Leah writes:

We are expecting a boy, our 3rd child. We have a daughter, Caroline and a son, Oliver. We’ve narrowed down the names to either William or Wilson for the baby. We are nowhere close to deciding between the two. Most likely he will end up being called Will either way, but to me Wilson will always be a volleyball. My husband is not convinced.

However, that is not my question. Here’s my question: I’m a little worried because our children’s initials will spell COW. This might not be an issue in every family but our surname is Ellcey (pronounced Elsie). Think Elsie the Cow from Borden Milk. My husband thinks this is hilarious. I’m a little horrified. So I’m wondering if this will be an issue or if anyone else will notice this little fact? And does it really matter? They will spend a large part of their lives as separate people whose friends and co-workers won’t even know their siblings, much less their names.

I don’t think I ever would have noticed the situation on my own, and in fact I immediately did an inventory of my own kids’ initials to see if they spelled anything. Now that you’ve pointed it out to me, I come down on the side of amusement. I think if I were you I’d go ahead and use Wilson/William.

Let’s take a vote and see what everyone else thinks. The poll is to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results (280 votes total):
Go ahead and use W name: 271 votes, roughly 97%
Don’t use W name: 9 votes, roughly 3%

The past couple of days, we’ve done polls on Top Ten boy names and Top Ten girl names. Here’s the next poll: which GROUP of names do you prefer? Do you prefer the Top Ten boy names, or do you prefer the Top Ten girl names? Here they are again, to refresh your memory:

Jacob
Michael
Ethan
Joshua
Daniel
Christopher
Anthony
William
Matthew
Andrew

Emily
Isabella
Emma
Ava
Madison
Sophia
Olivia
Abigail
Hannah
Elizabeth

Poll is over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results (248 votes total):
Prefer the boy names: 112 votes, roughly 45%
Prefer the girl names: 136 votes, roughly 55%

Which is your favorite Top Ten boy name? If you were required to choose one for your baby, which would you choose? Here they are from the Social Security name list for 2007:

Jacob
Michael
Ethan
Joshua
Daniel
Christopher
Anthony
William
Matthew
Andrew

Poll is over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results (380 votes total):
Jacob: 54 votes, roughly 14%
Michael: 14 votes, roughly 4%
Ethan: 59 votes, roughly 16%
Joshua: 23 votes, roughly 6%
Daniel: 26 votes, roughly 7%
Christopher: 19 votes, 5%
Anthony: 8 votes, roughly 2%
William: 106 votes, roughly 28%
Matthew: 30 votes, roughly 8%
Andrew: 41 votes, roughly 11%

Which is your favorite Top Ten girl name? If you were required to choose one for your baby, which would you choose? Here they are from the Social Security name list for 2007:

Emily
Isabella
Emma
Ava
Madison
Sophia
Olivia
Abigail
Hannah
Elizabeth

Poll is over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results (434 votes total):
Emily: 29 votes, roughly 7%
Isabella: 37 votes, roughly 9%
Emma: 37 votes, roughly 9%
Ava: 50 votes, roughly 12%
Madison: 8 votes, roughly 2%
Sophia: 50 votes, roughly 12%
Olivia: 70 votes, roughly 16%
Abigail: 25 votes, roughly 6%
Hannah: 36 votes, roughly 8%
Elizabeth: 92 votes, roughly 21%

Jennie writes:

Our baby needs a name and we are having a hard time making a final decision. Please help us Swistle! The last name is Newsome and a possible choice for a middle name is Leigh (we are open to suggestions for the middle name). The three choices my husband and I have narrowed it down to are: Kaelyn, Hailey/Haley, or Aubrey. Also, I like the name Allie. :) Thank you for your help Swistle!

My favorite is Aubrey. But I’m also very influenced by recently hearing the cutest nickname ever for the name Haley: Halo.

Let’s find out what everyone else likes best! To the poll! (To the right!) [Poll closed; see below.]

