Stephanie writes:

I need your help….again!  You and your readers gave me the push I needed to name our last baby, and you addressed a naming quandary I was worried about early in a previous pregnancy [naming a second son after someone when the first son already had a name honoring the same relative].  Sadly, that pregnancy ended in a loss.  Ecstatically, we are finally expecting our third child, due December 15, but expected to be early.  We just found out that this baby is a girl, so that eliminates the previous honor name quandary, but introduces a different one!

We have a son Thomas (family surname) M. and a daughter, Audrey Kathryn M.  Both middle names are our middle names, with my son’s middle name going back several generations as a middle name. Our naming style is traditional (that less common spelling of Katherine is my mother’s fault :) ), and we have a short list of candidates from before. We are not in love with them, but DH hates most female names. I can live with this though.  The issue now, is the middle name.  I desperately want (need) to honor my grandmother here.  The reasons are highly emotionally tied to her death shortly after my daughter’s birth and the two losses we suffered last year.  So, what’s the issue?  Her name was, well, not our style.  D0nna Je@n Lew1s.

Can your readers brainstorm for me?  A great classic first name and a middle name honoring my grandmother?  Candidate first names are:  Anne or Anna, Mary or Marie or some other variant.  I like Elizabeth and Margaret, but DH does not.  My favorite idea for a middle name is Lew1s or Anna Je@n but DH isn’t sold.  Naming our son was so easy! Girls are just hard for us.  Flow with the last name isn’t a big issue.

Here is what it is going to come down to: on one side of the scale is your desperate need to honor your grandmother by using her name, and on the other side of the scale is the fact that her name is not the style you’d normally choose. Which seems like a more important side of the scale? It would be completely reasonable for you to decide you’d rather choose a name you like better, and to find other ways to honor your grandmother.

It’s true the name Donna isn’t in style for today’s babies, but that’s also true of most of the names of adults we’d like to honor: each new generation kicks out of fashion most of the previous generation’s names. (Exceptions to this may find themselves with an unexpectedly high number of namesakes.) I think it’s even part of the reason namesakes are considered such an honor: it means something to sacrifice fashion for significance. If you were intent on using the name as a first name, I might reluctantly agree that it was not going to work—but in the middle name position, style seems like a very minor matter. Many of your baby’s peers will also have out-of-fashion middle names, and for similar reasons.

You could play around with names that aren’t your grandmother’s, trying to make those names honor her, but all of them will be a significant step down in honor. You could use the same initials, use a name with similar sounds or letters, use a name with a similar meaning, use one of her nicknames, combine names to make a different name, use an updated version of the name, use the name of one of your grandmother’s relatives, etc. For each possible solution, think to yourself, “Does this name bring my grandmother immediately to my mind? Would my grandmother recognize this as a tribute to her?” If yes, then they are good options.

If you called your grandmother “Grandma Lewis,” you might find that the name Lewis brings her to your mind more quickly even than her first name—though if you’re like me, it brings to mind the entire side of the family and not just one person. You could use her middle name; it’s done commonly enough. But for me, my grandparents’ middle names don’t bring my grandparents to my mind, whereas their first names do.

Each time I re-read your letter (as well as the additional part not for publication), what stands out to me is that you are not just doing this because you loved your grandmother and feel warmly about the idea of using her name, but because you NEED your daughter to have her name. So in your case, I don’t recommend any compromise names or fixes; I strongly urge you to go directly for the name Donna. I recommend saying it over and over in your mind until it does that thing where words/names turn into combinations of sounds, and see if that helps you hear the sound that caused so many parents to choose the name for their daughters to begin with. You could also see if you preferred it as a double middle name: Donna Jean, or Donna Lewis. This has the additional benefit of dramatically strengthening the connection to your grandmother.

In time, whether your daughter’s middle name is to your tastes or not will, I hope, pale in comparison to the comfort and satisfaction it will bring you to be able to say to her “You were named for my grandmother,” and tell her the stories you want to tell her. And the good news is that names tend to come around again: by the time your daughter is grown, she may be like one of the current lucky women who have suddenly found that their previously-disliked middle names of Emma or Abigail are now considered wonderful.

The other comforting thought is that middle names are rarely used or thought of after the birth announcements go out. When you do think of her middle name, it will almost always be because of your grandmother—so, with feelings of love and happiness. All the rest of the time, you will be thinking of her first name, which can be something more in your style.

Anna Donna has some appeal to me, as do Maria Donna and Mary Donna, or maybe Marianne Donna or Annemarie Donna. People tend to be split on whether they like two names in a row with -a endings; I tend to be in favor. And because the honor name is so important here, I would only barely consider flow anyway.

I wish I could suggest one of my own favorite names, Eliza, but the movie My Fair Lady has forever connected Audrey Hepburn and Eliza Doolittle in my mind. Maybe Eloise would work? Eloise Donna.

I was also thinking Ella Donna sounded so beautiful to me—and then realized it was certainly because of Belladonna.

With siblings named Thomas and Audrey, I would lean heavily on the Timeless section of The Baby Name Wizard. Here are some of my favorites:

Abigail Donna
Caroline Donna
Cecily Donna
Charlotte Donna
Clara Donna
Cora Donna
Eleanor Donna
Elsa DonnaEmily Donna
Eva Donna
Eve Donna Jean
Grace Donna Jean
Greta Donna
Hope Donna Jean
Ivy Donna
Jane Donna Lewis
Josephine Donna
Julia Donna
Laura Donna
Leah Donna
Miriam Donna
Naomi Donna
Nora Donna
Rose Donna Jean
Sarah Donna

Name update! Stephanie writes:

I am certain neither of us expected this update to come so soon, but baby girl M had other plans.  She arrived two weeks ago at just 25 weeks, while we were on a vacation!  So far, Mary Lewis M. Is proving to be a tough little fighter with the feisty spunk of her namesake. We were caught off guard with having to name her before we had settled on a name.  It felt strange to use her name for at least the first week, but I’m used to it now, and we love the simplicity of her very traditional first name.  I will send a picture once she is bigger and stronger.  For now, know that we appreciated the input from you and your readers!

