Molly writes:

My grandfather (and my best friend) just passed away. I would really like to honor him in the naming of our child, but there are some complications. His name was Nils Paul Johnson Sr. Unfortunately Nils is reserved for my brother’s future son (the 9th with this name in our family). My husband and I don’t like Paul or any variations that we can think of (ie: Paulina, Pauline, etc.). There are three Johns in my husband’s family and it just doesn’t feel like using John would be directly after Grandpa. A little more about Grandpa: he was a Court of Appeals Judge, a devout Christian, gardener, and family man. We have talked about using the name “Judge” which I adore. Grandpa’s friends always called him Judge as if that was his first name. Hubby likes our previous choice better.

Prior to this we had settled on a boy name: Remington “Remmy” Walker. Hubby is dead set on it. Grandpa didn’t like it. While he would definitely want me to use a name that I loved, it’s just bothering me.

We cannot agree on a girls’ name but enjoy the following: Violet, Scarlett, Penelope, Matilda, Piper, Harper, Leighton and Emerson.

To summarize we like names that are traditional in spelling and easy to read. We will not find out what we are having. I’m due October 19. Our last name is Phillips.

Any of your thoughts would really help.

 
If you have a boy, I suggest naming him Nils. Names are not one-time-use items or even one-time-per-generation items, and the minor confusion caused by a duplicate, even in a close family that gets together often, is not worth abandoning an entire name to avoid—especially when you have strong reasons for wanting to use it. And am I understanding that the person the name Nils is reserved for is only hypothetical at this point—that is, your brother is not currently expecting a son? He might not even have a boy, in which case it would be even sadder to have not used the name. You could talk to him first about it, explaining your reasons for wanting to use the name and making sure it won’t cause a huge feud.

On the other hand, are we not talking about just one duplicate? I’m thinking of the part where your grandpa was Sr. but your brother’s son would be the ninth Nils. It seems like this argues even more strongly for the idea that the name is not reserved for your brother’s exclusive use—but perhaps it means there are already several children named Nils at family gatherings, in which case we’re not talking about the minor inconvenience of a single duplicate. (And yet, in that case—what’s one more?)

Perhaps you could use Nils as the middle name: this shouldn’t step on any naming-tradition toes, and it matters less whether you and your husband love the name. You can make the namesake more obvious and honor-y by using two middle names, such as Remington Nils Paul Phillips, or Remington Nils Johnson Phillips.

I see what you mean about Remington, but I hope you will not in the end be unduly influenced by whether your grandfather would have liked a name. Previous generations are CLASSIC in their dislike of the current generation’s naming practices—just as the current generation looks back on many of the names used by the previous generation or two and says “Ick.” If your grandfather were alive, it would be pleasing to find a name he might like—but my assumptions about the afterlife include the idea that not liking a baby’s name is one of the lesser concerns, and might even be the sort of thing where a person would think “Why did I even express opinions on such things? What does it matter?” (Swistle Baby Names NEW AND IMPROVED: now with speculations about post-death baby-naming issues!)

For a girl, Nilsa would be very pretty, and might not have the “reserved for brother’s use” issues. One small downside is that with the surname Phillips it makes me think of the singing group Wilson Phillips—but they’re probably not going to be on our kids’ generation’s radar, and it’s only a similar SOUND anyway, not like actually naming the child Wilson.

Judge is adorable on a little boy, but, like the name Doctor, seems like it would be a headache for an adult. I’m imagining a doctor named Dr. Judge Phillips, or a lawyer named Judge Phillips, or a judge named Judge Judge Phillips. I think that name only works when it’s given as a nickname to someone who is already a judge.

If you don’t want to use Nils or Nilsa or any version of Paul or Johnson, it may be time to resign yourself to the idea that it doesn’t always work to honor someone special with a namesake. It’s a heartbreak, but sometimes there’s just no way to do it—and reaching further and further for possible connections can leave you with a name you don’t really like AND that doesn’t really honor the namesake. There is a boy’s name Gardner, and of course there’s the name Christian, or the name Court/Cort, or you could start reaching back to your grandfather’s mother’s maiden name or his siblings’ names, or the name Nils is related to the name Nicholas, or Judd is similar to Judge—but do any of those seem like they’d be named for your grandfather?

