Hi Swistle! I’m a longtime reader and obsessed over your blog when I was pregnant with my first. I have a 2 year old named Claire and just found out we’re having twin boys!! We’re so excited but I knew this would be the hardest name challenge for me – two girl names would’ve been no problem for me, but boys name I have such a harder time with! It doesn’t help that I find something wrong with and second guess myself on every name! I still question the name Claire, wondering if we should’ve gone with something more frilly, longer, flowery etc, especially now that we probably wont’ have another girl. If either of the twins was a girl I would’ve gone with Genevieve Ann. Sadly am mourning the loss of that name! Anyways……on to boys names. These are our current contenders:

Andrew
Collin
Aaron
Marshall – family name
Hugh
Jude
Lawrence
Harrison
Christopher
Maxwell
Oliver
Jake
Everett (possible nickname Rhett)
Walt
Edward
Wesley

Our last name begins with P and is 2 syllables, ends with -er. Wanting at least one of the names to be at least 2 syllables.

The coming up with two names at once adds an additional challenge for me! I can’t seem to separate them in my mind, but constantly say the pair I’m trying out together. My other problem is that I’ll like something for a couple of weeks, then be “over it” so it’s hard to imagine a name I’ll love forever! Does anyone else have this problem or am I the only one? ;)

I knew Claire was in the top 50 when we named her but since she was born I’ve learned of what seems like a million baby Claires. Being a Sarah of the 80s, I feel like I did the same thing to her! So, am wanting to avoid the super common – strangely, I know no Christophers, and only one each of Andrew and Jake, even though they are high on the popularity charts.

First I would like to give you some comfort about the popularity of the name Claire. You mention she’s two, so I will look at the 2012 statistics. In 2012, according to the Social Security Administration, the name Claire was given to .26% of baby girls. I will guess at your ’80s birth year and pick 1985: in 1985, the name Sarah/Sara was given to 1.92% of baby girls. So there were more than SEVEN TIMES as many girls named Sarah/Sara in your age group as there are girls named Claire in your daughter’s age group. For every ONE girl named Claire now, there were SEVEN girls named Sarah/Sara then. It’s the same ratio if you were born in 1989; if you were born in 1980, it’s EIGHT times as many instead of seven.

I know there will be others who will report feeling that same “like it, but then I’m over it” feeling about names. I had many name crushes, and it was alarming later to see how those crushes had faded; I too worried this meant I might not love a chosen name long-term. So far, though, I’ve found I’m only MORE committed to the names in the long term: regrets gradually fade as it becomes more and more impossible to picture having chosen a different name. A regret such as “I wish we hadn’t chosen such a common name” changes over time to something more like “I wish everyone ELSE hadn’t chosen it,” if you see what I mean. That is, I feel more and more as if we made the right choice, and I am only sorry it was the right choice for so many other people as well; I don’t wish to have made a different choice ourselves.

Because I enjoy a little twinniness with twin names, and because your daughter’s name starts with C, and because twins are referred to during the pregnancy as Baby A and Baby B, I would be a little tempted to go with an ABC pattern. You don’t have any B names on your list, but my mom and I were just talking this morning about how much we like the name Benjamin, so I’ll use that as a sample name:

Claire, Benjamin, and Andrew
Claire, Benjamin, and Aaron

I do think it can be a helpful exercise to pretend you’re not having twins. Pretend you are pregnant with only one boy right now, and pick your favorite name from the list to join his sister Claire. Then pretend it’s two years later and you are pregnant again, another boy to join siblings Claire and ______: which name is your choice this time? I do always go back to trying the two names together as a twin set, but thinking of them as two singleton births helped me avoid some of that overwhelmed feeling that comes with choosing a pair of names.

Do matching initials appeal to you? You could do Claire, Collin, and Christopher: 1, 2, and 3 syllables.

Collin and Oliver make me think of Calvin. Claire, Calvin, and…hm. Collin seems too similar, Christopher too different, and with two C names I’d want a third in this case. (Normally I say the pattern isn’t set with only two, but I feel differently about it when twins are involved.) Maybe Claire, Calvin, and Caleb. Well, but two Cal and one Cla seems too similar again. Maybe Claire, Calvin, and Charles.

Or maybe matching initials just for the twins: Andrew and Aaron, Harris and Hugh, Jude and Jacob.

I think it’s fun to make twin-name pairs from a list. I am going to play with your list a little, pairing up my own favorites, and perhaps the commenters would like to do the same.

