R. writes:

As we approach this holiday season, and as reports of violence and simple cruelty seem to run rampant, the need for peace is more prevalent than it has ever been.  It has started me wondering if Peace itself is a usable name.  I am already a fan of virtue names—Felicity, Joy, Hope, Faith, Grace.   However, is Peace just stepping a bit too far?

I’ve only ever heard it used as a name in a book by Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins.   It was the name of her great-aunt.  The great-aunt’s sister was Plenty.

The full name would be Peace Eliza S_____son.

Any thoughts?

Oh! We have a commenter here named Peace, so I’ll be eager to hear her firsthand report! She’s recommended her own name before, though, so I think we can start with one vote in favor.

Without that endorsement, I would have said absolutely not. The name’s sentiment is wonderful, but the sound-alike slang word “piece” (nice piece, piece of that, piece of ass) seems like it would be irresistible and unavoidable.

More specifically to your situation, I wouldn’t pair it with a surname beginning in S: Peace S____ is either too hissy with the double S, or else it can make the first name sound like Pee.

I do think Peace might work very well as a middle name. For a first name, I’d instead consider Serenity or Harmony. To get a little further off the beaten path, names like Accord or Truce or Calm or Amity or Tranquility might work. A name like Eden gets across the concept of a perfect world. A name like Haven gives the feeling of rest and safety. And of course there’s the name Pax, which is the Latin word for Peace.

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

Katherine writes:

We are due January 4th with our second, and probably last, child. Our daughter’s name is Dalila (Dah-lee-la, which is the Spanish pronunciation/spelling for Delilah) Patricia. Both her first and middle name are family names.

Because we are keeping the gender a surprise, we need a boy and a girl name. We have the girl named picked out: Mariella Lucia (Loo-see-ah). Again, we chose these names because they are family names or hold a special significance to us. We will likely call her “Mimi” (Mih-mee) for a nickname, since this was what my great-grandmother went by as well, but one thing we really like about the name is that there are lots of nickname options in case Mariella doesn’t fit her personality, or if she doesn’t like using her full name when she’s older.

If it’s a boy, the first name will be Jerico, after my husband. We love the name and it’s a bit of a cultural/family tradition to have a “junior” so we are set on the first name.

Our problem is that we don’t know what to do for a middle name and I am starting to panic!! Our son will need either a nickname to go by or to use his middle name so there isn’t confusion about having two people named Jerico in the house. If we could come up with a nickname we liked, then we would likely choose a sire name for a middle name from my side of the family (Ash or Bramhall are what we’re considering right now).

Finding a nickname is proving to be a problem because we hate all the nicknames, at least that we can think of, for Jerico. Jerry, Jer, Jay, Jo(e), Rick, Rico or Junior are all completely out! My husband is called Eric and Jerico equally so we think using either could get confusing.

That leaves us with trying to find a middle name that we could either make a nickname with using a combination of Jerico and the middle name, or to find a middle name that we’d like our son to go by. I thought we could maybe use Lucian (masculine of Lucia, our girl middle name) but for a variety of reasons that name is out.

I’m freaking out and I would really appreciate any suggestions you have, but I also value your readers’ opinions as well! I’ve been reading your blog for years and I’ve seen many a name problem solved and I’m hoping that we could get a bunch of suggestions and one might turn out to be “the one”.

Two things to consider:

First, my husband is Dominican so we prefer names that work in English or in Spanish, but it’s not a deal breaker.

Second, I don’t like really common names – I tend to like the more unusual. My name is Katherine and I hated having 7 other Katherines, Kates, Katies, etc. in my class in school so while I wouldn’t completely rule out popular names, I’d more easily fall in love with something that isn’t in the top 10.

Thank you for your help!!

If you’d like him to be a junior, the middle name is easy: it’s whatever his father’s middle name is. Is that a name that would work for everyday use?

