Hi Swistle,

My husband and I are due with our first child, a girl, on Jan 31. Our last name is Chenn, but with “a” instead of an “e”.

She won’t have a middle name.

My husband and I are partial to gender neutral names and have narrowed our choices down to Alexis and Riley. Riley was our top choice, but I’m worried that it doesn’t “age well” in the sense that it sounds too childlike (can I picture a lawyer named Riley or a Grandma Riley)? Alexis (nn Lexi) recently came into the picture but I’m hesitant because the possessive form of the name (Alexis’ or Alexis’s) is inconsistent and I find that slightly annoying. I also know two people with that name who I would not want my daughter to emulate.

Other names we have on our list include Quinn, Skyler, and Casey. I also love the name Mia (but he hates it) and he likes the name Caitlin (but I’ve vetoed because: 1. there are too many ways to spell it and I don’t want her to go through life spelling her name for everyone, and 2. It’s traditionally pronounced more like “Kath-leen” in Gaelic so I would be intentionally pronouncing it wrong by giving her that name).

What do you think? Is Riley too “kiddish” and are my qualms about Alexis unreasonable? Do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you!

I like putting names through a series of tests, too. I do the careers test: does the name work on a lawyer? a teacher? a clerk? a carpenter? I also like the stages-of-life test: does the name work on a young child? a young adult? a middle-aged adult? an older adult? And I like the “make sure you’re not imagining a celebrity” test (aka the “Blake Lively looks wonderful in everything but that doesn’t mean the rest of us will” test): picture the name on an ordinary child; on a unpopular teenager with bad skin and unflattering clothes; on a plump, plain, glasses-wearing adult; etc.

Here is where the tests fall short: because name fashions come and go, and because they shift so much from generation to generation, a name can fail dramatically if you run the test while you’re pregnant, even though the name would later on have passed the test easily. When people of approximately my age think about “old man/lady” names, we might think of Mildred, Ethel, Howard, Donald. But the parents who used those names for their babies back in, say, 1920, were not thinking to themselves, “I love this name, and it will work GREAT on an old person.” If you’d asked them at the time to imagine a Grandma Ethel, it would have been difficult. Ethel is a swinging young person, vibrant and cheeky! But 90 years later, people my age are saying “Ethel? That’s an old lady name!” (and are on the verge of finding our grandchildren given it as a charming vintage revival).

Riley is an excellent example of the issue. I know NO ONE my age named Riley, nor anyone my parents’ age named Riley, nor anyone my grandparents’ age named Riley, nor anyone my great-grandparents’ age named Riley. I only know children named Riley. This makes sense when you look at how many girls have been named Riley over the years, going back in roughly generation-sized chunks:

1893: –
1923: 5
1953: –
1983: 36
2013: 4,902 (plus another 2,878 named Rylee, 1,709 named Ryleigh, 839 named Rylie, etc.)

So picturing a Grandma Riley does indeed feel ridiculous: if those 5 in 1923 are not a recording error (in that same year I see 41 baby boys named Elizabeth and 43 baby girls named David), maybe a few of us know an elderly woman named Riley—but most of us have never encountered one. But will it seem ridiculous when all of today’s child-aged Rileys are grandparent-aged? Will the children of that era say, “Wow, sure seems weird to have a GRANDMOTHER named Riley!” Of course not! Fast-forward 80 years from now and parents will be making baby name lists and one of them will say “How about Riley, after my grandmother?” and the other one will say “No way, Riley is SUCH an old-person name. Maybe as a middle.”

Where was I? Oh, yes: I was saying that I would not be very concerned about a currently-popular name fitting an older person. If you were to suggest a name such as Boopsie because you’d always thought that was an adorable name for a baby, I might gently remind you that babies are babies for only a very short time, and after that they need names that work in childhood and adulthood. If you were wondering if I could picture a lawyer named Boopsie, I would have to admit it was a stretch. But if you are looking at the names popular for this generation of babies, and you are feeling concerned because they seem to fit young children but not lawyers or senior citizens, then I say the tests are only helpful to a certain extent. The name Riley was the 45th most popular girl name in the United States in 2013, and that doesn’t even count all the other popular spellings; the name will age along with everyone who has it, just as Ethel has, just as Barbara has, just as Jennifer has.