Oliver and Wesley (matching number of letters)
Oliver and Everett (matching “ver”—but is that too much “er” with the surname?)
Everett and Harrison (both have a doubled letter)
Edward and Andrew (matching number of letters/syllables, both contain A, D, E, R, W)

I also like Hugh and Walt (matching number of letters/syllables), but neither of those has two or more syllables.

I kept wanting to use Marshall (I love family names), but felt a little reluctant to give one twin a family name and not the other. Maybe something like Marshall [Non-Family Middle] and Collin [Dad’s Name] would work.

Everett makes me think of Elliot, which I like in a very similar way. I like Oliver and Elliot together.

Name update!

Hi Swistle :)  Well my babies turn 1 this week so I guess it’s time to update you on our names!  Ha!  I had decided on Oliver as one of the names but for the life of me couldn’t decide on the other!  After a few days in the NICU (yes poor baby B was nameless for a while!), we decided on Andrew Paul for our darling baby B.  We had requested a Catholic priest to bless the babies at the NICU, but had no idea when he would come by our room.  About 5 minutes after deciding the name, I hear a knock at our hospital door, and it’s the priest who says “Hi, I’m here to bless your babies. What are their names”?  And he proceeds to bless them, using the names finally decided on!  It was truly a sign from God that these were the “right” names :)  Here’s a picture of our precious John Oliver (goes by Oliver) and Andrew Paul.  Thank you so much of your input!!

Hello!!

We need middle name help! Our baby girl is due this Friday (November 7th), and a friend just told me about your site last night, so I figured I’d write in and see if we can get some middle name suggestions.

Her first name is Zoey, and our last name is Hildebrand. I saw a recent post on your site about the name Zoey where you said it’s getting popular and you suggested a bunch of Zoey alternatives, but we are set on that as a first name. Our problem is that there is just nothing that stands out as a middle name! We have spent many hours browsing name websites (including the Social Security name database), and after awhile they all start to blend into mush!

So here’s the relevant information:

Big sister is Phoebe Kate
Big brother is Wyatt David (David is a meaningful family name)
Zoey’s middle name can’t start with H (because of our last name) or R (because for some reason R names blend too much with the vowels in Zoey when I say both names fast)
We want to keep her middle name to one or two syllables (because it could easily become a mouthful with our last name)
If the name has two syllables, we like the sound of the accent on the second syllable, but we are not necessarily locked into that pattern
The middle name should probably not end with an “ee” sound, because that’s the sound that Zoey ends with
We are open to common, uncommon, popular, less popular, or whatever

Alright, I think that’s it.

Thanks!

This may be too late to be of any help, but the letter stood out to me when I was looking through the possibilities this morning.

One way to narrow things down is to look for a name that fits the same rhythm as your first daughter’s name. Phoebe Kate and Zoey ____ would mean looking for a one-syllable middle name. Some possibilities:

Zoey Belle Hildebrand
Zoey Faith Hildebrand
Zoey Fay Hildebrand
Zoey Grace Hildebrand
Zoey Grey Hildebrand
Zoey Jade Hildebrand
Zoey Jane Hildebrand
Zoey Jean Hildebrand
Zoey Laine Hildebrand
Zoey Mae Hildebrand
Zoey Paige Hildebrand
Zoey Quinn Hildebrand

I like Claire as a one-syllable middle, but with first names ending in an -ee sound I always hear eclair: Zo Eclair.

I also like Zoey Louise a lot, and that would give you the 2-syllable accent-on-2nd-syllable sound. And I love Zoey Noelle. The middle name Marie was very common in my generation but I feel like I hear it far, far less often on current babies; Zoey Marie is pretty. Or Zoe Elise.

If nothing stands out, here are a few strategies to try:

1. Look for a name with significance to you: a family name, for example. If you don’t really care if it’s Zoey Marie or Zoey Elise or Zoey Mae, but Marie is your mother’s middle name, you can let that tip you toward the Marie choice. Would your own middle name work? Or are there any family surnames that could be preserved?

(I can see how this might be a little worrisome if Phoebe’s middle name doesn’t have any particular significance, and then Wyatt’s and Zoey’s both do. If Phoebe is the firstborn, I would spin it that “being firstborn” is her special thing. If not, I still wouldn’t worry very much: four of my kids have honor middle names and one doesn’t, and so far none of them care. We say to the one without the honor middle name: “And your middle name was because we loved it so much.”)