Since you either hate or are already using every reasonable nickname for Jerico, I think the next possibility to consider is not using Jerico as his first name. Sharing a name is a little complicated; sharing a name he can’t use any form of seems even more challenging, and not very pleasing. Perhaps it would be better to use Jerico as his middle name and give him a first name he can be called by.

A third possibility, as you mention, is to give him the first name Jerico and then never use it—calling him instead by his middle name, which would be whatever name you would have used for his first name if you weren’t naming him Jerico. You haven’t mentioned any candidates other than Jerico, and I’m not familiar with names that work in English and Spanish, so this would be a matter of going through baby name books and making a list, just as if you were starting from square one. Or both Ash and Bramhall seem like very good choices, using “Ash” or “Bram” as his everyday name. (Ash does give him the initials JAP, which I would probably prefer to avoid.)

A fourth possibility is to call him by his initials: either first and last (J.P. is cute) or first and middle (J.B. is also cute).

A fifth possibility is to give him the first name Jerico, then a family name for the middle name, and then call him whatever you want: Skip, Chip, Trip, Kip, Ike, Jack, Zeke, Jake, Scott, Cole, Josh, Bo, Abe—whatever nickname you like. Nicknames don’t have to be attached to a name the child actually carries, and an unconnected nickname is particularly common/understandable when a child is named for someone else in the same household. You’d put on the birth announcement something like “Jerico Bramwell Pen-ya (Jeb)” and everyone would understand why. You could even use it as an opportunity to get both family names in there: “Jerico Bramwell Pen-ya (Ash).”

Erin writes:

I am in need of some unbiased opinions.  I would love if you could do a poll for me.  I don’t want to ask family or friends because I think I will not be able to take their opinions separate from what my opinions of them are.

My husband and I are expecting our first baby in March – a girl.  Our last name is !llingworth.  One of our top girl names is Ellie.  I love the way it sounds and it means shining light.  My husband and I are Christian and many of our favorite Bible verses talk about being a light.

However I am worried about the Vowel – double L – I combo that would be in both her first and last name.

Other girl names that we like are (this is probably the order of what we like)

Annie
Grace
Charlotte
Isabelle
Cora

Her middle name will be Kay after me and my mom.

For reference, if we were expecting a boy we liked the names

Matthias (family name)
Jamieson (family name)
Lincoln
Augustus (would go by Gus)

We are hoping to have three children

So can you help us?  Is Ellie !llingworth to much of a mouthful?

Thanks

My own opinion is that the Elli-Illi of Ellie !llingworth is definitely highly noticeable, but that it might land right in that zone of Distinctive/Memorable rather than Silly/Difficult. I think you’re right that we need a poll; I’ve put one over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

The name Ellie doesn’t have a meaning, per se; the name Ellie started as a nickname of other names, so it would have the same meaning as whatever name it was a nickname of. For example, if the full name were Elle, the name and its nickname could both be said to mean “she”; if the full name were Elizabeth, the name and its nickname could both be said to mean “God is my oath”; if the full name were Penelope, the name and its nickname could both be said to mean “duck.” (Meanings taken from The Oxford Dictionary of First Names.)

One possibility if the meaning is important to you is to take a name that is said to mean light, and then use Ellie as the nickname; this would in some cases also reduce the Elli-Illi effect. Elena, for example, is the Spanish/Italian version of the name Helen, which may mean ray, sunbeam, or sun.

Another possibility is to use a baby name book or website that sorts names by meaning (I have Baby Names Made Easy: The Complete Reverse-Dictionary of Baby Names) and look in light-related sections for other options: Clara, Lucia, Lucy, Neve, Phoebe.

I’d double-check with a reliable guide such as The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, however: many baby name books use meanings they found in other baby name books, so the meanings are only as reliable as the sources used—and of the sources THOSE sources used. Often I’ll find that a name’s connection to its reported meaning is so slim as to be almost completely irrelevant, and that it would be just as accurate to make a similarly tenuous link to a completely different meaning. Entire categories of names without meanings of their own are sometimes assigned the meaning of a similar name. And some names have an assortment of meanings from the different languages that came up them.