Speaking of the other popular spellings, however, I’d say Riley is up there with Caitlin in terms of spelling issues. Just looking at the spellings given to 100 or more baby girls in 2013, we have:

Riley (4,902)
Rylee (2,878)
Ryleigh (1,709)
Rylie (839)
Rileigh (185)
Rilee (130)
Reilly (102)

If you wanted to reconsider Caitlin, but the pronunciation issue bothers you, there are two sources for the name. One is the Gaelic, which, as you say, was originally pronounced more like kat-LEEN. The other is a classic combination source such as Maryanne and Annemarie: Kate + Lynn is Katelyn, and is pronounced as you’d prefer, with no “pronouncing it wrong” issue.

On to Alexis. The issue of making a possessive or plural out of a name ending in S is one of the reasons I hesitate over using such names myself, because errors of that sort me want to pull out my teeth. I know I’ve told this story before, but when I worked in a daycare, a co-worker once made baby James’s name possessive by writing “Jame’s,” and I have never quite recovered. And recently my high-school-aged son told me after I proofread his paper that his English teacher told him it is now considered correct to make a name ending in S possessive by just adding an apostrophe; if this is true, and not just a teenager refusing to admit he’s wrong, I will be driven crazy not only by people getting it wrong but also by having to adjust to a new rule.

BUT: this is why I say every name has a set of issues and it’s a good idea to find the ones that drive you less crazy. In my case, a name ending in S is likely to produce decades of irritation; for someone else, only decades of shrugging, because it isn’t one of their hair-tear issues. If the people getting the possessive wrong is only slightly annoying, then it may be something you chalk up to being part of the package deal of the name, and nothing more serious than that. But if seeing Alexis’ and, heaven help us, Alexi’s, will make you grind your teeth, then I think that’s a legitimate reason to be concerned about using the name. Adding in two people named Alexis who are not positive associations, you may have a name you like very much but that isn’t a good fit for your family.

If you’d like the name Riley, but would like to reduce issues of popularity and spelling, I suggest Rory.

I think Avery might be a good fit for you. It’s a unisex name, but it doesn’t seem as youthful as Riley. I can more easily picture a lawyer named Avery.

Or Ellis. It fits so nicely with the Ella/Isabella sound (and has the nickname Ellie if she wants something more decisively feminine), but is much less common and much more unisex.

Or Hollis. It has the nickname Holly, if she wants it.

Devany is a name I’ve heard only once on an actual child, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Or Hadley.

Or Teagan.

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

Thank you for responding to my email and assuaging my fears about names not aging well. Baby girl Riley was born on Feb 1, 2015. We knew that we had the right name for her when she weathered 35+ hours of labor like a spunky little champ.

I’ve attached a picture! Thanks again for your help!
Mama Chenn

Hi Swistle,

I am a massive fan of your blog and have been an avid follower for many years (before I was even married or pregnant!)

I am pregnant and due in April with our first baby and this will also be the first grandchild on both sides

We haven’t found out the sex and have had a baby name list for a couple of years. We think we have settled on names for both boy and girl, but I keep having doubts about whether people will like them (I know we can’t please everyone) but I am worrying about peoples negative responses

We have chosen Thelma Jane for a girl, Thelma (husbands grandma’s name) and Jane (my grandma’s name)

My husband really likes the name and it just happens that they are our grandma’s names, but I am worrying about using an honour name (both our grandma’s are deceased) but I don’t want to offend my husbands other grandma (Sheila) or offend any of our parents if we have another girl in the future and don’t use any honour names for them.

For a boy we both really like Forrest, but we can’t decide on a middle name. We liked William, but cannot use this anymore. We also like James, (my granddad was called & christened Jim, so not an honour name, but is in a way?!) but don’t love the name…. and worried about it being too similar to Jane (middle name for girl, see above)

We want something a bit more common to go with the unusual name of Forrest.

I am very concerned about peoples reactions for Forrest. I keep going through stages of feeling determined that this is the name we both like and have liked for a couple of years, but then I go through stages of feeling really anxious and worrying about people mentioning the film Forrest Gump (not the reason we chose the name) or grandparents who only seem to like regal names (like William, Harry, George, Charles) there is nothing wrong with regal names, but not what we are looking for with a first name.