Katie writes:

My name is Katie and my husband Paul and I are expecting our first baby. We are having a girl and she is due on the 28th of August. Our surname is Jenkins, and the middle name will be a family name which we will most likely decide after we choose the first name. If it helps we like names such as Max, Callum and Finn for boys.

The name we like the most is Lyric. Is that too weird though? Can you imagine a lawyer named Lyric? Also if we name the baby Lyric does that mean we have cornered ourselves into a certain naming style for future siblings? We would like to have at least two more babies, although that could change once our daughter arrives ;-)

Other names we like are:
Selah (probably our second favorite, we like it pronounced as SAY-luh, but is that how it is normally pronounced?)
Amelia ‘Mila’
Luna
Brynn
Astoria ‘Story’
Eleanor

We also really like Glory, but feel as though it should be a nickname for Gloria which neither of us really like.

So I guess you could say we like names of all different styles. We are pretty much open to any suggestions, we would love to find a less common name but overall we aren’t too fussed.

Thanks a heap!

I was mentally composing my reply while getting breakfast for the kids, and what I was planning to say is that Lyric is not too weird, that there were nearly a thousand new baby girls named Lyric born in 2011, and that although I do think it would rule out names such as Amelia and Eleanor for future girls, it looks like you have plenty of good sister names in Selah, Luna, and Astoria.

But then I got to my computer and re-read the part about a lawyer named Lyric, and it’s true it’s hard to imagine. Part of this, though, is just my generation: I’m having trouble picturing lawyers named Caden and Madison, too, but that’s because I think of those as “kid names.” Just as Jennifer and Jessica don’t seem like old lady names but soon will, the current kid names will soon seem natural as grown-up names—including lawyers.

On the other hand, Lyric does have a certain nounish style that may always sound a little funny with certain professions. Crystal and Brandy were popular names that have had a chance to fully grow up now, and yet they still don’t have as serious a sound as peers like Amanda and Kimberly. It’s very hard to know which names will grow up to have which connotations, though: Heather and April and Brooke are also noun names, but grew up to easily fit lawyers.

Luckily, there is a common naming solution to this: different styles for first and middle names, to hedge your bets. This solution is particularly applicable in your case, since your list is split right down the middle between riskier and more conservative choices. If you choose your favorite style for the first name, you can use the other style as a middle name. A woman named Lyric Eleanor or Eleanor Lyric can go by whichever name seems more appropriate for her personality and job choice.

Another possible solution is to find names that have similar sounds to the ones you like, but are of a different style. Instead of Lyric: Lyra, Mira, or Lyla. If you like Story and Glory and Eleanor, maybe you would like Aurora, Cora, Corinne, Dorothy (Dory), Ellery, Emory, Flora, Florence (Florrie), Jory, Georgia, Lorelei, Maura, Morgan, Mallory, Nora, Orianna, Rory, Victoria. If you like Callum for a boy, maybe you’d like Calla for a girl.

Yet another possible solution is to choose a name with flexible nicknames. An Eleanor can be an Ellie, a Nora, a Linny, or of course an Eleanor. An Astoria can go by Story or Ree or Ria, and also has the full Astoria to fall back on. Luna and Lyric have fewer options.

Yes, according to The Baby Name Wizard, Selah is pronounced SAY-lah and Sela is SEE-lah. It’s hard to know, though, what actual usage is. If I encountered a Selah, I’d be prepared to find that her name could be pronounced SEE-lah.

Name update! Katie writes:

My husband and I ended up narrowing the names down to Lyric and Eleanor and decided to wait until she was born to decide. As soon as we saw her we both knew she was a Lyric. Our little Lyric Helena was born on the 1st of September, and we both love her name! Thanks to all who gave input, it definitely helped :-)

Morgan writes:

I’m hoping you and your readers can help us. I’m 28 weeks along with baby number two and we’re seriously stuck on a middle name. Here’s a bit of background info: I’m Morgan, my husband is Jeremy, our son is Jackson Kelley (nn Jack) and our last name is Hirsh (with a different spelling). Jackson’s name came easily. His first name is a place that has a special significance for us and his middle name is an honor name (Kelley was my great grandmother’s maiden name and also happens to be my middle name as well as that of an uncle and a cousin). We love his name.

After narrowing our list of girl names down we have decided on Phoebe for this baby’s first name. We are both in love with the name and plan to use Bee as a nickname. The problem we’re having now is the middle name. We’d like to continue the tradition we began with our son of using an honor name for a middle name. The LONG list of potential middle honor name contenders has been whittled down to three. They are all from my husband’s mother’s side of the family. The contestants are:

Phoebe Lefebvre (pronounced Le FEV) Hirsh
Phoebe Adele Hirsh
Phoebe Pascale Hirsh

My mother-in-law is French and Lefebvre was her maiden name. Pascale was my husband’s great grandmother’s first name. Adele was his great great aunt’s first name. Both were wonderful women and both lived to be over 100. I am somewhat partial to Phoebe Adele, while my husband is favoring Phoebe Lefebvre. My concern with Phoebe Lefebvre is the double “f” sound. Does that make it awkward to say? Does the “v” sound at the end blend into the “H” at the beginning of our last name? At this point we’ve said all three of these names so many times that they are starting to sound the same.

