Author Archives: Swistle

Baby Naming Issue: An Ex Used One of Our Finalist Names

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Hi Swistle,

I have been a long time reader of your blog. Love it! I’m also a baby name fanatic.

I had written you previously about naming our second baby girl. Her name is Amelia. Today I see through some photos a friend posted on Facebook that an ex of mine is having a baby girl. He and his wife has chosen our second choice name. The name that we ultimately did not choose. But I can’t help this feeling of having been stolen from. It isn’t as if they knew this name was at the top of our list, a frontrunner, a favorite name. They have without knowing stolen this name from me.

I know this is not your typical baby naming issue but I am hoping you may have some advice for me. I think in the way way way back of my mind I was hoping to ‘save’ the name for a future daughter. Is this name off the table? Am I forbidden to use it? We have quite an overlap of friends and social circles.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

 

The short answer is that you are not forbidden to use it, but that I would indeed say it is off the table.

There are times when I would emphasize to parents that names are multi-use items (there are many other people named Amelia, for example, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t use the name Amelia), and I would add that duplication can be fun.

This is not one of those times. THIS falls into a different category, where the use of a particular name is packed with so much symbolism and/or so many potential issues, it causes me to flip right over to the “There are so many other names to choose from; why choose THIS one?” side of the name-duplication argument. If you and your ex had each named a daughter the same name inadvertently and unknowingly, that would be awkward enough; I think it would be a very poor idea to do it knowingly. It might be a useful mental exercise to imagine how it would feel if your ex named his new baby Amelia, knowing you had used the name already.

I think what is needed at this point is Coping Thoughts: thoughts to make yourself feel better about the loss of the name. One is this part of your letter: “I think in the way way way back of my mind I was hoping to ‘save’ the name for a future daughter.” After my first read-through of the letter, I was feeling as if the name in question was your chosen first-choice name if you had another girl later on; after re-reading, it sounds more as if that idea to use the rejected name for a future daughter didn’t fully occur to you until after you saw that your ex was going to use it. I wonder if the issue is more that it was very startling to see your second-choice name on an ex’s child, combined with the natural human feeling of wanting something more when it is no longer available.

Another Coping Thought is that it’s very possible that, if your ex hadn’t used the name, you wouldn’t have used it either. Many parents find that by the time the next baby comes along, they’ve cooled on previous finalists or have discovered new favorites.

If I’ve correctly assumed that your ex’s baby is not yet born, there is also a slim possibility that they won’t use the name either. (This could be a False Hope Thought rather than a Coping Thought.)

It is also of course a possibility that you will not have a third daughter, and so the issue won’t come up at all. This is more a Coping Thought for the future: looking back, you may be able to say, “We wouldn’t have been able to use the name anyway.”

I’m finding it interesting to wonder about the other names on your ex’s list. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they had Amelia on their list, and had to scramble for a new favorite?

Baby Name to Consider: Ferris

58 Replies

Hi Swistle,

I have recently fell in love with the name Ferris. I think it’s fun and spunky and mischevious and that’s exactly the personality I’ve seen from our baby whilst in utero. It’s rare, unusual name without sounding too bizarre to our older relatives. I think Ferris John M@rino the perfect name for our child, if our child is a boy.

While my husband also loves the name Ferris, he’s concerned about the association with Ferris Bueller and that our child will get “Bueller? Bueller?” for his whole life and that people will think we named our baby after a movie character. I don’t think the Bueller connection is a bad one. I actually think it’s kind of fun! And we do love the character and the movie and the idea of slowing down and enjoying the world around you. I totally get that our child will hear about Ferris Bueller from my generation and older, I don’t see that as a bad thing.

My husband prefers the name Lindon John M@rino, which I also like but it doesn’t have the same sparkle and excitement to me. My heart is set on Ferris – How can I convince him??

For reference, if the baby is a girl, she will be Ruby Diane. My name is Meredith and my husband is Jay. Other names that we liked but eventually decided against for boys are: Shepard, Perry, Calvin, Cameron, Brooks, Ian, Darcy and Edwin.

Baby M@rino is due in 4 weeks. Please help Swistle!