My husband is really settled on these names, I think I am too. But I keep questioning if other people will like them, I am worried they will have a negative reaction and then it will change the way I look at the name.

Other names we have considered for a girl:

Enid
Jovie (don’t like the ‘ie’ ‘ey’ rhyming of last of middle name and last of surname, my name is K@yley H@rtley, cant get much rhymier than that!)
Jerrica
Deryn (pronounced Derren)
Lavender
Nuala
Sylvie (same ‘ie’ ‘ey’ rhyming issue)
Emerald
Penelope
Marcella

Other names we have considered for a boy:

Zeke (don’t like how it sounds with the surname)
Malory
Selwyn
Parker
Morris
Sebastian
Kip (middle name)
Solomon
Evander (middle name)
Gabriel (middle name)
Alexander (middle name)

We don’t like names beginning with H as we feel they clash with our surname and are hoping to have 3 children in total!

Any help or advice on the names we have considered and advice on middle names for Forrest would be really appreciated, really hoping you can help and thank you in advance :)

Many thanks,
K@yley and Jo$eph H@rtley

It is definitely one of the tricky parts of using honor names: many parents wonder if the people they DON’T honor will then feel NON-honored by implication. I’m not sure if there’s any good way around it, but this may be where the tradition of “only use honor names of people who have died” comes from: if you’ll never know if you were honored or not (or at least, not until after you’ve joined an afterlife and presumably have a renewed sense of perspective about such things), there can be far fewer hard feelings. And if the trade-off for being honored is that you have to be dead and never get to meet the sweet little baby namesake, it no longer seems like such an enviable thing. And that’s the spin I’d put on it if I were you: “We wanted to honor our grandmothers who never got to meet our little girl.” Implication: The actual lucky people here are the ones who get to know the baby.

Then if you have another child and don’t use honor names, I would do so with the self-assurance of someone who trusts that all the family members understand how such things work: using an honor name, or two honor names, doesn’t mean the parents will now go through the entire family name by name, making sure they have enough children to cover every single person. Using two great-grandmother names in no way commits you to using the other two great-grandmother names, or to using the four great-grandfather names, or to using all four grandparent names. And it is a familiar practice to give honor names to the firstborn but not to subsequent children.

I do worry about making sure sibling names aren’t too similar, but I don’t worry at all about the middle names being too similar. If you wanted to name siblings Jane and James, I would feel those were too similar; for middle names, I don’t see it as an issue. From your list, my favorite is Forrest Alexander. Or I like Forrest Henry or Forrest Robert. Forrest Joseph, maybe? Or perhaps your husband’s middle name would work? Or do you have a brother or uncle or father or grandfather whose name would be nice? I hope for LOVE-love for a first name, but for the middle I like to find something serviceable: in this case, something to meet your preference of finding something more common to balance the first name, and perhaps something to mollify anyone who doesn’t like the name Forrest. The middle name would also be a good chance to use a name you like very much but don’t want to use as a first name for whatever reason (not a good sound with the surname, wrong style, etc.).

I think it can be reassuring in a bit of a backwards way to realize that no matter what you name your child, a significant portion of the population will think you have made a poor choice. I know you know this, since you mention not being able to please everyone, but I’m not sure it has FULLY sunk in. That is: NO MATTER WHAT you name this child, some people won’t like it. NO MATTER WHAT. Which is what leads us to the other half of the saying: You can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself. You will not catch Swistle saying that this means you should completely ignore all of society around you: the child will have to wear this name in that society, and so by “please yourself” I don’t mean “shrug off valid issues, such as whether Chicky McBawkBawk is a name that will please the child as much as it pleases us.” But if you have decided on the perfectly nice names Thelma and Forrest, and those are your favorite names, it’s not going to solve the “some people won’t like the names” problem to choose different names; it will only change which people don’t like them, and for what reasons.