To give an example, Baby Names Made Easy says the name Etta means “light” from Yiddish and “little” from German. The Oxford Dictionary of First Names says it’s a feminine diminutive—that is, letters added to a name to make it cute and girlish.

To give another example, Baby Names Made Easy says the name Kira means “light” from Latin and Russian, and “sun” from Persian. The Oxford Dictionary of First Names says Kira is a variant spelling of Kyra; that Kyra is from either the Greek and means “lady,” or else a feminine version of Cyrus, or else a feminine version of Kyran. Kyran turns out to be a variant of Kieran, and Kieran turns out to be an Anglicized version of the Irish name Ciarán, and Ciarán turns out to be a diminutive of the Irish word for “black.” Hm. So that’s not “light.” Let’s follow Cyrus instead. The origin of the name Cyrus is not known, but it was associated with the Greek word kyrios, or “lord.” So that doesn’t give us “light,” either. Even if Cyrus or Ciarán DID give us the meaning light, would that mean the Anglicized feminized version Kira means light as well?

Which is not to say it would be wrong to use the name Ellie and go with the source you found that said it meant light. Meanings are not inherent to names—that is, no one is Lord of Name Meanings, giving each name its Real True Meaning of What It Really Truly Means. The name Ellie is a collection of letters we traditionally use as a name for girls; if you like to think of it as meaning “light” and of that meaning as having a pleasing connection to your religious beliefs, there will be no Name-Meaning Police coming out of the shadows to verify the source and give you a ticket if that source isn’t traceable back to a stone tablet.

If I were you, though, I might prefer to go with Annie/Anna, which through its connection to the name Anne, and the name Anne’s connection to the name Hannah, is said to mean “God has favored us with a child.”

Or the name Grace can of course be connected to the biblical concept of grace, if you like.

Or Isabelle comes to us from Isabel, which is connected to the name Elizabeth, which is the usual English spelling of Elisabeth, which as we’ve mentioned is said to mean “God is my oath.” However, I think Isabelle !llingworth is a little tricky to say.

If name meanings were important to me, I probably would not choose Cora, with its connections to the goddess of the underworld; Persephone/Cora was a nice girl, herself, but Hell is not a good neighborhood. I’d choose Clara instead, with its connections to light and brightness and clarity. Or I might choose Eleanor (nicknames Nora, similar to Cora, and also Ellie), which could also be connected to Helen (ray, sunbeam, sun).

All right, enough chit-chat. To the poll! [Poll closed; see results below.]

Holly writes:

I love your blog and how fairly you weigh everyone’s options. I have been thinking of writing in with our surname problem for a while and am curious to see if you have any suggestions.

So, let me give you the basics first. I’m Holly Sch1ltz (rhymes with stilts) and my husband is V1gnesh “Vic” Vij@y@kumar (pronounced Vih-jai-yah-koo-mar–emphasis on the jai and mar syllables). We’ve been married for 2.5 year and I still have my maiden name.

I like my name and will probably just keep it, but I also have no problem changing my name for the sake of our family having a common name (husband included–we could be the so-and-so’s or the so-and-so family). I haven’t changed it yet because we don’t have a clear choice for a family name. Vic doesn’t care at all about what name I keep as a surname and has joked w/ his dad about giving all future kids my name. We’ve talked about it with them and though I’m sure they’d prefer us to keep with tradition, they aren’t very forthcoming with opinions. So, the decision is ultimately ours without fear of repercussions.