Any advice you and your readers can provide would be so greatly appreciated. Oh and I PROMISE to send a name update in October with a photo.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I think all three are great choices. The up side: it doesn’t really matter which one you choose, because any of the three will give her a very good name. The down side: that makes it hard to choose. We had a similar issue when naming our youngest child: three excellent, family-honoring middle names to choose from, and all of them seemed equally good. We finally just…picked one. I like the one we chose, and I think I would have liked either of the others, too.

I would lean toward Lefebvre, because the other two seem like more distant honors: your husband’s mother is a much stronger connection than a great-great-aunt or a great-grandmother. Also, I love when it’s possible to preserve maternal family names as well as paternal ones. Also-also, part of the joy in using an honor name is surprising/pleasing the person being honored, and your mother-in-law is the only one of the three who is alive. The repeating F sound doesn’t bother me unless in your family you frequently use the first and middle names—and actually, if you DO, I like how that sounds: it’s fun to say! And I don’t find it blends with the surname: I find I naturally pause between them. But most people find their middle names all but disappear and are rarely said aloud, so in general I don’t worry much about that.

This is a minor thing, but I like to think about the minor things: Pascale would give her P.P. initials which, along with I.P., I like to avoid for Pee-Related Teasing. But since it’s first and middle instead of first and last, it’s unlikely that other children would even know about it. And Pascale gives the cutest monogram, if you like monograms: a central H, bookended with two P’s.

Let’s have a poll over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Name update! Morgan writes:

Just a quick note to thank you and your readers for the wonderful baby naming advice. Our daughter Phoebe Lefebvre H!rsh arrived on October 19th weighing 8lbs 2 oz and measuring 22 inches long. We were stuck on the middle name, but ultimately ended up going with my mother-in-law’s maiden name of Lefebvre (as opposed to the other front runner Adele, which was the name of a great great aunt). Ultimately it felt more special to honor a close living relative as opposed to a more distant relative who has passed away. Mommy, Daddy and big brother Jackson are all completely in love with our little Phoebe and have taken to calling her Baby Bea.

Austin writes:

I am 35 weeks pregnant (due 8/31) with our first child and we found out we are having a girl at 16 weeks (it’s nice to have an ultrasound tech friend!). This was a blessing because while my husband and I had agreed on a girl’s name, Norah, in one of our first baby name conversations five years ago, we were nowhere close to agreement on a boy’s name. In fact, talking about potential boy names had become quite a chore. The news that we were having a girl ended that struggle until very recently.

Three events have broken the naming peace:

A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law suggested that we should have a boy’s name just in case. Ultrasound techs have been wrong before. This got my husband thinking about boy’s names all over again. Then about a week ago, my husband found out that his 22-year-old cousin was thought to be a girl all the way until birth, leaving his aunt and uncle to flail for a boy’s name moments after his arrival. And yesterday our good friend’s cousin gave birth to a baby boy…AFTER they had already spent several thousand dollars on pink baby gear, thinking they were having a girl. These stories make my blood pressure rise!

We think the odds of our baby being a boy are very slim and most of our expensive baby gear is gender-neutral, including nursery decor. We’ve had several ultrasounds and have been told by four different doctors and techs to expect a girl.  But are we tempting fate if we allow our boy’s name feud to linger?  Do we need to have a boy name in our back pocket? I know we are probably way overthinking this, but it would make my hormone-addled brain and my planning-obsessed husband feel better to have a backup plan in case a boy appears at delivery!

Assuming we do need a boy’s name, we could really use your help. Our last name is $tephen$on (pronounced like Stevenson) and the baby’s middle name will be Lee regardless of sex, which is my husband’s and his father’s middle name. We plan to use honor names as middle names for all of our children.

Our top choice for a boy was Lucas until a close friend named his son Luca in December. Now it’s off the table, sadly.

Potential compromise names that neither of us love or hate:
Gideon
Elliott (nn. Leo)
Gabriel

Names I like and he has vetoed:
Wyatt
Oliver
Judah

Names he likes and I have vetoed:
William (nn. Liam)
Lincoln
Charles (nn. Charlie)

I tend to be all over the map with respect to naming style preferences for boys; I like the surname-as-first name style, some traditional names, and some trendier names. He tends to be more firmly settled in the traditional name camp. There are names we both like but feel like we can’t use because of alliteration with our last name (which makes me nuts!) like Silas and anything ending in -son/sen. We have many other names we agree upon for future lady babies; favorites include Charlotte, Alice, and Gwendolyn, in case that helps generate more ideas.

We’ve both scoured your blog and the Baby Name Wizard for new ideas but nothing seems to be The Boy Name for both of us! And we find ourselves falling in and out of love with boy names, which is weird since we’ve had Norah picked out for years and never wavered. Any advice and suggestions you or your readers have would be so appreciated. Thank you!

Here are some reasons to have a boy name AND a girl name ready, even if you’re pretty sure you know which one you need:

1. It can be quite fun to say things like, “If I’d been a boy, my name would have been Christopher!”

2. It does very occasionally happen that an ultrasound is wrong, and so it’s nice to be prepared.

3. Baby-naming is fun.

Here are some reasons not to:

1. If you do have a boy when you’re expecting a girl, that story is SO THRILLING to everyone, you’ll have all the excuse and time you need to come up with an alternate name. There would be no need to decide immediately; you’d have days or even weeks. It even becomes part of the fun: “Daddy and I didn’t even know you were a boy! We had to go through a baby name book right there in the hospital!”

2. Baby-naming can stop being fun, and start being stressful and difficult—and the odds are strongly in favor of all that stress and difficulty being for nothing. You’re describing it as “quite a chore” and “a struggle,” and you’ve had several ultrasounds all with predictions of girl, so it sounds to me that this is where you are right now.

3. Many people find that the name they’d chosen for the opposite sex is no longer one they want to consider when expecting subsequent babies. Deciding on a name now may save you time if you have a boy later—or it might waste a name.