2. If one or both of your other children are old enough, ask for their input. It can make for a sweet story to say that an older sibling helped choose a younger sibling’s name.

3. Are there any names you would have liked to use as a first name, but couldn’t because of issues such as a friend using the name, or not liking the initials, or not liking it with the sibling names, or not liking it with your surname? This could be a good way to salvage one of those names.

And I think at some point it’s fine to say “Let’s just PICK something.” For my fifth child, we had three middle names that all sounded equally good to us and all had similar levels of significance. Finally we just PICKED one. I haven’t regretted the one we chose, and I don’t think I would have regretted choosing one of the others: the nice thing about nothing standing out is that it probably means all the choices are equally good and you’d be equally happy with any of them.

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

Baby Zoey was born this week, and we named her Zoey June. Thanks for your suggestions, and to everyone else who added their thoughts!

Jenn

Hi Swistle! It is finally my turn to email you, as I have read your blog for a long and time love love love your advice. We are expecting a baby girl in March of 2015 and although we’ve had a list since before we started even THINKING about kids (literally, it was something we discussed on our first date, what a topic, huh—“What are you planning on naming your future children?!”) we now cannot make a decision. I have two step sons, Kyle and Joshua (Josh.) This is my first, and we’re super excited to be adding a girl. I’m named after my grandmother, Mary Louise, and carry her middle name. I’d like to continue this trend. My mother’s middle is Lynne. Here’s where our dilemma comes in…

We love the name Eleanor. But, does Eleanor Lynne sounds too lin-lin to you? Some people hear Ella-nor and others hear El-lynn-or. Do you think it is too repetitive to use Lynne as a middle? We’ve also considered Amelia, Hannah (He loves, I’m ehh) Harriet and Charlotte. I don’t love them as much as I love Eleanor, but I could be swayed. We’re also super open to other suggestions!

I pinky swear that if you help name our baby, I will absolutely update you and the readers as soon as she arrives!!

Our last name is M0ntre@l, pronounced exactly like the city. For the record, we’re Dave and Rachel. Thank you in advance!

I do notice the repeating “lin” sound, but I’m not sure how quickly I would have noticed it if you hadn’t mentioned it, and it doesn’t bother me. There was recently a news story about a little girl named Brooklyn Lynn, and that is a much more serious repeating-“lin” issue—and yet after a moment of noticing it, I found I shrugged and thought “Who cares?” If their favorite name is Brooklyn and they want to honor a Lynn or even they just LIKE the name Lynn, is there any reason in the whole wide world they shouldn’t go right ahead and do that? No, there really isn’t.

Coming from that line of thought to your Eleanor Lynne issue helped me to clarify things. It doesn’t seem like a problem, and in fact I suspect some people would find the repeating “lin” sound increased the appeal of the name—and as you’ve noted, some people wouldn’t hear a repeating “lin” sound at all. I also see the potential for cute around-the-house nicknames such as Linnie-Lynne.

Name update!

Hi Swistle! I’m Rachel. I wrote to you last year after learning we were having a girl. Eleanor Jane arrived on April 7th (TWO WEEKS LATE!) and just reminded me that I had yet to share her picture and name with you even though I promised.

Thank you and your readers for your suggestions!! We love her name and it fits her perfectly.

I hope you’re ready to help name #4 someday!

Dear Swistle,

My husband and I are so excited to welcome baby boy #3 into our family this February, but we are in desperate need of help with his name. You (and your readers’ comments) were a tremendous help to me in naming our second child back when I wrote to you in June 2012 (“Baby girl or boy Fable, sibling to Sawyer Benjamin“) that I decided to write again.

My name is Jocelyn and my husband’s name is Brian, last name rhymes with Fable. We currently have two sweet and silly boys, Sawyer Benjamin and Reed Wheeler. I have a strong sense to continue the surname/not-very-common naming trend as with Sawyer and Reed, but can’t seem to find anything that we both agree on… and trust me, I’ve read ALL the lists in the Baby Name Wizard book! Also not sure if I want another -er name, in order to not leave out Reed. Hudson is super cute, but is my nephew’s name (as is Fletcher).

We both almost agreed on the name Brooks, but discovered the sad connection to the character Brooks from the movie Shawshank Redemption, unfortunately ruling out that name. Other names I am somewhat drawn to are Brennan, Beckett, Brady, Grant, Parker, and ones that my husband has suggested include Hunter, Forrest, Henry, and Jack. Neither of us are crazy about the other’s list, however, leaving us stumped. If the baby were to be a girl, we would hands down agree on Madeline… but of course, this was not meant to be easy :) Any suggestions are MUCH appreciated!