The problem lies in his family’s South Indian naming tradition. There is no family surname. Once a man (Firstname Lastname) marries, his wife and kids all take Firstname as their surname (Wife Firstname, Kid #1 Firstname, etc.) and the man will always have a different last name. Boys then keep their dad’s first name (pass on their own first to their kids) and it’s assumed that girls will take on their husband’s first name. So, Vij@y@kum@r is my father-in-law’s first name. So, I’d become Holly V1gnesh if we followed tradition (as would our kids) and Vic’s name would stay the same. We’ve been told that you can trace family lineage way back to a certain priest’s family that had a surname that is very long but this hasn’t been used for generations and wouldn’t really tie us to his family at all.

The actual question is what last name do we give our future kids?

• Option 1: We follow tradition and give them my husband’s Indian first name, V1gnesh, and I take that name on as well. In this scenario, my husband would have a different last name than the rest of the family.
• Option 2: We give them V1gnesh as a surname and Vic and I retain our respective “maiden” names. If I change my name, I’d prefer that my whole family ends up with the same last name, as a group. We will probably always live where this naming tradition is not practiced and would forever have to explain it, so wouldn’t it just be easier to have different last names than to go through the whole schpeal any time someone asks?
• Option 3: We ditch that naming tradition and take up a family surname, Vic’s last name. His cousins plan to do this (different last name) and his sister already has. But, Vic doesn’t really want to pass on Vij@y@kum@r since hardly anyone can pronounce it and there’s a lot of rhyming potential for kids in those first three syllables.
• Option 4: We hyphenate. Hyphenating seems like a nightmare, this is not an actual option.
• Option 5: Friends have suggested we all make up a new name using an anagram of both of our last names, but that seems like trouble with all of the strange consonants: s_c_h_i_l_t_z_v_i_j_a_y_a_k_u_m_a_r
• Option 6: We shorten Vic’s last name to Kumar. He’s brought it up a couple of times in the 100’s of times we’ve had this same conversation. It’s a more common name than his last name.
• Option 7: We give them my last name. I do feel a little weird about this. My family has a patriarchal naming system, my in-laws may be moving back to India in the next few years, and Vic doesn’t care to teach our kids to speak Tamil or Hindi, so I don’t want to cut out such a strong family tie if I’m not adamant about my name being passed on in the first place.

We plan to name our kids American names rather than Indian names–resulting in names that will be radically different than the list of surnames of men in the family before them. They can carry on the South Indian naming tradition if they want, but we figured the pattern would be broken our generation or the next. How bad would it be to make up a new name? Are there any identity issues involved with kids having different last names than both parents? Our kids will be ours and neither of us has strong feelings about them representing our family through surnames, but I’m concerned about how they’ll feel growing up. Do you have any other options you’d recommend?

Thanks for any advice you could send our way!

My favorite option is to use the names from your husband’s side of the family, combined with the surname traditions from your side of the family and the culture in which you live. That is, all of you become the Vij@y@kumars—or the Kumars, as your husband prefers. This seems like the best compromise for a complicated issue: it keeps a part from each side of the family while also giving you a unified family surname.

Another possibility is to give all the children V1gnesh (the name that would be their surname in South India) as a middle name or second middle name. Then they would have their complete South Indian names, but with another surname you would all take (Kumar, perhaps) tacked onto the end for ease of usage in your culture and for unity of family surname. Perhaps your original surname could be the first middle name, for ultimate inclusiveness.

If you were going to combine the names, I don’t think I’d try to use all the letters. I’d use Schi1tz-Kumar to hyphenate, or something like Schilmar to combine.

As for the other questions (is it a problem to make up a new surname, are there identity issues involved in having an assortment of surnames in a family), those fall outside my area of experience. I suspect you will get anecdotes from across the entire spectrum, from “Everyone in our family had a different surname and I never even noticed, and no one else ever had a moment’s confusion about it” to “I had a different surname from my mom and step-dad and it always made me feel excluded.”