As you might expect, I was VERY KEEN on naming my own babies, and started lists the day the pregnancy test was positive. And yet I waited until I knew if the baby was a boy or a girl before getting serious about choosing a name, and considered that one of the huge benefits of finding out the baby’s sex before the birth. For the fun of it, I would draw up little lists of names I might consider if the baby surprised us by being the opposite sex—but I never got into the more difficult and stressful work of making a final decision. It didn’t feel worth it, and I soothed myself with the “It will make the story even better” idea.

If you do have a boy, the work you have done so far is plenty: you will still have some deciding to do, but you’ve given it thought, and you’ve drawn up some rough lists, and you’ve become familiar with the other parent’s opinions and with the boy name sections of the baby name books. At this point, when it has become a stressful and upsetting chore, it doesn’t seem worth the effort of narrowing it down further. If choosing only one name were enough to bring down punishment from Fate, there would be many more stories of birth day surprises than there are.

Name update! Austin writes:

Hi Swistle & Readers!

Thanks for all your help and suggestions for a name in case we had a baby boy. As it turns out (and as we figured), we fretted in vain. Our beautiful daughter arrived nine days late on 9-9-12, healthy and huge (9lbs. 10oz.!). After some last-minute angst over whether to name her Norah-with-an-H or Nora-without-the-H, we settled on Nora Brooke when we saw her (my middle name is Brooke so we kept up the family middle name tradition). You’ll be hearing from us again if we have a boy in the future!

Many thanks again,

N. writes:

In an effort to get some honest feedback without having to tell family and friends our short list of names, I’m coming to the expert (and loyal readers!) for advice.

We’re expecting a girl this fall and have a few names that we like, but our definite frontrunner is Sloane Wesleigh. Both my husband and I adore Sloane and think it’s fits with our personalities and naming style and it goes well with our last name. My only concern is that because Sloane is unisex, Wesleigh is too masculine to go along with it. My husband sees no problem with it (but he only recently discovered that Sloan is used a boy name also…apparently only one of us is “research mode”). That said, I really like the way the two names flow and think Wesleigh has that “cool” (but not too trendy) vibe that we like too. Perhaps we need something similar but a little more girly? My fear is that when the little lady arrives, we announce her name and people still have no idea if we had a girl or boy.

Do you think we need a more feminine middle name to balance out the androgyny of Sloane? Or the opposite, do the two unisex names match one another?

To give you a sense of our taste, here are some of the other names that made our “maybe” list:

Kennedy
Rowen
Greer
Lainey
Bronwyn*
Isla*
Maeve*

*my picks, hubs is not a fan of these

Family names include: Lindsay, Mason, Mary
Boy names that we like: Finn, Sullivan, Abel

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or tips!

With first names that can be used for either boys or girls, my own personal preference is to use the middle name to clarify things. So, for example, if the child’s first name is Cameron, I like the middle name to be Jacob or Olivia, not Riley or Jordan.

But there are arguments for not bothering with this. For one thing, your friends and family will have ways other than the name for determining if you’ve had a boy or a girl. And some people make the deliberate decision to use a name that doesn’t instantly communicate the sex (for resumes and college applications, mostly).

But in any case, because Sloane is used much more often for girls in the United States (there were 861 girls and 87 boys named Sloane/Sloan in 2011, according to the Social Security Administration), and because you’ve feminized the spelling of Wesleigh, the name reads girl to me. I would feel an urge to double-check, just as I would with a Camryn Ryleigh, but I’d feel pretty confident.

In fact, my main issue with Wesleigh is that the spelling looks to me as if it might be pronounced Wes-SLAY, because of the word sleigh; I’m familiar with -leigh as -lee from Ashleigh and Ryleigh and of course Leigh, but after a plain S it threw me. Still, it took all of a second or two for me to realize it must be pronounced like Wesley, and in the middle name position it’s not going to cause trouble or confusion. Plus, spelling it Wesley would tip me the other way, to being more sure the baby was a boy.

If you did decide you wanted to go more feminine, Sloane Lesleigh would be pretty. Lesley used to be a unisex name but has now gone almost completely girl in the United States.

Or Sloane Kelsey.

Or Sloane Paisley.

Or Sloane Cecily. It has a lot of S sounds, but I find I like it.

Or Sloane Vanessa.

Or Sloane Hayleigh.

Or Sloane Briony.

Or Sloane Waverly.

Or Sloane Eliza. I realize that one takes a sharp style turn, but I think it has a cool sound with Sloane.

I also think Sloane Lindsay sounds wonderful, and it appeals to me to use a family name.

Let’s have a poll over to the right to see what everyone else thinks. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results for “Should Sloane have a more feminine middle name than Wesleigh?” (410 votes total):

No, Wesleigh is feminine enough – 50 votes (12%)
No, I like the idea of it being unisex – 27 votes (7%)
Yes, it needs a more feminine middle name – 316 votes (78%)
I can’t decide – 17 votes (4%)

Name update! N. writes:

We welcomed Sloane Everly on October 11 and are in love with her and her name! Thanks for the advice and suggestions!

A. writes:

I debated whether to write to you because I REALLY wanted my husband and I to figure this out ourselves, and we mostly have, but it has gotten to the point where I need an unbiased second (or fiftieth?) opinion. After having the PERFECT girl’s name picked out (Rose) and lovely visions of ruffles and sparkles and unicorns, we found out we are having a BOY. Surprise! He is due early November, right around my birthday, and we are ecstatic- and really want a full name to start calling him!

My question to you today is about whether we should take into consideration any future sibsets in naming this baby, when the rest of the names we would be inclined to choose are so drastically different than the one we have currently chosen.

