Relevant facts:

• My husband has an unusual three-letter name.
• Our last name starts with S, which is also the third letter of my husband’s first name.
• I am due late December with #4, and we’ve decided not to find out the sex of the baby this time.
• This is our final child, we have a naming pattern with the other three of “first name we liked, middle name family name.”
• The girls family name we liked last time (when we had a boy) was Alice.
• If we name a baby _________ Alice S________ that gets us reaaaaaaally close to initials that spell my husband’s first name
• This is cool, right??? My husband and I both think so!
• Butttttttttt………..and there had to be one………..there are only two girls names that start with C that I like-not-love (Cora and Clara) and lately I’ve even been toying with NOT using Alice (though I think ultimately we will.)

So here’s where I need help. Can you think of any other “C” girls names that are similar to Cora, Clara (or our other kids – Patrick, Lila, Joel – not super popular but not weird)? OR, can you release me from the desire to HAVE TO USE a name that starts with C?

Relevant info for a boy: we are NOT considering the naming pattern for a boy, but would welcome boys name ideas similar to:

Leo
Emmett
Elliott
Caleb
and of course – Patrick and Joel

Help me Swistle!!!!

I will start by making a suggestion I know you have already considered, so it is a little silly to make the suggestion at all, except that sometimes around here we’ve found that it works. Here it is: I love the name Alice with this sibling set, and so I suggest it as the first name. But I know it’s common for a previous frontrunner to not seem quite right for a subsequent child, so I won’t push. But Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Alice—I love it.

The next step is to discuss some good C names for girls, and then after that I’ll work on removing the pressure to choose one of them. Cora and Clara are both great: I love both of those.

Another of my favorite C names is Celeste, but I suspect that would be too much S-sound with your surname. Cecily has the same issue.

Colette, maybe? Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Colette. Hm, it may share too many sounds with Joel.

Or Corinne. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Corinne.

Or Cleo. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Cleo. It bothers me a little bit that Joel and Cleo both have four letters and share three of them.

Claudia works, I think. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Claudia.

Camille would be pretty. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Camille.

Carys may not work with Alice, which is too bad. Carissa instead, or Clarissa? Clarissa is one of my own favorites. But it might have too much S-sound to work well with your surname.

Oh, perhaps plain Claire? Similar to Clara, and takes away all the S of Clarissa. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Claire.

I like Cressida, but I wonder if it’s a little too unusual for the sibling group; also it has the S issue.

Well, my favorites are still your top two, Cora and Clara. I have a slight preference for Cora with Lila, but it’s only slight.

Now for the reassurance. While I agree that it is quite fun and interesting to have a child’s initials spell your husband’s name, I don’t think it’s fun/interesting enough to be worth choosing a name you only like, if there are names you love. It’s the sort of gimmick I do enjoy (like when twins have matching initials or reversed first/middle initials), but it doesn’t feel irresistible. I think in the long run you would get more satisfaction out of choosing a name you loved.

Also, it would break your naming pattern, which of course is fine, but it’s an argument to use if you’d LIKE to talk yourself out of it. (If you wanted to be talked INTO it, and if you found a C name that you liked well enough to use, I’d instead be saying you were still meeting the spirit of the naming pattern: names you liked plus a family-name connection.)

One possibility is to just get CLOSE to the idea: you could give her the same three letters in a different order, for example (Alice C. S.), or use your husband’s name (or a feminine form of it such as Cassie or Cassandra) as her middle name.

I think my strategy at this point would be to set aside the initials idea for now, and look for first names you love. If you find some, then weigh it: “This name we love, or this name we like-don’t-love with the fun initials?” If you find only names you like, then it’s a different situation, and may help make one name pull ahead of the others: “This name we like-don’t-love with fun initials, or this name we like-don’t-love without fun initials?”

For boys, I’m going to copy the list down here again so we have it to look at; names similar to:

Leo
Emmett
Elliott
Caleb
and of course – Patrick and Joel

A name we had on our finalist list for our youngest child may work here: Alan. We’d watched a television show with a very appealing Alan Alda doing the hosting/narrating, and then of course there’s Alan Rickman. It comes to mind because I saw it in action on a child for the first time just this weekend: I was in a store, and a mother called her elementary-school-aged son Alan, and I thought “That works!” It’s a slight surprise, without seeming weird. It’s similar in sound to Alice, and I think it goes well with brothers Patrick and Joel.

I wonder if you would like the name Calvin? Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Calvin.

Or Henry. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Henry.

Or Wesley. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Wesley.

Or Timothy. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Timothy.

Or Malcolm. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Malcolm.

Or Graham. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Graham.

Or Edmund. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Edmund.

Or Callum. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Callum.

Or Gideon. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Gideon.

Or Micah. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Micah.

Or Philip. Patrick, Lila, Joel, and Philip.

Name update!

First of all, I was completely swayed by you and your commenters and decided that we’d buck the C-A-S initial idea and go with Alice Rose for a girl.  I loved it, I dreamed it, I wanted it – and then we had a BOY!

Elliot Baxter (Baxter is the birthplace of my grandmother – she hated her name so we went a little creative to honor her) was born December 19, 9lbs 3oz and 21 inches.

Picture attached!

Thanks for your help – I am totally mourning the loss of Alice, but we love our Elliot.