Thank you!
Meredith

 

I have an instant, strong, positive, nearly exclusive association with Ferris Bueller. I also think of Ferris wheels.

Although the association is positive, a quick field test at my house showed a nearly universal impulse to say “Bueller?… Bueller?” in that familiar flat Ben Stein voice. Paul also immediately said, “Save Ferris!” I do think those knee-jerk movie-quote reactions could get tiresome.

As an aside, re-reading this post, I realized it’s interesting the association is positive. It’s a tribute to the charm of the actor and character that a movie in which a person repeatedly ditches his obligations, lies to and manipulates his parents (so successfully and so long-term that they think they have a completely different kid), pressures and manipulates others to do things against their will, steals a car, takes over a parade in a successful yet behavior-worrisome way, etc., still ends up leaving an impression about slowing down and enjoying life. It’s that famous quote, I think, the one that so many people used (and probably still use) under their senior pictures.

I think if I were set on the name, I might consider it as a perfect fun middle name. John Ferris M@rino is handsome. You could even call him John Ferris: I think double names are fun, and can spruce up a name such as John.

Or you could just go with it, accepting the mentioned downsides as part of the package deal of the name. “YES, after the guy in the movie: we love him, and we love the whole message of that movie.” “Yes. Ha ha. Bueller. I see what you did there.”

 

 

Name update!

Dear Swistle,

Thank you so much for helping with our naming dilemma! You and the commentors were so helpful and encouraging. We had not considered hyphenating our son’s name like you suggested but in the end, it made perfect sense.

Our son, John-Ferris Edwin, was born on June 28, 2015.

We have received so many compliments on his name and very few Ferris Bueller comments.

Thank you Swistle!

Meredith

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Baby Boy Webb, Brother to Grayson; Two -son Names?

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We have another little boy coming soon and are having difficulties choosing a name for him that corresponds with our first boy, Grayson Michael. We cut out all one syllable first names because they sound too choppy with our surname. We just loved the name Grayson for our first and Michael is a family name after my father. Our names are Jordan and Amanda, to give you an idea of the flow of our names. We have cut down our list to two favorites so far that we can both agree on – Jackson and Maddox.

If we went with Jackson, then the middle name would be Taylor (my husband’s middle name). Hubby loves this name as he feels it is a strong name for a boy. We would use “Jax” as a nickname, as I am not a fan of Jack. If he decides to go by that when he gets older then so be it, but as a childhood nickname I would call him “Jax”. I love the name Jackson and it was actually one of my favorites for naming our first, but at that time hubby didn’t love it. Now he has surprised himself by having it as his number one name. My issue with it comes in the ending. Since we already have a Grayson (who actually IS called Grayson and not Gray-which I don’t particularly care for), does Jackson sound too similar to Grayson since they both end in –son? Grayson and Jackson…? Along those same lines, we will likely have another child at some point and if that child ends up being another boy then are we backed into a corner with two boys already ending in –son? I think three –son’s would be too much, but would it sound odd to have one boy with a different name and two so similar? I wouldn’t be worried about it with a girl, but it’s something I think about if we had another boy.

Maddox is our other finalist and is at the top of my list right now. If I think about the names by themselves, then I probably lean towards Jackson, but I find myself favoring Maddox along with Grayson. If we went with Maddox then the middle name would be Cole. We would use “Dex” as a nickname here.

Other names we have considered:
Connor
Brodie
Gage – one syllable and sounds choppy with Webb
Grady – sounds too similar to Grayson
Harrison and Davis – cousins have already used those names
Landry – bad association for my husband
Logan – I like but hubby has shot down

Thanks for your consideration and if you had any other suggestions, then we would be happy to hear those as well!

 

If I encountered two brothers named Grayson and Jackson, I would notice the matching -son endings, but not in the way I would notice a Grayson and a Grady, or a Grayson and a Jason. It helps that Grey- and Jack- are such different sounds. It also helps that in everyday life they may be Grayson and Jax.