My first name is super-common (#3 in the year I was born- ’84) while my husband’s name is the unpopular Justin-with-a-D. We both have family middle names that we like much better than our firsts, and my husband actually calls me by my middle name instead. That’s not really helpful information to this question, but I felt I should mention it anyway. :)

We narrowed down our list about five million times and finally got it down to our top two: Gavin and Magnus. My husband’s last name (which will be the baby’s surname as well) is Swedish and sounds like Oldman, but without the D in the middle. We have found that we both typically prefer Scandinavian and Germanic names for boys, which is why Gavin as our frontrunner surprised us! We’ve mostly decided to go with Gavin as his first name, and give him two middle names, one of which will be Scott, in honour of my father. Here is where we need help, though.

We were thinking about using Magnus as a middle for him, because it really is one of our favourites. Gavin Magnus Scott Ol(d)man. HOWEVER…we do hope to have more children, and would like for siblings’ names to not clash. If we go with Gavin now, will that be narrowing our choices too much for future boys? Our other favourites are Magnus, Hafþor, Asbjörn, Axel, Ulrik, and Gunnar. (My husband also likes Atlas, on which I’m not sold.) Should we go with Magnus Gavin Scott instead? Magnus fits with the rest of the bunch. But a Gavin and a Hafþor are just way too different! We just don’t care as much for other styles of names, the closest in coordination with Gavin that we like is Lincoln, and maybe Westley, but those were more middle name choices than firsts. We kind of feel like Gavin and Magnus and Gunnar are the more usable and the closest coordinating of our bunch, and while I’d love to save Magnus for a future son, there’s no telling if we’ll have another boy and I’d rather use our current favourites on this baby instead of regretting not using them in the future.

Also, as I stated earlier, our girl’s choice is Rose, with a middle or first of either Caroline or Delilah (we would call her Rose whether it were her first or middle). That fits with Gavin, and while it doesn’t go with Magnus or the others, it doesn’t seem as important for the girl and boy names to match for some reason. But if we have a Gavin now, and a Rose next, would a future Asbjörn just feel left out?? Augh, so much to think about! Am I over-thinking it all? I probably am.

SO, to try to wrap this up (feel free to edit this email around to make sense): Should we stick with Gavin and just hope for the best for a future son’s name coordinating enough to not stick out? Or should we maybe use Magnus in the first name spot so that a future son will have a name similar to his brother? Does that make sense? I hope so. :) Thank you for your help!

It WARMS MY HEART to see someone considering the Sibling Name Problem ahead of time! It’s one of my more fervent suggestions in Advice for First-Time Parents, because if coordinated sibling names is something you’d prefer to have, it can help so much to think things out ahead of time.

It does sound as if Gavin is one of your outlier names, as Emerson was mine: a name that you love, but that doesn’t belong to your preferred naming style. In which case, since Gavin and Magnus are both in your top two but Magnus does belong to your preferred style, I like your solution of naming him Magnus but using Gavin as the middle name so you still get to use it.

On the other hand, naming style can change a bit once an actual baby is on the scene. And I do think Gavin and Magnus and Gunnar are compatible enough to be brother names, as long as you don’t want to use Hafþor and Asbjörn. And I’m looking at your girl name, Rose, which also goes acceptably with Magnus and Gunnar (I agree with you that the boy/girl sibling name divide can be quite wide) but not so well with Hafþor and Asbjörn. I am starting to think that Hafþor and Asbjörn may also be outliers, but in another direction.

So this is where I suggest a gamble: if you prefer to use Gavin as the first name, I suggest NOT using Magnus as the middle name. I know this will be upsetting if you don’t have another son, and it definitely IS a matter of choosing which way you think you’d regret LESS, and you specifically say you think you’d regret it more if you didn’t get to use the name, so all this is to say I understand if you don’t go this way—but what I suggest is taking one of the names you consider less usable as a first name, and using it as a middle name instead. Gavin Asbjörn Scott Oldman, for example. A second son could be Magnus Ulrick ___ Oldman. A third son could be Gunnar Hafþor ____ Oldman. (I saved Hafþor for last, because I did the “Would I want this name?” test and decided that for myself I would rather not have the hassle of a letter that isn’t in my language’s alphabet. If you ARE living where it’s in your language’s alphabet, it would be my first or second choice for middle name.)

But I can also see the wisdom of not saving a name for a future sibling, especially since parents often find that their first batch of name candidates goes out the window when the second child needs a name. I suggest the idea here mainly because we’re dealing with the tricky business of using an outlier name, which calls for extra-careful tactics. If I’d used Emerson for my first child, I would have been up a bit of a creek for future children—so if I’d also loved, say, Paisley, I suspect I’d be glad later to have it still in the wings, rather than having used it as Emerson’s middle name.

So in that case I go back to thinking Magnus Gavin is the perfect solution: you get to use both of your top two names without gambling on the loss of either, but also without using in the first-name position an outlier that might paint you into a corner for future siblings (Gunnar Lincoln! Axel Westley!).

Let’s have a poll over to the right to see what everyone else thinks. …Well, wait. That’s a tough poll, because to me the three options are: (1) use Magnus Gavin, (2) use Gavin Magnus, or (3) use Gavin but not with the middle name Magnus. But that will split the Gavin vote, making it look less than it is. No, we’re smart people, we can figure that out. Poll to the right! [Poll closed; see results below.]

Name update! A. writes:

Thank you so much for your help! I am WAY overdue with this, but it seems like, even though it’s been 6 months, I’ve just come up for air! All of your advice was great, and in the end, we decided to save Magnus in case we still love it if we have another son. My husband, a former lineman and now coach, enthusiastically picked the NEW middle name, so we now have G@vin Hal@s Sc0tt as his first and middle(s).

