’ names, but it makes choosing a girl’s name very difficult.

Names my husband doesn’t like, but I do, are Mona, Adele and Trudy. He suggested Brooke, which feels too modern for my taste. If this baby were a boy, we propbably would have named him Edwin, or maybe Morgan. Last name is Cooper-with-an-H. My name is Anna, and my husband’s name is Nicholas.

Please help! We are running out of ideas.

Anna

Brooke definitely feels like a style misfit to me with Wayne and Jerry. Your choices of Mona and Trudy seem right-on (I’m particularly keen on Trudy), but of course that doesn’t help if your husband doesn’t like those names. More possibilities:

Belinda
Bess
Bonnie
Colleen
Diane
Eileen
Ellen
Ginny
Helen
Jean
Joan
Judith
June
Kay
Lois
Mabel
Marcy
Marian
Milly
Myra
Nancy
Peggy
Sally
Susan

I’m especially fond of Sally from this list. Wayne, Jerry, and Sally.

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

Thanks again for all the great ideas.
We ended up narrowing it down to Betty, Agnes, Martha, Robin and Sally, which we all loved. We took a few hours to rethink it all, looking at her little face, and ended up naming her Martha Shirley. We are all in love with her and her name, and Wayne and Jerry are very excited to be big brothers.

Thank you!