Even though a namesake is a wonderful way to honor someone we love, it’s only one of many ways. A printed photo book of all the photos of your grandfather. Framed pictures of him in the baby’s nursery or around the house. Writing down all the memories you have of your grandfather, and telling your babies the stories. A small landscaped area in the yard with a few of your grandfather’s favorite plants and a sign “Grandpa’s Garden.” Some areas do fundraisers by charging a certain amount of money to carve anything you want (such as a name and dates) into a brick, that is then used as part of a pathway.

Name update! Molly writes:

Just writing you to tell you that my husband and I welcomed a baby boy in October. You (and your readers) helped us to go with our guts and stick to our original baby name choice- despite the fact that I was desperately missing my grandfather who had recently passed away. I would like to present to you, Remington Walker Phillips. We have embraced the nickname Remy at present, though will support him if he ever wants to grow out of it. Thank you so much for your help. We definitely do not regret our decision.

Beth writes:

I’ve been scouring the internet for a name for our 4th baby, due on July 10th. She will join 3 brothers: Samuel Elijah (Sam), Sean Matthew, and Gabriel Joseph (Gabe). For some reason, I’m very apathetic about all things girl! And no names sound “right”. Our last name is Putzer, frequently mis-pronounced, but not any better than my maiden name was, so I’m used to it ;) My MIL used to tell her students this little sentence to help them pronounce it: Joan “puts her” shoes on.
Here is my list, that I’ve had buried list in my inbox since #2, even though we knew he and his younger brother were boys:

Caryn (neat spelling)
Nia (Irish)
Stella (maternal great grandma’s name) – everyone I’ve mentioned this to has yelled out “STEEELLLLLAAAAAA”, even my husband, so I’m leaning towards no
Olivia – this was to be #1’s name if he was a girl, I think it is too popular now
Leah – meh
Morgan
Carina (beloved, in Latin) , I also like the sound of Cora
Mattea
Mira
Rachel
Renee
Harlow – husband thought this was absurd when I told him
Molly Philomena – seems to be more popular to me now, but Philomene was my grandmother’s name

Newer names I’ve come up with are:
Eden Philomena – I loved this before we knew this baby is a girl… I came up with a boy’s name and girl’s name I liked to avoid being disappointed when we found out. The problem now with Eden is that the FEW people I’ve mentioned it to haven’t been very enthusiastic. My husband seems fine with it and has come up with Edy (ee-dee) for a nickname), but did mention that he looked it up online and the meaning HE found was “place of pleasure”, which to me is somewhat off-putting, but I know there are other meanings. Another person said they had only associated Eden with boys. To me, Eden sounds girl-ish.
Imogene
Jillian (I love the nn Jilly) – husband like this better than Jaqueline, but is still non-committal
Jaqueline (but neither of us like Madeline)

Ruby – I LOVE this, but is there a problem with the “u” sounds in this and our last name? I think it might encourage mis-pronunciation of our last name.

Generally, I am disliking popular names and names ending in -a and -ee sounds. I would like it to fit with the boys’ names as in tending towards biblical/saint names. We’d appreciate any help you could give us!

 
Eden is a place name, usually referring to the garden of Eden in the Bible. “Place of pleasure” is off-putting to me, too, but I think definitions for place and other noun names are unnecessary. A name like Paris, for example, really means “Paris”—rather than “place of croissants and perfume.” (There are some exceptions for names that sound pretty but refer to non-appealing places: for example, people usually prefer to combine the meanings of the names Brook and Lynn for the name Brooklyn.) You are right that Eden is widely considered a girl name, though not exclusively: in 2010, the Social Security Administration reports 1701 baby girls named Eden, and 222 boys.

If you like Caryn and Carina, I wonder if you would like Carys? Or Karenna? Or Corinne/Corinna?