Funnily enough, while we love the name Gavin, it just doesn’t fit him right now! I’m sure it will be a great fit as he gets older, but I kind of wish we had chosen something that had a cute nickname that he could have grown with (like Magnus- Maggie- Gus, even though that definitely isn’t his name, either!). So for now, he’s mostly Baby, Handsome, Gavi, or Rotten. :)

C. writes:

I have read every last drop of your site and still can’t find a name that grabs me for our third baby due in October. I am obsessed with finding a name. I’ve run many a cell phone battery dead during my search!!!

My main issues are trouble with a sibling set, desire to have a different but not weird name, and finding a name with some semblance of meaning.

I have a daughter named Carys Campbell. We chose her name based on the fact that I am Welsh and that the name means “love”. Campbell is my maiden name.  Perfect fit, had it in mind for ten years and never wavered.  My son’s name is Hollis Lincoln. Chose his name from a book and it stuck.  No real attachment to the meaning ( in the holly bushes). We thought it sounded Celtic and strong, it is perfect for our rough and tumble, red haired boy!

The sibling set issue….Not sure if we should stick to a name that ends in an “s” sounds to match the sibling set already established. We are pulling our hair out trying to find a girl name that would work.  Our last name sounds like “Cartons”.
There are several names we’ve experimented with and tried from Caybree to Landry, Harlow to Dallas. We just can’t seem to come up with a name we love like we did with the other two.

Other names we have considered for a girl are:
Sawyer
Ebyn
Aubrey
Jorja
Emmerson
Ellis
Laken
Wynne
Wren
Arlis

If the baby is a boy we like the name Royce,  but we aren’t stuck on that name in particular. We also like:
Heath
Hudson
Layton
Linden
Lachlan (I love, but hubs isn’t sold)
Samson Davis ( a nod to my grandpa Samuel and my husband’s grandpa David)
Damian will be the middle name in honor of a loved one who passed away recently.

My hubby and I would love to hear your opinions/suggestions of a name for our new little snuglette!

Thanks Swistle!!

Because the name Carys is used in the U.S. exclusively for girls but the name Hollis is unisex (according to the Social Security Administration, 60 girls and 101 boys were named Hollis in 2011), I would strongly suggest removing unisex and boyish names from the girl list. A two-girl-one-boy sibling group with a Carys, a Hollis, and, for example, a Sawyer, is going to make things difficult: Sawyer, with 2168 boy babies and 383 girl babies born in 2011, is going to seem like the boy name of the group.

This cull would leave you with only four names on your girl list:

Arlis
Aubrey
Jorja
Wynne

And maybe Wren, too: it was given to 32 boys and 206 girls in 2011, and maybe that’s enough of a girl lead.

If you want the matching S-endings, Arlis is your girl. Carys, Hollis, and Arlis. I might consider spelling it with a Y to make it look more like Carys: Carys, Hollis, and Arlys.

My own preference would be to avoid a third S: with only two siblings, it’s not a pattern that needs to continue; and when I say three S-ending names aloud together, it feels sibilant and matchy. I also find I start accidentally swapping syllables: Harlis and Carlis and Harris and so forth.

A mid-name S or initial S might give you a similar coordinating sound. Coincidentally, we just did a post last week on a very similar group: two children with S endings and what to name the third. Their second daughter’s name is Elise; perhaps that would work for you: Carys, Hollis, and Elise. By breaking up the syllable-emphasis pattern, it knocks out most of the syllable-swap and matchiness issues for me. Other possibilities that came up for that other post:

Astrid
Cecily
Celeste
Elsa
Elspeth
Isis
Lucia
Selena
Silvie
Stella
Tanis

I’m uncertain if I should pillage the comments section and put all the names I wish I’d suggested, or if I should let those commenters make their suggestions again on this post! I will say that I particularly liked Kaela‘s suggestions of Bronwyn, Isla, and Gwyneth, and Katita‘s suggestion of Tamsin.

From your list, I like Wynne and Aubrey. I love the name Jorja/Georgia, but it seems too sassy with the gentler Carys.

Arlis and Wynne make me think of Arwen. Carys, Hollis, and Arwen. But maybe that’s rhymey with the surname.

For a boy, I think your idea of Royce is pretty genius. It has the S sound, but the one-syllable and actually-a-C aspects keep it from seeming too repetitive. Carys, Hollis, and Royce. Bryce has a similar effect.

I also like the idea of the two H names, since the matching initials seem to help clarify that Hollis is a boy. I like Hudson for being another place/surname name, and Heath for having a gentler sound that coordinates well with Hollis. Heath comes out as the winner for me: Carys, Hollis, and Heath.

Would you like Hayes? Carys, Hollis, and Hayes.

I think Davis would make a great first name. Carys, Hollis, and Davis.

For a mid-name S, I suggest Jasper. Carys, Hollis, and Jasper.

I wonder if we’re far enough away from the TV show Dawson’s Creek to use Dawson? Carys, Hollis, and Dawson.

If not, Lawson is one of my favorites. Carys, Hollis, and Lawson.

Or Ellison. Carys, Hollis, and Ellison.

Or Jenson. Carys, Hollis, and Jenson.

Or Wilson. Carys, Hollis, and Wilson.

Sullivan would repeat the double-L of Hollis. Carys, Hollis, and Sullivan. But if you’d want to call him Sully, I might be nervous that that would lead to Hollis being called Holly.

I love Wesley, in part because I think of Wes as one of the best boy nicknames ever. Carys, Hollis, and Wesley.

Elias might be too different in style from Hollis, but it keeps coming to mind anyway. I think it’s that it would result in one of the “lovely assortment” name sets I find appealing: each name is a different style, but there’s no one name that stands out as different—and in this case, the S-endings tie them together. Carys, Hollis, and Elias.