My guess is that even if you get your share of negative reactions to the name, it won’t alter the way you feel about the name any more than ANY set of negative reactions would have altered the way you felt about ANY name. There is “Oh, like Forrest Gump?,” and there is the flat little “Oh” of someone so bored by the name they can hardly comment, and there is the “THAT’S an interesting name” of someone who feels incorrectly that they are doing an excellent job being tactful, and there is the “Oh, I know SO MANY of those!,” and there is the “…How did you come up with THAT?,” and there is the “Oh! Is that…a family name?,” and the “Oh, yes, that’s quite a popular choice these days!,” and so on. It’s not so much a matter of avoiding negative reactions; it’s more an issue of picking the ones you’d rather deal with—and of realizing that even a negative reaction is a fleeting thing, and no one truly deep-down cares if you use a name they don’t love, especially as the years (or in fact MINUTES) go by and they find other things to occupy their minds.

Thelma in particular may require a brief adjustment, because it’s so rare these days. It was last in the Top 50 back in the early 1900s, which makes me suspect it is getting to be time for a revival: the usual pattern is Popular Name, then Mom Name, then Grandma Name, then Great-Grandma Name, then back to Popular Name. I remember when the name Emma was such a surprise (and remember when Julia Roberts named her daughter Hazel?), and Emma was last in style in the late 1800s along with Cora and Clara and Grace and Ella; the early 1900s (Ruth, Hazel, Martha, Louise, Pearl) are next up.

You may especially encounter an initial resistance from older generations, since to them it may be an “old lady name”: names the current generation sees as Great-Grandma-or-older names, older generations would naturally see as Mom or Grandma names. Emma and Henry were recently “old lady / old man” names, and my parents are probably not the only ones of their generation who still think of the name Henry as somebody’s elderly great-uncle. I found that my first reaction to the name Thelma was neutral surprise (according to the archives, the name has come up on this blog only twice total, and this is one of those two times), and that the surprise quickly tilted positive: my inclination was to encourage you to use it, rather than to try to talk you out of it. And I think “She’s named for her great-grandmother” is an especially charming assist for those who have a little trouble with the transition to the next generation of names (as all of us likely will have, in our turn): honor names are always in their own category of fashion.

If you use Forrest, some people WILL make the association with Forrest Gump: I don’t think that’s avoidable. They will say, “Oh, like Forrest Gump!,” and you will say pleasantly, “Oh—no, we just liked the name,” and that will be the end of it. Later on, a few people will say “Run, Forrest, run!” when he is running, but they will not intend it meanly; they will feel they are making a funny reference to one of movies’ most beloved characters. The same is likely to happen with people informing him that life is like a box of chocolates. (It can be a little lesson to us all about avoiding saying the first joke/association that comes to one’s mind.) You might be able to reduce the association by spelling it Forest, giving it a nature connection instead, but many people will make the association anyway. If I were you, I would consider it part of the package deal of this name: if that element will drive you crazy, I would look for a different name; otherwise, every name has its own set of issues, and at least the association is a positive one. Thelma may have a similar issue with the movie Thelma and Louise.

Name update!

Hi Swistle,

Thank you for featuring my naming query! I was so excited when i saw it on your blog :)

Our little boy Forrest James arrived on 16th April 2015 at 07:57am by emergency caesarian weighing 9lb 7oz

We absolutely love his name and it suits him perfectly. We have had a few, “oh what an unusual name” or “oh as in Forrest Gump?” or “oh what made you think of that” but we just reply saying thank you we just liked the name.

Please find attached a picture of our gorgeous little man :)

From the H@rtleys :) xx

Hello Swistle!

I’m so excited to be writing, and I’m so hopeful that you can lend your ear and help me find a good name for baby Jenkins number FIVE arriving in June! I have a long list of preferred requirements for a name, but they can mostly be summed up in the following guidelines:

1. Easy to spell when said aloud.
2. Easy to understand (i.e. over the phone).
3. Not too many matchy/rhyming names through the sibling set.
4. No formal name that defaults to a nickname for everyday use.

To give you a complete picture, I think I’ll start with my oldest child and explain a few things about what we’ve done so far. Our oldest is Abigail Kate (nn Abby). My husband and I agreed on Abigail pretty easily, but we were at odds about the middle name (I’m bracing myself now because I know you’re not going to like what comes next!). I grew up without a middle name and HATED it… until I got married and now I LOVE it. When I was a kid I got to imagine up my own middle name, I didn’t feel like I had to give anything up or make a hard choice between keeping my middle or maiden names, or both, when I got married. I simply gained a husband AND an extra name to tag on the back. My husband advocated for a middle name, and I wanted to leave it without. We flipped a coin in a smoothie shop, and you see who won! I don’t hate her middle name, but it’s just a name we both liked with Abigail/Abby, and if I had it to do over again I’d likely skip it. I’d also just name her Abby, since that’s what we call her 95 percent of the time anyway.