And since you like Cora, I’ll mention Clara.

Eden makes me think of Eve—not for the place-name/place-resident reason, but for the sound of it. Sam, Sean, Gabe, and Eve. I think that’s my favorite.

Another biblical place name you might like is Bethany.

Would you like Genevieve? It appeals to me that then the kids’ initials would be S, S, G, G. The nickname Evie is similar to the Edie nickname your husband liked for Eden.

Another of my favorite saint names is Josephine.

My favorite from your original list is Rachel. I like it with her brothers’ names and with your surname.

I also like Philomena as a first name. She could go by Mena for short.

From your newer list, my favorite is Imogene (I like Imogen even better), and I also like Jillian.

Name update! Beth writes:

I think I’m pretty settled in at home now to let you know that our baby girl arrived on June 16, 4 weeks early! This pregnancy was so different than my previous three, I should not have been surprised to be in labor! Due to the gestational diabetes that I developed with this one, 36 weeks was too early for her little lungs and she was taken to the special care nursery right after delivery. She spent the night with oxygen and I got to hold her in the morning for a little bit. We still didn’t have her name picked out, but I really felt urgency to come up with something while watching her from outside the incubator. I was really liking Ruby Cecelia or Ruby Philomena up to that point, but I finally got out of my husband that his grandpa’s dog was named Ruby and therefor not an OK name for his daughter. The week before we had exchanged an email with Evelyn in it. I wasn’t sold, but Evelyn sounded nice with Cecelia (close to his grandmother’s name, everyone called her Ceil, but no one can tell me what her full name was) and he liked that it had a couple of different nicknames (Evy, Ev, Eve, etc). So she became Evelyn Cecelia. Just in time, I think, because she developed a pneumothorax (tear in her lung that let air into her chest) and had to be transferred to the NICU at another hospital. It was scary and she had to have a tube into lungs and an IV and many other things, but she got better quickly and was ready to go home after one week. We are so happy to be home and she is sleeping away as I type!
Thank you and your readers for your help! I really appreciated the different perspectives!
Now… to try and finish our little girl’s bedroom!

Caroline writes:

I have a Naming Issue question I hope you and your readers might be able to discuss.

My fiancé’s last name is hyphenated. His parents chose to keep their respective surnames (they are still married) but hyphenated their names together to form their children’s surname, MaternalSurname-PaternalSurname. I see why they made this choice, but now it is complicating my future naming plans and I am getting a little frustrated.

I like my full name and its flow and always just assumed I would tack on my partner’s name to the end of my name, First Middle Maiden Married. Adding in the extra name because of the hyphen makes keeping my original surname seem impractical. If you are still following me on this one, my name would then become First Middle Maiden Married-Married. My own surname is short but has two syllables and sounds like a common female first name but is spelled in a non-traditional way. I would consider dropping my middle name and putting my surname in the middle name slot, but then I would feel like my maiden name would become an embarrassing middle name rather than my surname. This would also imply that my husband and I hyphenated our surnames together and I don’t really want to add that implication (not that I don’t approve of that idea).

I feel like the simple solution is to keep my name and he will keep his, but I would really like to share a surname with any future children. I would like for the whole family to share a surname as our “family name.” He would prefer the same but is by no means insistent that I take his name at all. I’m also worried about any future children’s names having to match with this hyphenated name created by his parents. I know that his mother wanted her name to be represented for her children as well, but now I feel like I will have to give up my own name in order for hers to be carried on.

We have discussed my fiancé dropping his middle name to become First MaternalSurname PaternalSurname and then my name becoming First Middle Maiden HisPaternalSurname, but his mother seems to be annoyed by this idea. I don’t want to exclude my future mother-in-law or make it seem like I am starting our marriage by taking her further away from her son. I think that him changing his name makes it seem as though I do not like her and do not want her to be a part of my newly created family when that is certainly not the case. I’m currently at a loss of what do to, but the wedding is May 28 (!) and I would very much like to decide on a surname for myself and future children BEFORE that date!