I like Lachlan, too. Would your husband prefer Declan? Carys, Hollis, and Declan.

Not looking for S-sounds but just thinking “Carys, Hollis, and ____?,” I thought of Brennan and Callum and Quinn and Rowan and Finn and Finlay.

Name update! C. writes:

We welcomed a sweet baby boy on October 19th, 2012.  We named him Royce Damian, a name that had stuck for a few years. We are very happy with our name choice and have gotten a lot of positive feedback. Thank-you for all of your suggestions and thanks as well to all of the readers who took the time to comment.  Happy Naming!!!

Melissa writes:

Hello Swistle.  Thanks for taking the time to read this!  We are a two-mom family expecting our second child, another boy, in October.  I carried our first son, whom we named Miles Ru$$ell MySurname David$on, and my wife is carrying our second son. He will also have four names, First Middle MySurname David$on.  We had a long, complex process for naming our first child, involving a huge poster on the wall, pulling different combinations out of a hat, and ultimately making a list of six finalist first names and naming him a day after he was born.  We both love the name Miles.  Other things to know: Ru$$ell is an honor name from my wife’s side of the family.  Also, we have abandoned nearly all of the alternate names we considered for Miles — Quinn, Owen, Preston, and Langston.

What we’re looking for now feels impossible: a boy name we like as much as Miles that sounds good with Miles and that satisfies her more traditional taste and my slightly more unusual taste.  I’m a name maniac, but my initial list of about 30 names was quickly pared down when my wife found most of my suggestions way too wildly unfamiliar.  To give you a sense of her style, I will say that she strongly objected to Haskell, which I liked, and Dashiell, which I presented as a variaton on my father’s name, which is Darryl.

I would like to use a name from my side of the family somewhere in there, although we are not making that a requirement.  We also prefer that it not be another M name (my name also starts with an M), but we are not firm on that. Finally we have pretty much ruled out any name ending in “son,” to avoid repetition with the last name David$on.

Qualities we like a name to evoke are kindness and intelligence.  For me, creativity would be a plus, but I don’t necessarily need an artist name.  We’re less into names that come across as macho, if that helps, but we also are not looking for an androgynous name.

If we’d had a girl, top names would have been Delia Claire and Hazel Magdalena.

Here’s what’s left of our list.  Family names from  my side include Charles, Glenn, George, and Sever.  I strongly prefer to use Glenn somewhere because it honors both my dad and grandfather, but my wife is so-so on it.  She likes Sever (rhymes with Weaver) but thinks that everyone would pronounce it SEH-ver and that he’d have to constantly correct people.  She suggests adding an A to make it Seaver, but to me that seems like an entirely different sort of name.  Sever is a Norweigan first name from my great-great grandfather, and I just can’t handle how the letter A changes the feel of the name for me.  I would consider Seever, but maybe that is too weird?  We are on the verge of abandoning Sever altogether.

Edgar and James are family names from my wife’s side that we both like.  If we used one, though, I’d want to use it with one of my family names for balance, especially because we have chosen to use her surname for the kids.

Here are the other names we both somewhat like.  You can see they are all over the place because we have such different styles.  Otis, Luke, Clark, Vaughn, Leo, Sawyer, Amos, Graham, Grant, Hugh, and Silas.  Leo and Luke are the ones she is most comfortable with, but I think she is warming up to Otis too.

We are considering using the name Falkner as a first or middle.  It is a reference to a place that is meaningful to us, and it was almost Miles’s middle name until we decided to use an honor name in its place.

We have been calling the baby Chet in utero (long story).  We could use Chet as a nickname for Charles.  I think it sounds good with Miles: Miles and Chet.  This brings up the issue of a possible musician theme.  When people see the name Miles David$on, they assume our son was named after Miles Davis.  He was not, but we don’t mind the association because it is a pleasant one to us.  However, if we name our second child Chet or Otis, will the musical theme seem intentional?  And would that matter?  It doesn’t really bother me, but should it?<

Oh, and my surname starts with an O, for the purposes of inital cross-checking for weird words.  Like, Otis Glenn would have the initials OGOD, and would that be okay? Hee hee.

Oh, yeah — are Miles and Charles too similar sounding?  We’d probably call a Charles by Chet or Charlie, but still…

We’d love any additional name ideas, as well as feedback on our current ideas.  We’d be grateful for the help!

The extensive naming process and 6-name finalist list for your first son can be a comfort when naming your second: the name that now seems perfect didn’t stand out as perfect from the start. The next name you choose may very well follow the same path: not standing out as obviously perfect before it’s chosen, but growing into a name just as perfect as Miles grew to be.

Miles and Charles do sound a little matched-ending to me, but not to the point of ruling out the name—and I love the tie-in to the baby’s in-tum nickname.

I do think people will pronounce Sever like the words sever and seven, but that in the middle name slot it wouldn’t be an issue. I too would be resisting changing the spelling, since it’s a family name. I like something like Elliot Sever OSurname David$on. But it seems like the name of a great-great grandfather is much less of an honor name than the name of your dad and grandfather, so I’d be under-motivated to use it.

I would sell Glenn as a sort of nature name: “a forest glen” has a much prettier spin. Or I might mention Glenn Close. Or I might say, “It’s not my style either, but it’s an important honor name for me.”

The musical theme is only slightly noticeable to me with Miles David$on (I thought “…Hey, that is ringing a bell…”) (I did figure out why after a moment), and a brother named Chet or Otis wouldn’t have raised any connection for me at all. But I’m almost completely unmusical, so I think we need feedback from people who would immediately have wondered if it were intentional. As to whether it should bother you (when it doesn’t naturally), I don’t think so. When the connections aren’t negative, I think it’s mainly a problem when the parents are bothered by other people questioning/assuming the connection (“I don’t want them to think we used Jack and Rose because of Titanic!”)—and if that hasn’t bothered you with Miles David$on, I don’t think it’s an issue.