Poll results (287 votes total):
Aubrey: 180 votes, roughly 63%
Hailey/Haley: 86 votes, roughly 30%
Kaelyn: 21 votes, roughly 7%

What is your favorite variation of the girl name Annabel? Poll over to the right. [Poll closed; see below.]

(P.S. You may be wondering how I choose which variation to use in the question itself, and if this means that’s the variation that’s MY favorite. What I’m doing is choosing the one the Oxford Dictionary of First Names lists as the first version of the name.)

Poll results (340 votes total):
Anabel: 16 votes, roughly 5%
Annabel: 112 votes, roughly 33%
Anabelle: 56 votes, roughly 16%
Annabelle: 145 votes, roughly 43%
Anabella: 3 votes, roughly 1%
Annabella: 8 votes, roughly 2%
other (leave in comments): 0 votes

D. writes:

We’re due February 27th and don’t know what we’re having. My husband is from Germany and I am of German descent. Since we may be living in Germany at some point, we’re looking for a name that would work well in either Germany or the States. We’re a fan of modern German and Scandinavian names (meaning no Gertrudes or Rainers), and don’t mind something a little unusual.

We’re down to two boy name finalists. We’re leaning toward Lukas Alexander at the moment, but Carsten Matthias is another possibility.

We’re totally flummoxed on girl names, as we don’t tend to like the same ones. My husband likes very feminine names (Daniela, Liliana), but they don’t do much for me. I really like the names Corinna and Anja, but can’t bring my husband totally around. Karina is a potential compromise. We also keep coming back to some version of Annelie (Annalee? Anna Leigh?), but can’t come up with a spelling that works well in both places (also, my husband has a good friend whose daughter is named Amelie, so he’s concerned they’re too close). And we can’t even get to a middle name until we get closer to a first name, though I like Jane and Mae (my mother’s middle names) as companions to a longer first name.

Any help or creative thinking you could provide would be much appreciated!

I’m going to flip right to the German/Dutch and Scandinavian sections of The Baby Name Wizard to help me out here.

Actually, no, I’m going to do that second. FIRST, I’m going to do some perfunctory research into what names are currently popular in Germany. I don’t trust BabyCenter: they publish an annual list of “the most popular names in the U.S.” that includes only the names their readers report using, as opposed to the list put out by The Social Security Administration which is based not only on the entire country (rather than on a non-random sample), but also on actual usage (rather than reported usage). But their European twin BabyCentre claims to have collected “official statistics” to come up with this list of the top ten names around the world, including this list from Germany:

Top 10 Boy Names in Germany, 2007:
Leon
Maximilian
Alexander
Paul
Luca
Lucas/Lukas
Felix
Elias
David
Jonas

Top 10 Girl Names in Germany, 2007:
Marie
Sophie/Sofie
Maria
Anna/Anne
Leonie
Lena
Johanna
Charlotte
Hannah
Sophia/Sofia

Any one of those names would work in the U.S. just fine.

All right, now back to The Baby Name Wizard. First, boy names. You’ve got Lukas and Carsten. Here are a few more I like from the book and/or from the BabyCentre list:

Anders
Andreas
Elias
Erich/Erik
Evert
Josef
Karl
Leon
Otto
Soren
Torsten
Werner

Now, girl names—again, using the Baby Name Wizard and the BabyCentre list:

Anneliese
Annika
Brigitta
Claudia
Elsa
Elsbeth
Greta
Ida
Lena
Leonie
Linnea
Lisbeth
Wilhelmina

This is too many choices. I’m getting muddled. What I’m fervently hoping is that we have some readers actually LIVING IN GERMANY who could give us some input. Awhile back we were talking about French names, and I loved hearing from people living in France who could say things like, “Yeah, that’s a typical French name—but it’s, like, a DAD name, not a current baby name.” These things are so obvious in one’s own culture, and so difficult in an unfamiliar one. Jess Loolu is in the middle of a big cross-country move or I’d force her to ask her German husband Torsten for input. (And if you need a little breather between unpacking boxes and setting up utilities, Jess…)

It’s common for baby name discussions to bring up the “teaseability” element of a name. Will Dirk be called “Dirk the Jerk”? Will Cooper be called “Cooper the Pooper”? How about Bart and Huck—will anyone replace that first letter with an F? Will Ivy be called Poison Ivy? Will Clementine get heartily sick of hearing “Oh my darling”?