So many other issues contribute to such feelings: the cultural norms of the area the family lives in, whether there are other reasons a child might feel the surnames are symbolic of family cohesiveness, the personality of the particular child, etc. It seems like in this case the explanation of the issues involved in choosing a surname (and the exposure to the various surname systems of both sides of the family, as well as living in a culture where many families have assorted surnames) would be enough to make any solution untraumatic to a child.

I have a question, and I’m not quite sure what it is. So maybe what I have is a discussion topic. The discussion topic is about whether your friends tend to have the same naming style as you or not—and how far off do they get.

And, backwards from there: if you met someone with a wildly different naming style than yours, would it feel like it Meant Something? That is, would you think to yourself, “Oh…her kids are named ____, ____, and ____?” and get a little sinking feeling because it seemed to indicate that the friendship might not work out?

My friend Mairzy and I have what I consider easily-friendship-compatible naming styles. The styles are different, yet we can both appreciate the other one’s style—and we have areas of overlap. We are an “I like it for someone else’s baby” friendship. We can discuss names recreationally, and we both tremendously enjoyed discussing name possibilities for the children who were born after we started being friends.

I have another friend who is more like Top 10 names for boys and girls, while I’m more like Top 50 for boys and Top 1000 for girls. If she were more interested in baby names, we’d be able to discuss them recreationally: I don’t flinch from her choices and she doesn’t flinch (much) from mine. Her choices have in fact given me a greater appreciation for Top 10 names.

I have another friend who has two children with names of my style, and one with a name that’s quite different and of a style I dislike. I felt a little dip at the announcement of that third child’s name—a feeling of “Maybe we don’t know each other as well as I thought.”

I was stressed when my friends who are also my brother and sister-in-law were expecting their first child. The subject felt fraught with meaning. I was intensely relieved when they picked something great. It wasn’t the same style as mine, but it was in one of my Style I Admire categories rather than in one of my Style I Dislike categories.

If I meet someone at kindergarten drop-off/pick-up, and I ask the names of her children and she says names of a style I would never, ever consider because I dislike it so much, I admit I do think, “Huh. Maybe this isn’t going to work out.” But I’m always aware that my initial reaction might be completely unfounded, and I don’t seriously ditch a potential friendship based on it; it’s just one piece of information in the information-gathering stage of getting to know someone.

But it does catch my attention, just as many other not-necessarily-(but-maybe)-relevant-to-friendship details do: “Oh…they live in that absolutely enormous and beautifully-decorated house?” “Oh, she loved [movie I hated]?” “Oh, she dedicates two hours daily to housework?” “Oh, she doesn’t know where the library is?” To me it’s one of many indicators of compatibility: just as I’d make certain preliminary (not conclusive, but preliminary) assumptions about a family with a giant house and more luxury cars than adults, I’d make certain preliminary assumptions about a family with children named Apple, Pax, and Pilot.

How is it for you? Are you dying to know the names of a new acquaintance’s children because it seems like Interesting and Important Information? Do the names add to the information you have about the person?

And how do the naming styles of your established friends compare with your own style?

Jane writes:

I really need your help! Our baby girl is due soon (Nov. 12) and we’re having an impossible time agreeing on a name. Her middle name will likely be Jane and we’re using my husband’s last name, which is M!n (rhymes with tin). I love the name Eliza, but my husband really doesn’t – to such a degree that it sadly won’t be her name. His favorite names are Lucy and Penelope, which are nice, but I’m having a hard time moving beyond Eliza. Because of the last name, we can’t use first names that begin with “C” or “Se,” and I would prefer to avoid names beginning with “B.” Also, we have a son named Theodore (Teddy).

Tremendous thanks in advance for your help! I am extremely eager to hear your suggestions and ideas from your readers.

I love the name Eliza, too, and Eliza Jane is so wonderful. Would it work to use Eliza or Eliza Jane or Jane Eliza as the middle name(s)? Then you’d still have your special name in there. This solution works especially well if your husband will be getting his choice of first name: the deal becomes “You have the name you love as the first name; then in victory you graciously allow me to use the name I love as the middle name.” Lucy Jane Eliza M!n, Lucy Eliza M!n, Penelope Jane Eliza M!n, Penelope Eliza Jane M!n, etc.