Our second child, a boy, we named Evan Campbell. I loved the soft simplicity, sort of worn in feel of Evan, and Campbell is a family name on my side with a deep meaning which I was very excited about. It fits my list of criteria, and I’ve been really happy with it. My husband kind of had the final say on both of the first two kids, and we agreed that I’d have the final say on the next two.

Our third pregnancy was (surprise!) twins! We got a boy and a girl, and I was so so careful with those names. I wanted them to blend well with the others, but pair nicely with just the two of them, but also stand alone well. We debated between Henry/Claire and Hugh/Molly. In the end, we decided to go with Hugh and Molly. I would have loved to have chosen Henry and Molly, but I felt it too matchy matchy with an Abby, Henry and Molly…and Evan. For our son, we chose Hugh Douglas, even though Hugh breaks both rule 1 and 2 because Hugh is a family name on my side, and Douglas which is my dad’s name. (And here’s where it gets fun!) For Molly, we chose JUST Molly, as in Molly no-middle-name Jenkins. I felt that I was giving her my middle name, which is to not have one. We often call her Molly Belle because she was so tiny on her first Halloween that she fit into a little Belle dress for an 18” doll, and it’s just sort of stuck. I feel SO MUCH HAPPIER with her fake middle name than I do with Abby’s real one. With Molly I just FELT that her name was meant to be Molly and just Molly, and she’s the first of any of my kids that I’ve felt that way. With my older two, I never could commit 100%, which is why my husband got the final OK. This time I just felt it for the name Molly, which dictated what happened with Hugh’s name, which I was perfectly happy with.

So. Here we are, with baby number 5 on the way. I’m not sure who gets the final stamp of approval rights this time, but I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s me! We have the slight advantage that these babies have all come in close succession (Abby will be 6 when baby 5 arrives) and also the slight disadvantage that these babies have all come in close succession (leaving less brain power than I once had!) To recap, here’s what we’ve got:

My husband, Kristopher Michael
-I’m not fond of either of his names. I especially dislike that his name is spelled with a non-traditional K, making him Kris instead of Chris to most everyone, and that his middle name is just a name his mom liked for no particular reason.

Myself, BriAnna no-middle-name
-forever explaining the capital A which was supposed to feel a bit like having a middle name as kind of two names put together as one, but really just made cursive in the third grade a little harder to navigate.

Abigail Kate
-I wish I would have gone with just Abby, but Kate with a K could work as a partial, albeit very slight, nod to my husband’s name spelling if we don’t use his name elsewhere.

Evan Campbell
-Family name Campbell.

Hugh Douglas
-Family name Douglas.

Molly no-middle-name
-Because I feel remorse for Abby’s middle name.

We’ve just found out that the baby is a girl! I’ve got a list of choices that I can see working, but nothing that I’m totally sold on. This begs the main question, middle name or no middle name? Many of my family members couldn’t believe that I named one daughter with a middle name and one without, but I felt like if I HAD had a middle name, I could pass that on to one daughter and not the other and that wouldn’t be odd at all. With a third daughter, what happens next? I do know that I feel strongly that if she does get a middle name, it should have meaning and heritage, or else it should be omitted, as therein lays the heritage. Some of the names we are considering for a girl are:

Claire
-This feels maybe worn out from being a top contender last time, although it’s lovely. Maybe Clara instead?

Jane
-Jane Jenkins? Too much? Not Enough?

Beatrice (nn Bea)
-I think this is DARLING, but for everyday use Abby and Bea is just too similar to be workable, and I don’t like Tris. If I HAD to choose a middle name, I think I would choose Bea, because Abby Kate has the K for Kristopher, and _____ Bea has the B for BriAnna.

Lucy

Hazel

Alice

Nora

Ruby
-This is my husband’s suggestion, but I like it.