I did notice Miles and Otis sounding like Milo and Otis—even though I’ve never seen the movie and it’s over twenty years old. I think I noticed it because long long ago when I was considering Milo for the child who turned out to be Henry, a bunch of people mentioned the movie; and, since then, on our many cat-acquiring quests to animal shelters, I’ve noticed a large number of orange cats named Milo. (Not as many as black-and-white cats named Oreo, but close.)

I am trying to hold myself back from OVER-PUSHING you to use George. I love that name and I think it’s the perfect companion name for other revival names like Max and Jack and Sam and Henry and Oliver. It sits right on the line of “completely traditional” and “whimsical/interesting/unusual.” It has long roots and it has George Clooney, and I’m just not sure I can stand the wonderfulness of George Falkner OSurname David$on. Miles and George! I love it.

For kindness and intelligence (while still trying to find something between traditional and unusual), I like:

Edmund
Elliot
Emmett
Everett
Felix
Henry
Ian
Karl
Louis
Malcolm
Oliver
Simon
Wesley

…Okay, so that’s pretty much my own boy name list. But I think “kindness and intelligence and not overly macho” is a very good way to describe what I too look for in a boy name. And since George and Milo/Miles and Charles and Leo have ALL been on my list TOO, the others from the list sprang to my mind.

The one I keep coming back to (other than George) is Elliot. Elliot David$on; Miles and Elliot.

With Hugh and Leo both on the your list, I also suggest Hugo. Hugo Charles OSurname David$on; Miles and Hugo.

Name update! Melissa writes:

We are happy to announce the arrival of Hugo Carl On$tad David$on on Tuesday, October 23 after 37 hours of labor!  We went to the hospital with a list of first names, and it didn’t take long to determine he looked like a Hugo. We considered the middle name Atticus for its literary and historical connections, but my desire for an honor name was strong and we ultimately chose the middle name Carl after my great-grandfather.  The suggestions and input provided by you and your readers were helpful — when you recommended Hugo, you gave me the courage to add it to the list.  Thanks again for your thoughtful help.

Jilian writes:

Swistle… I’m sending an S.O.S :) I was hoping at this point I wouldn’t need your help, especially having read your blog for months… but here we are almost 38 weeks and still no solid short list if our second (and final) child is a boy! Not sure why boy names allude us but we struggled just as much with our first. At least we had narrowed things down for him. We went into the hospital with Ryker (my favorite!), Warren (family), Thile, and Coleson. After he was born my husband vetoed Ryker and Coleson so we settled on ‘Warren’ Thile (pronounced ‘th’ – ‘eally’). At the time we were still a little unsure but this name is a perfect fit for our laid back son and I couldn’t imagine him being anyone else. I’m ‘OK’ not having the perfect name moment – I just need some choices we agree on, and FAST!

If this little one is a girl she’ll be Alta ‘Paisley’. Warren & Paisley. Alta is a family name and she’ll be Alta #4. Paisley is a name I laid eyes on in a baby book when I was pregnant with my first and fell in love. I had that ‘aha’ moment. To give you a little more sense of our style… runners up names are Celia (family, my husbands mom was Cecilia) and Willa. I swoon when I hear the name Willa and was really close to replacing Paisley – I just don’t like the flow of a double ‘a’ ending with Alta Willa… but Warren and Willa… love.

I don’t have many ‘rules’ restrictions.
– I’m not a fan of the top 100 (especially top 25), but don’t want anything too unfamiliar. This is really the only REQUIREMENT
– I’m leaning against another name that ends with ‘n’. I just can’t get behind the flow of Warren & Nolan or Warren & Stratton. Something about it bothers me.
– I do love that Warren does not have a nickname, but it’s not a requirement.
– I call Warren ‘old-fashioned’ but not ‘dusty’ – but haven’t been able to find another name matching that style. Not a requirement but would be fun.
– I would like to have a family name in there somewhere – but my husband is having a hard time with ANY of our family choices.
– The hardest part of this process is my husbands vetoing power! He likes different but NOT ‘trendy’.
– PS, our last name is like the baseball team METS but with a Z.

Names we are throwing around but haven’t quite committed to:
Stratton (I just can’t quite commit to this one, the ending N is one issue but it’s more than that)
Wade
Everett
Cecil (Again honoring his mom Cecilia)

Family middle name possibilities, we can’t seem to fall for one:
Ryker (I’m keeping this on my list even though he can’t commit to it, says it’s too trendy)
Cecil (most likely)
Wayne (I love this after my dad, my husband REFUSES)
Joshua
Arthur (I dread the nickname Art for some reason)
Whitfield (Maybe even call him Fielder)
Ford

For more background, names I love that he has vetoed or just don’t seen to work:
Oscar
Fisher
Soren (Obviously Warren & Soren would not work!)
Nolan
Theodore

Please tell me you have a slew of suggestions in your pocket that are different, but not too trendy, that my husband won’t veto :) Thanks so much for your (and your readers) help!!  Jilian

PS – I just read the post about Linus and it’s definitely a contender in my book… I’m assuming my hubby will turn his nose up at it though :)

Name update! Jilian writes:

All that stressing about a boy name and we had a precious little girl! It’s funny how I’d been gung-ho about the name Paisley for over 2 years…. and coming down the home stretch my heart wrapped around the name Celia and felt so content there. Alta Cecilia was born on July 25th weighing in at 9lbs 11ozs :) Thanks so much to your readers for their suggestions, approvals, and disapprovals! Had she been a boy the only name we were even close to choosing was Everett Cecil… but I still don’t know what we would have actually decided on! :)