I think you’re smart to think ahead, though, to what that might mean to you if later you’re naming a third boy. Of course the answer to whether you’d HAVE to name a third child a -son name is no (and I agree with you that three seems like too much—though if you liked the matching, I’d be saying to go for it), but you might feel PRESSURE to do so. If I had to give it my best guess, my guess is that it would feel a little pressurey and weird while you were choosing the name and introducing the baby, but then after that it would be at most something that name hobbyists would notice. No one would think, “Grayson, Jackson, and KEATON? Guess they didn’t want that third child.”

There are several ways to get past the pressure/weirdness. One is to choose another name ending in -n or -on, which is why I used Keaton for the example: even though the names don’t have the same full ending, the ending -on helps to keep the third name from standing out.

Another way is to choose a third surname name. This looks like it will be an easy one to meet: all the names on your list are surname names.

A third way is to aim for a name of roughly the same length: close to the same number of letters, close to the same number of syllables.

None of these three things is something I think is necessary, by the way. They’re mostly self-soothing suggestions: that is, if you DO decide to use Jackson this time, and later you’re expecting a third boy and DO feel backed into a corner (especially if someone carelessly/lightly remarks, “Oh, now you’ll need a third -son name!”), you may these ideas useful for getting yourself out of the corner. It will help even more if you’re calling them Grayson and Jax: Grayson, Jax, and Brodie doesn’t seem odd at all.

Another option is to use Jackson as the middle name: you still get to use it, but it’s not causing any trouble.

I notice both finalists have a strong X sound. I wonder if you would like other names with an X sound. I’d look for X itself, but also for -ks and -cs:

Baxter
Brooks
Ericson
Felix
Lennox
Maksim/Maxim
Maxon/Maxson
Maxton
Paxton
Xavier

 

 

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

We welcomed Maddox Cole Webb to our family in October. We love the name we decided on for our little boy and thank all of you for your thoughts and suggestions. We had made the decision that we were okay with the similar ending of Jackson, but Maddox just began to roll off our tongue and we fell in love with it! Now we couldn’t imagine him being anything else!

General Baby Name Discussion

267 Replies

I was happy to be able to post a name update this morning. I don’t know about you, but I am feeling discouraged by the low percentage of name updates. I don’t know what the solution is. I used to email parents and ASK for the updates, but (1) that involves a fair amount of tracking due dates and writing emails, and (2) after not one but TWO very sad replies to such emails, I didn’t want to ask anymore. Imagine nagging a parent for something as trivial as a name update when that parent is grieving, and then that parent has to RESPOND to the nagging email. Let’s never do that again, was my feeling.

Well. I should post a question for us to answer but I don’t feel like it today: I’m restless, and overwhelmed with kid birthday-party stuff. Let’s just have a general baby-name discussion. Just, anything you want to say about baby names, go ahead and start it with a comment, and we can all skim through and see what we want to join in on. Probably we should not start a discussion where we trash other people’s name choices, but anything else we want to talk about.

I’ll go first. I recently had a fun discussion with my sister-in-law about what other middle names our babies could have had. I thought it would have been fun if my niece’s middle name had been my sister-in-law’s sister’s name, and I was also wondering what middle name they would have chosen for my nephew if they hadn’t decided to go with a naming tradition, and we discussed the possibilities for awhile. Then I mentioned a couple of whimsical middle names (Marigold, Fern, etc.) I would have liked to consider for Elizabeth if we hadn’t used Paul’s previous first-choice name (he was willing to switch to the new favorite, but couldn’t quite let go of his old favorite). And what middle names we might have used instead of honor names, if we’d decided against honor names.

We also talked about what other names the twins could have been. One combination I think would have worked well was John and Genevieve. I like that they have the same starting sound, but still have different initials. And although it can be hard to imagine children having different names, both names seem like possible fits. (Some, like Eric and Bianca, I really can’t picture.)

Here’s another possible topic. What are we going to do with all the names we start loving AFTER we’ve named all our babies? Will we have to start giant doll collections or something? I was thinking it might be fun to frame each name and make a collection on the wall; it would be easy to take down ones we no longer liked, and put up fresh ones. “Wow, are these all family members or something?,” a guest might ask. “No, no—just my favorite baby names,” we’d reply placidly.