The name Lila is similar in sound to Eliza. Lila Jane M!n.

Eloise, too. Eloise Jane M!n.

I also really love Penelope. That would be my choice over Lucy, especially with a Theodore: Theodore and Penelope are so great together.

Other names that come to mind when I think of Eliza/Penelope/Lucy and Theodore:

Annabel
Felicity
Fiona
Genevieve
Hazel
Josephine

I might add to this list, but want to get this posted quickly since this could already be too late.

Amy writes:

My husband and I are sort of in a debate and I think you are the one who could help us.  Although we’re not expecting our third child (yet…that I know of!) we have already been going through the lists of names that we had for our previous two children and debating whether they would ever be ‘useable’ for us.  The problem is endings.  We have a son named Samuel, and my husband likes the name Nathaniel/Nathanael; I do as well, but I feel like another ‘el’ ending sounds odd.  Same with girl’s names – our daughter is Clara, but all the names we like for girls (Anna, Louisa, Fiona, etc.) are soft-a ending names.

Is there a limit?  I mean, how much of one ending can a family handle?  Maybe you could do a poll?

Thanks!

Oh, interesting! I think it would be difficult to come up with a number answer (“Two. Two is the limit”) because there are so many factors:

• How many children are in the family

• Whether the matching endings are given sequentially or with other children in between

• Whether the matching endings have been given to all the children born so far, or if other endings have also been used

• How similar/different the names are in other ways

• How unusual/attention-catching the particular ending is

• Whether the children with matched endings are all of the same sex

• Whether the matching endings sound exactly alike

• Whether the matching endings are spelled exactly alike

• Your particular family’s feelings on how appealing it is to have matchy names

• Some other hard-to-pin-down factor that we know when we see/hear it (but which may vary from person/family to person/family)

If you had, say, five children, and two of them had names ending in an -en sound, but those children were first and fourth, and one of the children was a boy and the other was a girl, and the ending was spelled -en in one case and -yn in the other case, and one of the names had two syllables and the other had three and the consonant sounds were completely different—then it seems like it’s no big deal, and you could even use an -in/-an/-en/-yn name on an additional child without a fuss.

If on the other hand you had two girls named Isabel and Annabel, that already seems like too many -bel endings—and I’m not sure it would help to separate them by several other names. Unless of course you LIKED the matching: there are, after all, plenty of families naming sibling sets Madalyn and Madison, or Ella and Emma.

I think what matters most is whether it feels too matchy or attention-grabbing when you’re saying the list of kids (the definition of “too” will vary from person to person). Samuel and Nathaniel sound rhymey/sing-songy to me because of the similarity of the M and N sounds before the -uel/-iel, and also because of the similarity of the -uel and -iel sounds themselves. I MIGHT use both names in a family with a lot of children, if there were several children in between: Samuel, Clara, William, Emma, Nathaniel, for example.

For comparison, a name like Paul, while it ends in L like Nathaniel and Samuel, gives me no such urge to increase separation. Samuel and Paul have completely different sounds: the -l ending sounds different, the letters before the -l ending sound different (“yool/yul” vs. “awl”), the syllables are different, everything is different. It also helps that there’d be another child in between: Samuel, Clara, and Paul just sounds like everyone has a pleasing L-sound to tie the names together.

The repeating -a ending seems almost like a non-issue. Many, many names end with -a, and it’s not very ear-catching or distinctive. With the example of Clara and Anna, they don’t sound rhymey even though they have the same number of syllables and same emphasis: the letter-sounds before the -a ending are completely different, as are the rest of the sounds in the names. If you wanted to increase the difference, you almost couldn’t do better than Clara and Fiona/Louisa: different end-sounds, different syllables, AND different emphasis. If I encountered a family with daughters named Clara, Fiona, Anna, and Louisa, I might notice that they all had -a endings (which I wouldn’t consider negative), or I might just notice that they were a great sibling group.