I think in every conversation I’ve ever heard on the topic of hyphenating names, someone has always said, “Yes, but what about when their children get married?” Which seems so far off, and always seems like more of a jokey remark (“They’ll be Harrington-Smith-Mortons-Jones, har har har!”), and the feeling is usually “Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof”: when it comes to that point, the children will tackle their own naming problems. But here we are, in that future, and here we have one of the possible outcomes to tackle.

Especially riveting to me is your mother-in-law’s reaction and this statement of yours: “I know that his mother wanted her name to be represented for her children as well, but now I feel like I will have to give up my own name in order for hers to be carried on.” Yes. This is the problem. I wonder if your husband could present the problem to his mother in that way: explain it exactly the way you did, and ask if she has any ideas for resolving this very tricky name situation. My guess is that she will be stymied—but that she may come away with a better understanding of the situation and more sympathy for whatever you decide.

I agree with each point you brought up: if you take his name, it implies that the one of the two hyphenated names is your original surname; if he drops his mother’s surname, that sounds like it’s going to create political problems in his family.

I suggest another option: he could drop his father’s surname. That seems so much more shocking than dropping his mother’s, and yet it’s exactly the same: he drops one of his two parental names. He would be First Middle Maternal, and you would be First Middle Maiden Maternal, and your family surname would be Maternal.

This, of course, puts you right back into the patriarchal naming system, but it spares your mother-in-law’s feelings. It does lend a certain futility to the whole endeavor: why go through all these complicated naming situations if the entire effect is to change the paternal surname to a different parental surname? Well, indeed.

Another possibility is for your husband to take your surname, dropping both his parents’ names. This has the appeal of simplicity.

Another possibility is to hyphenate your surname with his mother’s, and both of you take that name. First Middle Maiden-Maternal.

Another option is to create a new surname, either by combining parts of all three surnames (or four, if you want to add your mother’s maiden name for balance), or by choosing another name from the family tree (wouldn’t it be nice if you both had the same surname somewhere in your trees?), or by choosing something entirely new.

But you said that what you wanted was First Middle Maiden Married, so ALL of these options thwart what YOU wanted for your name, which is indeed frustrating: we make a big deal about each woman getting to choose things her own way, but then we get one of these situations where it’s not going to work out that way. I go around in circles: just now I thought, “Wait! She CAN be First Middle Maiden Married-Married! It’s just that it will be a VERY BULKY name, and that’s okay!”—and then I remembered the problem of it looking, then, as if your hyphenated name includes your original surname, which to me would be significant: if I’m going to go through the hassles of hyphenation for me and for my children, I want it to be because my own surname is in there, not because our family now has TWO patriarchal surnames to carry.

Well. I think we need a lot of input on this. Commenters, help us with this difficult situation!

Name update! Caroline writes:

I have obviously thought long and hard about what to do with our naming situation. I’ve been weighing all of the options listed in the comments and by Swistle over and over. I don’t think my husband quite realized how serious this whole thing was to me until I presented him with the Excel spreadsheet I had made of all the various name combination options we had to work with. Like many people mention when naming babies, I wanted to find a solution that both my husband and I felt strongly about, not one that I really liked and he was only kind of okay with. We sat down with the spreadsheet and we agreed on the options that we liked best. This weekend we had a family dinner with his parents and mine and my sweet fiancé spoke with his mother about my dilemma. She warmed to the situation (she has Asperger’s syndrome and can be quite socially awkward) and understood our dilemma. I don’t think that she minds that I don’t plan to take both names; apparently her misgivings were about him dropping the hyphen and theoretically dropping her name with it.

Our official decision is for him to drop his hyphen and become First Middle Maternal Paternal and for me to take his paternal surname, becoming First Middle Maiden Paternal. He doesn’t feel that making her surname one of two middle names will really change anything about the way his friends and family feel about him, his identity, or his name. They will still call him by this name, he will still use it, he will still feel attached to it. We both really like the idea of giving our future hypothetical children either his mother’s or my surname as a second middle name but we will be keeping any baby names a secret until the child is born and named (awesome suggestion, readers/commenters!).