Thank you,
Jocelyn

I will be gone most of the day today (Edward has an appointment with a specialist, so I will spend a big part of the day clenching my hands on the steering wheel and trying not to panic about all the Big City Drivers driving crazily around me), so this is the perfect day to do a letter I originally planned not to choose because my answer was going to be so short I wasn’t sure it was worth it.

My answer is this: that even though I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption several times and have also re-read several times the short story it’s based on, the Brooks connection didn’t occur to me—and hasn’t occurred to me even though the name Brooks has come up fairly regularly around here. Even once the connection was pointed out, it seems like a very weak one, and also a positive one (albeit sad). The movie is 20 years old now and the short story it was based on is over 30 years old, and surname names are popular; so even though Stephen King remains a current cultural figure and his books remain popular for re-reading, I don’t think anyone would think you intended the connection to that particular character. If I DID have reason to think the connection was deliberate, I’d think, “Oh, yes—that sweet, sweet man.”

So my advice is to go with Brooks if you love it. But I’ll also post this in case Brooks would have been out anyway and you’d like more suggestions.

Name update!

Hi Swistle!

A much postponed name update to my 11/6/14 post “Baby Boy Fable, Brother to Sawyer and Reed.” We have happy and healthy baby brother #3 named Beckett Henry “Fable”.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my two requests. I found it so helpful and exciting to hear from you and your thoughtful readers!

Thanks again!!
Jocelyn

Hi Swistle,
My husband and I have been debating this particular baby-name quandary for years, and now that we’re relatively close to starting a family I’d really like some outside opinions. We agree that we would like to use family names for our children, but our preferences differ wildly. My husband would rather we gave our kids culture-spanning classics, whereas I’m drawn to heritage-specific names. For the record, our families have been in the US for one and three generations respectively, and our last name is his family’s Ellis Island adoption. His argument is that our overly common surname lends a comical effect to heritage choices (his go-to example is Juan-Pablo Jones, which I honestly don’t find that jarring!) He also thinks that trying to pull off an ethnic name rings of cultural-appropriation, even if that culture is historically our family’s. I think our surname justifies using a more daring (in this country at least) given name. Getting him to talk about it seriously has been like trying to put socks on a cat. He gets squirmy and distracted, and pulls the “we’ve still got time” card, when all I want is to have my hypothetical children’s names decided a good year in advance so that I can devote that corner of my brain to other things. Is that too much to ask, Swistle? But honestly, I’m not sure how to go about convincing him just yet. For one thing, what if his claims are valid? Am I so distracted by pretty, foreign-sounding names that I can’t see a potentially awkward situation in the making? I’d love to know your thoughts on pairing an ethnic family name with a run-of-the-mill surname. Are there any situations in which you think it should be avoided?

Sincerely, H

It’s very likely your husband will be much more willing to discuss these issues when a baby is on the way. (Or, if he’s like Paul, sometime in the third trimester.) In the meantime, discussing them with others is EXACTLY what this blog is for.

I think it’s unnecessary for him to bring cultural appropriation into it when what you’re discussing is using names FROM YOUR OWN CULTURES. It sounds as if his concern is that other people will THINK it’s cultural appropriation: that is, if someone didn’t realize your cultural background, they might think you shouldn’t have used the name. I am generally on the side of worrying what other people think and of taking into account the society we live in (I don’t want to give a child a name that will make people think badly of her or of us), but this doesn’t seem like an issue here. First/last-name incompatibility could happen any time the parents didn’t come from the same cultural background, or any time a surname gets married out of usage. It seems like even (or especially) people hyper-aware of cultural appropriation issues would also be aware that the current particular surname doesn’t tell the story of the family background.

One possibility that may be more trouble than it’s worth is to go back to the family’s pre-Ellis-Island surname. But this doesn’t solve the problem if you want to use names that represent YOUR heritage. And I assume he doesn’t want to argue that only the surname branch of the family can be represented.

Furthermore, matching the first name and surname can lead to another problem, which I’ve heard referred to as the “just off the boat” problem: Juan-Pablo Rodriguez might encounter more trouble in life than Juan-Pablo Jones. It SHOULDN’T be that way, but it can be.