Ahhh! I feel better now that that’s all out there. Swistle. Help! I’m a planner and would love to put a name to this sweet surprise baby to help her feel more real. I’m open to suggestions as well as your input about what we’ve got on the list so far… and go easy on me about the middle names! J

Grateful,
BriAnna Jenkins

You were right, I AM feeling all squirrelly about the middle name situation! But I WILL go easy on the topic: if it had come up back when you were naming Abby, or when you were naming Molly, I might have gone Full Swistle on it—but at this point, we are working with a set of already-made decisions, and I feel like you could go either way on the next decision.

If you DON’T give her a middle name, I like that the exception to the pattern is the firstborn: firstborns OFTEN have things about their names that are different, because of being firstborn. I also like that Molly wouldn’t be the odd one out: a 3-2 split seems so different than a 4-1 split.

And if you DO give her a middle name, I like that she has a middle name. It’s not that I think middle names are so crucial (I wouldn’t be the least bit squirreled-up if none of the children in the family had them), but I will say again (just once, because I know you already know) how much I dislike the idea that a girl’s name is not complete until she’s married (with the implied presumption, intentional or not, that she WILL marry and WILL change her name), while a boy’s name is complete from birth. I think you really could keep Molly from feeling left out with the “you have the same middle name as Mommy!” concept, even though I think passing on the absence of a name is not quite the same as passing on a name: YOU feeling it’s the same is what would be important here. A good happy-parent naming story is valuable and important, and you’ve got one. You can play with her the “choose your own middle name” game, have family jokes where you’re Mommy Belle and Molly Belle, and so on and so on. The question, I think, is “Can this odd-man-out situation be considered SPECIAL instead of LEFT OUT?,” and the answer here I think is yes.

In short, I think both ways can be right.

If you decide NOT to give her a middle name, you probably don’t need me anymore. Clara Jenkins is wonderful, and probably my top choice from the list. Jane is one of my favorite names, and with Jenkins I think it has a certain flair. I like the way Lucy and Ruby give all three girls names ending in -y (if we count Abby as Abby instead of Abigail), while neither boy has that. Nora Jenkins is another hit, I think, and I like it with Abby and Molly. Alice seems a little similar to Abigail/Abby; Ruby seems a little similar to Abby; Hazel seems a little different in style than Abby and Molly; but all seem like fine candidates.

If you DO give her a middle name, then this is the point at which I would turn my attention from your very good finalists list to the middle name issue, in case the middle name helped us narrow down the first name. I like your idea of Bea, to be a little bit after BriAnna the way Kate is a little bit after Kristopher. I also like the idea of using Anna, since that was sort of a stand-in for your middle name: you’d have one daughter with your actual childhood middle name (nothing) and one with your sort-of childhood middle name (Anna). Or, if you’ve made your maiden name into your middle name, I like the idea of passing on your actual current middle name. (And if this is the case, it seems worth noting that you now DO have a middle name and are no longer BriAnna no-middle-name—and that it was upon acquiring a middle name that you finally stopped hating not having one.)

To add more options to the list, I would use whatever method you used for finding your sons’ middle names. Part of your regret over Abigail’s middle name seems to be that it was just something that sounded nice, instead of being a significant family name like your sons’ middle names. Are there women in the family you’d like to honor? More family surnames to consider?

Once you have a little list of significant names, try them out with the list of first names: sometimes pairing the right middle name with a first name can make the whole thing click into place. Or perhaps that exercise will demonstrate that you really, really don’t want a middle name, in which case you can revert to that plan.

Name update!

Hello Swistle!
I’m so happy to be writing to update you on the arrival of our little surprise baby number 5! We definitely needed your help because this was the longest any of our kids have gone nameless and we were still discussing names while we were in the hospital after she arrived. In the end, we owe her name to a reader comment! In my original letter I mentioned both Claire/Clara and Nora, and reader Megz suggested Cora. I loved that Cora didn’t have the “does it have an H or not?” problem that Nora has, but also has the hard C start of Claire and Clara. As I reread my original letter to you, I’ve realized that Cora also hits every single one of my requests that I made for the ideal name. Hooray! Ultimately we decided not to have a middle name at all, but were still deep in the throes of figuring that out at the hospital. Our final three choices were Cora, Cora Bea or Cora B. In the end I was just happiest going without, and my husband gave me last picks. So! I’m so pleased to introduce you to our newest addition, Cora Jenkins :)