My husband has suggested we give any future children hyphenated double first names (i.e. Anna-Claire or John-Michael) as an homage to his mother and father… I’m glad the man has a sense of humor! Can’t wait to marry him this weekend and to see what name people chose to write on cards/monogrammed items!

Katie writes:

My husband and I are expecting our first child, a girl, on July 4th. Our last name is Zarembsk1, with the 1 being an i (my husband has a coaching job where he’s googled frequently). We’re both teachers and have started running into the problem where when a name comes up, at least one of us can think of an annoying kid with that name. We’ve both agreed that if one vetoes a name, it’s out of the running. I really liked the name Ella, but my mom cautioned me to check what the baby’s initials would be since my dad regrets his initials that spell ASS. That’s what threw Ella out of the running and caused my husband to veto it.

The other thing I am 100% insistent upon is that she be given a first name that when the average person looks at it, they know how to pronounce it. With the last name of Zarembsk1, she’s going to have to already battle mispronunciation problems for at least a good portion of her life.

Here’s the list of names we’re considering and we’re definitely open to more:

Quinn

Natalie

Brooklyn

Mia

We have 0 middle name ideas right now, so any help on that would be appreciated. If it had been a boy, my husband and I had easily agreed the boy’s middle name would have been James, after both of our beloved grandfathers. However, our grandmothers’ names are Barbara, Verna, and Kathleen (Kathleen is too close to my name). We’re not thrilled with any of those combinations.

Any help you can throw our way would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

In many ways, the first child’s name is the most difficult: if you plan to have more children, and if you like sibling names to coordinate, the first name sets the course. If you choose Quinn this time, you might feel locked-in to androgynous names; if you choose Mia, you might feel locked-in to common names or short names—and so on. Each name you choose can eliminate other names, depending on your taste in sibling names: if you use Mia, for example, you’re likely ruling out Leah and Amelia and Mila and Mina and Micah and maybe Milo; or if you used Brooklyn, for example, you might not want to use names ending in the same sound, or you might think of another name you love that starts with B but you don’t want to repeat an initial, or you might think of another place name you love but not want two place names, or you might love the name Brandon but it’s too similar, or WHATEVER.

This is why my main advice to first-time baby namers is to make your job HARDER than it already is, by thinking in terms of sibling groups. In the long run this will make your task easier, and help protect you from “We chose ____ without realizing that it doesn’t go with any other names we like!” It was sheer chance that Paul and I didn’t back ourselves into that very corner: if our first child had been a girl, we wanted to use the name Emerson—but Emerson is not a name in our usual style, and so we would have had a very difficult time choosing sibling names.

And this is one reason I like The Baby Name Wizard so much: by sorting names into categories, she’s made it so much clearer when a name falls into our usual style and when it’s an outlier. If I’d had this book back when I was naming my firstborn, I would have seen that 95% of the names we liked fell into the same two or three categories, and that Emerson was an atypical choice for us. (Instead I was saved at 20 weeks by finding out the baby was a boy.)

So that is the BULK of my advice. I don’t have many suggestions because I think you already have a good list, and also because I’m not sure which style you’ll end up going with.

But I do have a FEW suggestions! If you liked Ella, I wonder if you would like Clara or Lily or Calla or Stella or Annabel? If you like Mia, maybe Amelia or Lia or Mira. If you like Natalie, maybe Meredith or Bethany or Cecily or Celeste. If you like Brooklyn, maybe Maren or Rowen or Delaney or Keelyn or Tylyn. If you like Quinn, maybe Bryn or Lane.