So far it sounds like I’m absolutely against your husband, but actually I see his point; it’s only that I think his arguments don’t fit or help his point. If I were him, I’d stick to saying that I just don’t like the way it sounds when the first name and surname have a cultural clash, or when a very unusual/exotic first name is paired with a very plain/common surname. I have a very Dutch surname, and combining it with, say, a very French or very Chinese first name, gives a combination I find comical/jarring/unpleasant. It’s not that I worry people will think I’m trying to steal from another culture (for example, let’s say my family’s heritage was French or Chinese, and I had taken my husband’s Dutch surname); it’s just that I don’t like the sound of it. And “not liking the sound of it” is a completely legitimate reason not to want a certain kind of baby name: there’s no need to escalate it beyond that.

What I’d suggest, if you both would like to represent your family/cultural backgrounds but he doesn’t like the way your favorites sound with the surname, is to use those names as middle names—perhaps with a culture-spanning family first name. I think if I were you, I’d offer this in the form of a compromise: you’ll put the names in the middle name position, but then you get to choose ones that sound even more culturally representative. For example, I love the Dutch name Thijs (pronounced Tice, to rhyme with ice), and it’s a name from Paul’s cultural background AND mine, and it fits culturally with our surname—but we didn’t want to use that as a first name in the United States, where it would cause no end of hassle. If I’d had my heart set on using it, it would have made a spectacular middle name.

Name update:

Hi again Swistle!
I wrote you the “Juan-Pablo Jones Problem” letter a few years ago, and I’m pleased to report that we successfully named a baby with minimal injury to ourselves/others! Yours and readers’ advice was very grounding, so thank you. I was really stirred up about “solving” the name at the time, but it was useful to be reminded that hearts, minds, and circumstances change once a baby is a reality. The news that we were expecting a girl coincided with a dear friend of ours falling ill, and despite all the grand declarations I made in my original email (calm down past self!) it became more important to us to honor her with a namesake than worry about the name clashing. We used our friend’s name in the middle and chose a name off the family tree for her first. And despite being a name derived from two different cultures, one of which is decidedly not ours, I can’t imagine our sweet 0ttili@ N@ida (pronounced Nye-ee-da) Jones as anyone but herself. I love her name in a way I don’t think I could have been if I’d stuck to my stipulations. She’s a reminder of our deep roots, and the most recent ones.
Sincerely, H

Help Swistle!

We are having our second child, a boy, in four days and still don’t know what we are going to call him. He’s been called Baby Brother throughout the pregnancy. Our first child is a girl named Hannah Claire. Her middle name is a namesake for a dear family friend and Hannah both my husband and I instantly loved. Our last name is Burt0n.

We like traditional / widely recognized names that are not too overused.

I love Holden for a boy but I don’t think it works with our surname. I also like Finnegan and Finn but again struggle with the N sound at the end.

My husband likes Noah for a first name. Noah reminds me too much of “No” and I imagine myself shouting “No, Noah!” at the playground! Perhaps this association would fade though?

I’d like to use my Grandfather’s name James as a namesake but as a middle name since it’s so popular now. My husband is considering it for a first name, since we haven’t thought of anything else we can agree on. At any rate James is the only name on the yes list at the moment.

Samuel is also a contender, though we have a few girl relatives who go by Sam or Sammie.

We both come from large families and a lot of the typical traditional names have been used (Matthew, Daniel, Richard, Charles, Thomas, Nicholas, John, Anthony, Alexander, Benjamin, Jacob, etc.)

Any thoughts?!

Many thanks,

Sarah

This post has some feedback in the comments section on whether “No, Noah” is an issue: Baby Boy Smith, Brother to Carson Michael. I don’t think it would be a problem. A bigger issue for me is that Hannah and Noah both end in -ah and both have strong N-sounds: they sound and look very similar to me, almost like rearrangements of each other. I don’t think that would need to rule out the name Noah, but since it also reminds you of “no” and you’d prefer to avoid overused names (it’s currently the most popular boy name in the United States), it seems like it isn’t the name you want.

I vote for James. It’s less common at #13 than the #1-ranking Noah (18,090 new baby boys named Noah and 13,416 named James in 2013); you both agree on it; and it’s a family name. I love the names Hannah and James together, and I think James Burt0n is a wonderful name. Perhaps Noah would work as the middle name? James Noah Burt0n.

Name update!

It was so great to see your response and everyone’s comments.  It was helpful to have new suggestions we hadn’t considered before.  In the end, we decided on Samuel James, which I love – though we do still call him Baby Brother quite often!  I can hardly believe he is already 3 months old.  Thank you again for the input!