If a combination does bother you, there are often options: Samuel and Nathan instead of Samuel and Nathaniel; Clara and Anne/Annabel instead of Clara and Anna.

Brooke writes:

I am less than two weeks away from my due date and we are in a predicament. I would really really appreciate hearing your thoughts and your reader’s thoughts on this name situation. We have a name we really like and while my husband thinks it’s rediculous that I took this name off the list a long time ago because of it’s meaning, I am still hesitant and want to know if I would be making a mistake by using it. The name we like is Cora which means “maiden” – this alone is no big deal really. The middle name we planned on using is Marie which means “bitter”. Would Cora Marie hate us when she gets older and finds out her name means bitter maiden??? Marie is my middle name and my mom’s middle name. We want to use a family name from my side since we did a family name from my husband’s side for our son’s middle name.

A little background info that might help: my name is Brooke, husband is Bryan and our son is Drew Thomas. Our last name is Fletcher. Our top girl names are Cora, Kate and Audrey.

Cora Marie
Kate Amelia
Audrey Kate

Family names: Marie (my middle and my mom’s) Lucille (my grandma’s first name), June (my mom’s favortie aunt), Kate (way back on both my grandmother and grandfather’s side), Rosa (I LOVE Cora Rose, but this would be a stretch and Rosa is way far back in the family tree). I also love Cora Mae – could Mae be a newer version of Marie or am I pulling at strings here???

I am dying to know your thoughts and am completely open to any suggestions other than what have going!!!

Name meanings are fun, but this is where they bite us in the butt.

Historically, people have enjoyed attributing meanings to items. That doesn’t mean those meanings are inherent to the items: one community decides a certain flower or certain color or certain gem or certain day of the year means one thing, and another community might decide something completely different. In one culture, white fabric is used for weddings and religious purity; in another, for funerals and mourning. Which of those reflects the true meaning of the color white? Neither: both meanings are imposed upon the color rather than obtained from it. Yellow roses mean “jealousy”—but also “friendship,” “apology,” and “dying love” (source). Which of those is the REAL meaning? None of them: all such meanings have been tacked onto the object for fun. If someone gives you yellow roses, the most likely message is “Here, have some pretty yellow roses.”

It is the same with the name Cora Marie: it doesn’t truly MEAN “bitter maiden” unless you intend it to mean that, any more than a yellow rose truly means “jealousy” if you don’t intend it to mean that. A yellow rose means only itself: it is a yellow rose. The name Cora Marie means only itself: it is the proper noun Cora, followed by the proper noun Marie. Baby name books don’t even agree on the meanings of names; and combining names to make compound meanings creates compound problems: the meaning of one name is not designed to refer to the meaning of another name.

Marie is said to mean bitter because it’s similar to the name Mara which, in a Bible story, a character claims means bitter (source). Or maybe Mara means “to flap” or “to be filthy” or “to rebel” (source). In either case, does the possible meaning of a Hebrew word pronounced MAH-rah really impact the meaning of the French name pronounced mah-REE—and to the extent that a child sharing that name with millions of other women throughout history (as well as with her personal family ancestors) would take it as a personal slap in the face from her parents? Is that how you feel about your middle name, or how your mom feels about hers? Do any of us wonder, when we meet a Marie, if she hates her parents for giving her such an insulting name?

Besides, according to the The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, the names Marie, Maria, and Mary are separate from the name Mara and instead all come from the Latin word meaning “sea” (the same root as words such as marine, marina, and mariner). Presumably your daughter will not mind as much being known as a “sea maiden”—or mermaid, if you prefer.