For a middle name, I like to wait until after I have the first name chosen, and then see what seems good with it. Sometimes a family name works even if it’s not a name you love: we used one where I don’t like the family name at all, but DID like the family member, and it turned out to be a very satisfying choice even though I still don’t like the name. Or family SURNAMES make good middle names, or the mother’s maiden name if the children will have the father’s surname (I’m so tempted to call it “the father’s maiden name”). Or sometimes a name gets rejected for a reason that doesn’t mean the name itself was rejected (as with Ella, which had to be rejected for its initial, or as with a name you might love even though it fails the pronunciation requirement), and those make good middle names too. Or if one of you gets more sway with the first name, the other may get more sway with the middle name. Or if you have several names that don’t quite make it as your first-name choice but you still love them, those make excellent middle names. Or the name of the city where you met? or the city where you got engaged? or the city where you got married? or of an author you both love?

Name update! Katie writes:

Thanks for all of your (and your readers’ help) with naming our daughter. We took your advice and tried to think of possible other sibling names that we liked and realized we were not gender neutral baby namers. We also went digging a bit further back into our family tree for inspiration for a middle name and found out my great grandmother’s name was Grace. Our daughter, Natalie Grace, was born on July 7th at 6:18 AM. She was 8 pounds, 4 ounces and was 21 inches long. She also lots of dark hair, long enough for a baby ponytail!

Thanks again for all of your help!

Jessica writes:

Like many of your readers, I never thought I would find myself writing to you – I mean, come on! I have been buying baby name books since the sixth grade! I have a baby name spreadsheet that I have been updating since I got my first computer! It seems, however, that in all the years I spent blissfully compiling the perfect list of names for my twenty sons and twenty daughters, I neglected to consider one thing: my husband.

We are due to have our first child, a girl, on the 4th of August, and do plan to have at least one more. I knew we were in trouble when I said “Oh, no, a girl! But I had so many good boy’s names!” at the same time my darling husband said “Thank God, a girl! Now we don’t have to discuss all those awful boy’s names!”

So, after tabling the Great Sebastian Debate of 2011 for the time being, I completely fell in love with Eve. I happen to be of the opinion that Eve is this baby’s name and, furthermore, that she thinks it’s her name as well, despite the fact that it doesn’t have the wealth of cute nickname options that most of my other faves do. I love a cute nickname. Husband is just so-so about Eve (although he has conceded that it’s “not as horrible” as all the other names I have suggested) so while it hasn’t been completely removed from our list, we’ve agreed to keep looking in the hopes that we can find something that gives us both warm fuzzy feelings. Right now we call her Bean, which makes us feel both warm and fuzzy, but also not terribly optimistic about her gratitude were we to saddle her with the title on a more permanent basis.

A little background: I am a 1980s Jessica from the States. My husband is twenty years my senior and is originally from England. Not surprisingly, we have wildly different associations with each and every name we encounter. We are currently living in Australia, land of nicknames – literally EVERY noun (proper or otherwise) is shortened somehow, whether it lends itself to it or not. A good example of this is my husband’s name, Murray – the Aussie nickname for which is, obviously, Muzz or Muzzah. Australians think this obsessive need to nickname is not at all insane but I remain unconvinced.

Some names I have suggested that he has vetoed:

Imogen (poncey)

Wilhelmina/Willamina, nicknamed Billie or Willa (old)

Isadora, nn Sadie after my great-grandmother (poncey AND old)

Anais

Penelope nn Poppy

Seraphina nn Sophie

Talullah

Emmeline

Evangeline

Anastasia

Ophelia

Adeline

Sophia (which has sadly gotten too popular anyway)

His suggestions that I have vetoed:

Amber

Selby (after the street we drive down to go to work every day – ???)

Cori (Cori. With an ‘i’. CORI WITH AN ‘I’.)

I’d like a first name that isn’t two syllables (our last name is Simon and the rhythm of her name is important to me) and not a name that was popular in America in the 1980s. I also want to avoid the current top ten in the US – I know, I know, there is no one name given to as many girls now as Jessica was in the early 80s, but I am scarred for life! The only thing I like about my name is that it’s Shakespearean. My husband had the opposite problem in that his name was quite uncommon where he grew up and he was teased for it – thus any name he hasn’t heard on a baby before he immediately labels as ‘weird’ and assumes that we are subjecting our daughter to a lifetime of teasing as well. I am fond of names that start with a vowel and he would prefer her name not start with an ‘S’. Names that end with an ‘S’ tend to sound rubbish with our surname as well.