Michelle

Hi Swistle-

I’ve been reading your blog for a long time. As a 1980 Jennifer, I find naming trends very interesting. I also knew after naming our first son, that if we were to have any more male children, we’d be in trouble and would need your help.

My husband is Benjamin (Ben) and my 4yr old son is Noah Jacob. As one of many Jennifers, we didn’t pick Noah because of it’s popularity. It really was the only name we could agree on that we both liked (neither loved). My husband liked it a little more than me; Jacob was husband’s favorite name that go round. What we do like about Noah’s name is that all 3 names have very different sounds. Our last name is Herman, that starts with an S. The biblical theme is purely coincidental. DH is Jewish and I was raised Catholic but neither of us are very religious.

Baby boy #2 is due in January and we’ve begun looking at names with some trepidation. We think we are pretty set on the first name Matthew. I like it a bit more than husband, but it was a contender last time around and again pretty much the only name we are both in agreement on.

We are struggling in the middle name spot. I’d like something with a bit of a harder sound to balance the “thew” and “Sh..man” sounds. My pick is Elliot; I don’t love the name, but I like the sound. DH likes Issac in the same vein; I’m not as keen on this one. Secondary question: both of these would spell MES and MIS respectfully. I don’t think either is a deal breaker, but I know you are less a fan of initials that spell something. Should we worry about this?

The other thought is to honor a family member. DH’s middle name is Samuel, named after an Uncle Sam. He was close to his grandfather so we’ve been playing around with that a bit. Family names on my side have been well represented with other family members.

DH’s grandfather’s name was Sanford N. *herman. Apparently, his name was originally Samuel; when starting a business here in the US he changed his name to Sanford because it sounded more businessman-like and chose the middle initial N. However, he didn’t like the name Sanford and went by the nickname Shep exclusively. As far as we know, Shep was just chosen without significance like Skip, Buck, etc. What would we chose as the name? Samuel is out since DH has never liked it, Grandfather didn’t like Sanford, and Shep is a made up nickname. Should we use Shepard? Though I’m worried about the biblical theme of Matthew Shepard; we aren’t planning on any more children but it just seems odd in comparison to our actual personalities. Is Shep a stand alone name? Should we use pick another S name (though we’ve been through the list without any grabbers)? Do we worry about the alliteration of the middle to last name? My guess is we let that go if we are doing an honor name.

Here were possible contenders for this baby. Our girl name most likely would have been Lila.

Mine:
Alexander
Andrew/Drew
Gray (vetoed by him)
Max (vetoed by him)

Husband:
Adam
Caleb (vetoed by me)
Joel

Thanks for your help!
Jenn

It’s true I don’t generally like initials to spell anything, but MES and MIS don’t spell anything, unless there’s an acronym I’m not familiar with. I suppose we could say they spell MESS and MISS, sort of, and with initials such as FUK I would indeed consider even the misspelled word an issue—but with MES and MIS, I don’t think of mess/miss, and it doesn’t bother me even when I do.

I think if you wanted to honor a Samuel who changed his name to Sandford and was known as Shep, you could probably pick any of those three names. I’d lean toward whichever one most brings the person to mind; I’d also lean toward Samuel, since that’s a triple family honor name: your husband, your husband’s uncle, and your husband’s grandfather. I don’t think I’d be likely to use Shepherd—not because of religious issues (I had to think for a moment to figure out why it would be religious, even though I grew up fully immersed in Jesus-as-shepherd metaphors), but because it seems to go a step too far from the honoree: the name situation is peculiar enough (he chose the name Sandford himself, even though he didn’t like it, and then chose an unrelated nickname) without making it even more peculiar. But we could instead think of it this way: once we’re such a distance from the man’s original name, what’s one more step? And you wouldn’t need to say the whole story; you’d just say the middle name was Shepherd, “after his great-grandfather.”

Certainly Shep can be a stand-alone name, particularly for the middle name, particularly for an honor name: it would be a somewhat unusual choice, but easy to explain (“Named for his great-grandfather, who was known as Shep”) and it wouldn’t be likely to come up often. Matthew Shep Sh_____ is perhaps not ideal in sound, but it’s fine. If you did want to lengthen Shep, and you wanted to reduce the shepherd connection, you could spell it like the surname instead: Matthew Shepard Sh_____. I do think that’s handsome, though it reminds me of the sad Matthew Shepard story.

But if your husband doesn’t like the name Samuel, and you don’t want to use the name Sandford because the man who chose it for himself didn’t like the name, and Shep/Shepherd/Shepard doesn’t seem right either, it may just be that this grandfather is not a good candidate for an honor name.

It does seem simpler to choose one of your other favorite middle names. Since your husband liked the name Noah a little more than you did and also got his favorite name as the middle name, it seems as if the most balanced plan would be to use one of your favorite names as middle name this time around: Elliot, perhaps, or maybe another name off your first-name list. Matthew Alexander $herman is nice.

Name update!

Hi there-
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions on naming our second baby boy. Matthew David was born a few days early on Jan. 14th weighing 7lbs 9oz 20inches long.

Using a family honor name pretty much went out the window once my husband learned that he was also named after his grandfather’s original name and he didn’t need to be honored again. David was picked for the middle because of the harder sounds we both liked. We are enjoying our new family of 4 and think his name fits him perfectly.

Thanks again! Picture attached with big brother, Noah
Jenn