There are a few basic stances on this subject. Some people consider a bad rhyme/association a deal-breaker. Others say, “Kids will get teased no matter what, and it might as well be about their names.” Whatevs. Today, this part of the subject is moot. Here is what we are interested in today: DO kids get teased about their names? Or is that just something parents imagine/worry will happen?

I’m going to put a poll over to the right. [Poll closed; see below.] It is a LITTLE tricky, so pay attention. If you had a “teaseable” name (rhymed with a “bad word” or potty term, had an obvious association such as “poison” with “Ivy,” etc.), did you get teased about it, and if so how badly? If you had a NON-teasable name (Jennifer, for example, or Michael, where there’s no obvious tease problem), did YOU get teased about your name ANYWAY (“Michael Smichael!” “Mike bike!”), and if so how badly?

I’m wondering a couple of different things here: (1) Do teaseable names GET teased? and (2) Are children such little nutjobs that they’ll even tease the non-teaseable ones?

Poll results

(263 votes total):
Teasable name, teased a lot: 5 votes, roughly 2%
Teasable name, teased some: 14 votes, roughly 5%
Teasable name, teased a little: 24 votes, roughly 9%
Teasable name, not teased: 7 votes, roughly 3%
Not-teasable name, teased a lot: 12 votes, roughly 5%
Non-teasable name, teased some: 44 votes, roughly 17%
Non-teasable name, teased a little: 69 votes, roughly 26%
Non-teasable name, not teased: 88 votes, roughly 33%

Caroline writes:

I’m pregnant with a boy and my husband and I would love to call him Huck, but we’re not sure how to use the name. We’re deciding between Huck William MN LN and Henry (nn Huck) MN LN. The middle name would be my maiden name (one syllable) and our last name (two syllables, starts with H).

My husband thinks that if we want to call him Huck, we should make that the first name, otherwise it won’t “stick.” He prefers “Huck William MN LN”, with the idea that if our son feels uncomfortable using Huck in formal situations, he can use H. William, or just Will/William. I prefer Henry (nn Huck) since I’m much more comfortable giving my son an unusual name as a nickname rather than as a first name, and because I prefer 3 names (Henry MN LN) to 4 names (Huck William MN LN). Also, I think that since Henry and Huck sound similar, it would be easier to move back and forth between them than it would be to move between Huck and Will.

We’ve also ruled out some alternatives like Huxton/Huxley/Hudson MN LN (which fit better with Huck than Henry does, but we don’t like the names) and William Huck MN LN.

What do you think? Or is Huck too weird altogether?

My personal preference would be your idea of using Huck as a nickname for Henry. Or maybe as a nickname for the name Hugo? The name Huck isn’t a traditional nickname for either Henry or Hugo, but I think you could get away with it.

A bigger potential problem, I think, is using an H first name with an H last name. Does Henry H____ sound okay? How about Huck H____?

Let’s put a poll over to the right and see what everyone else thinks. [Poll closed; see below.] There are four options:

1. Name the baby Huck William Middlename Lastname, call him Huck (or H. William if he doesn’t like Huck)
2. Name the baby Henry Middlename Lastname, call him Huck
3. Name the baby Hugo Middlename Lastname, call him Huck
4. And your final option, which was when you asked if Huck was too weird altogether.

Poll results (288 votes total):
Option 1: 34 votes, roughly 12%
Option 2: 187 votes, roughly 65%
Option 3: 9 votes, roughly 3%
Option 4: 58 votes, roughly 20%

Quick poll: What’s your favorite spelling of the girl name Michaela? The poll is to the right. [Poll closed; see below.]

Poll results (375 votes total):
Makayla: 29 votes, roughly 8%
McKayla: 20 votes, roughly 5%
Michaela: 249 votes, roughly 66%
Mikayla: 67 votes, roughly 18%
other: 10 votes, roughly 3%