The “maiden” part is also uncertain: according to the same book, the name Cora was invented in the 1800s by a novelist. Did that author imbue the name with a meaning at the moment of its invention? Was a special court convened to divine the true meaning of the name before registering it in the baby name books? No: the Oxford Dictionary speculates that the name “could represent a Latinized form of Greek Kore ‘maiden’.” Nobody knows what Cora means, because the name Cora doesn’t have a meaning—not that this stops the baby name books from reporting one.

By all means, if you enjoy playing with the meanings of names, go ahead and do it: just as it might be fun to have a bouquet of striped and solid carnations seem to say “yes” and “no” at the same time, it could be fun to say a name like Cora Beatrix meant “happy maiden.” But letting these imposed meanings stop you from using names you love is another matter. It would be like digging up the hydrangeas you loved because you didn’t want your neighbors to think you were frigid.

The polls are killing me. Do you see how a Blogger glitch reset them all to zero? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of votes, all lost. I was leaving the polls up in case a fix restored the counts—but the Rosetta one has gathered additional votes since being reset, and each time has again reset to zero. I’d been thinking I might re-run the polls, but that won’t work if those too will just keep resetting to zero. I’ll leave them up a few more days just in case—and so Blogger can look at them if necessary to figure out what went wrong.

Update: Thank goodness, Blogger fixed it! I’ve put the poll results in their respective posts.

(Today I have several posts I ran out of time to answer at usual length in the week after they arrived, but I’d jotted down a single suggestion in the spreadsheet. I’m going to post several in a row today with my extremely brief response, so that others can work on them further if they want to.)

Ellen writes:

Swistle! did you know that you can get pregnant the first time you have sex after giving birth? ME EITHER. (I mean I guess I knew but not welll enough to avoid it…)

soooo my husband (Edward) and I (Ellen) have basically been in shock and it’s only just now occurring to us that we should maybe name this current baby that’s baking in there.  i’m  now eight months pregnant and we have  10 month old twin girls, Lucy June and Nora Rose. yes, our THREE children will be under a year apart, and yes, we are freaking out. also hiring babysitters frantically. Ahem. 

we DID want three kids, we just weren’t thinking we’d have them this close. With the girls, with spent months and months figuring out their names. They were carefully planned, etc. We love that their names have such a nice rhythm. our surname is Salter, btw. anyway, with this preg. it took me an embarrassingly long time to even realize i WAS pregnant, because of the whole having infant twins thing, and we just started seriously thinking about names last week. it’s a boy, btw. so with the girls, like I said we thought long and hard and settled on names that were kind of similar–four letters, similar styles–but didn’t sound super alike. We sometimes call them Lucy and Nora but more often Lucy June and Nora Rose, because the names are super fun to say. We’d like a similar double barreled concept with The Boy. Our girls do not have family names, we told our families that we would find many other ways to honor them. 

so…um, help? oh, we don’t want to repeat initials. we don’t really care about popularity, especially as we usually call the girls their full names. 

our hastily brainstromed list, we are thinking about combos from this list

Owen (but maybe too close to my name, but that might not matter at all since i’m the mom?)

Oliver

Henry (but I dont want to repeat ending sounds)

Caleb (but maybe too bliblical? we are not bliblical, we’re Unitarians)

Reid

Tate (but sounds kind of girly, I guess because of Tatum)

we are oddly drawn to Moss, but it isn’t really a name, so.

Gage (doesn’t seem quite enough like a name)

Gray (but again…is this really name-y? but could be a good middle, its a word name like June and Rose. but on the other hand, isn’t gray kind of depressing?)

Arlo

Nico

Jude (but super close to June)

Felix

Any suggestions for us? BTW our dogs are Ambrose and Izadore, for what that matters, which probably isn’t much.

THANK YOU!!!!

Owen Reid leaps out at me as an excellent combination, an excellent name, and an excellent way to repeat the 4-4 letter, 2-1 syllable pattern. I don’t think Owen is too close to Ellen.