Still on the table:

Eve

Amelia (I like but associate with an Amelia I knew in high school – would I get over this? I especially love the nn Mia)

Eloise (both like but don’t love, also doesn’t sound great with our surname, but again love the nn of Lola)

I’m not even going to go into middle names as it seems I have written quite enough already (I need to learn the difference between an email and a novel) other than to say that I would like to use mother’s name, Cynthia, although it doesn’t quite go with any of the first names we are considering (and then what if we have a second daughter?). I also really like Claire and Isla (in fact speaking of our second daughter, I had already named her Isla Claire in my head but for some reason don’t like it for our first, and besides hubby is not keen on Isla – all he can think of is the Isle of Man). All of our daughters will have a second middle name, Austin, which is my middle name, a family name, and which we both love. Okay, I definitely went into middle names there, sorry….

I have to apply for her passport pretty much as soon as she is born and at this point I’m thinking I might as well just get it in the name of Baby Girl Simon and be done with it!

 
I think her name is Eve, too. Eve! Eve Simon! It’s perfect. Would he like it better if she were named Genevieve, called Eve? That gives you other nickname options, and also makes it easier to find a middle name of the right rhythm.

One of my mom’s favorite names is Evelyn, but pronounced EVE-lin (instead of EHV-ah-lin)—and so she and I have pretty much given up on the name because of the near-impossibility of getting people to pronounce it that way. HOWEVER: if the first name were Eve and the middle name were Lynn, you could call her Eve Lynn. Though that’s a lot of -in with Austin and Simon.

I love Anastasia, too. That name gave me a little post-childbearing crisis because Paul was reading Anastasia At Your Service to the older kids, and I turned to him and opened my mouth to say, “You know, Anastasia would be a GREAT name if we had another girl!”—and then closed my mouth, because we’re never going to name another baby. …Except YOURS. Anastasia Simon. Is there any hope he’ll reconsider?

Or do you like Annabel? Annabel Simon.

Your husband’s feeling about certain names being “old” is a problem. Can he be persuaded to understand that these names are no longer “old” but rather “vintage” and “antique”—i.e. “awesome”?

The name Amber from his list is not yet old, but it was Very Big in the 1980s. An updated/fresher version is Ember—but that doesn’t seem right with your style.

If he likes Cori, I wonder if he would like Corinna? Or Karenna? Or Cordelia?

If you like Claire and he doesn’t like Isla, I wonder if you’d like Clara? Clara Simon is so nice—though it might run together a bit. It’s two syllables, but I do like that rhythm, especially with Austin as a second middle name: something like Clara Jane Austin Simon sounds good to me.

Or wait! How about Clarissa? Clarissa Simon! I like it almost as much as Eve!

If you like Eloise but it’s not-quite, I wonder if you would like Eliza? Eliza Simon. Or Louisa: Louisa Simon.

Your mention of Shakespeare made me think of one of my favorite underused names: Bianca.

When double-checking to make sure Bianca was indeed from Shakespeare, I saw the name Beatrice, which reminded me of another of my favorites: Beatrix. Beatrix Simon. Oh, hey: Cordelia, above, is also from Shakespeare. And here’s Phoebe, which reminds me a little of Penelope from your list.

I do think you’d get over the high school Amelia association, once it was your own baby’s name. Would spelling it Emilia help? It’s another Shakespearean spelling, too.

I hope the commenters will have some insight on this one: I feel like I’m only choosing names in YOUR style (or, er, MY style), but not getting closer to something your husband would like.

Name update! Jessica writes:

Hi Swistle! Great news: we have a daughter, and she has a name! After thirty hours of labour culminating in an emergency c-section, husband tearfully announced (as I knew he would) that I could name our darling little girl anything I liked. We were in hospital for three days and it wasn’t until we got home that I decided she was Amelia Eve. What ultimately swayed me was your advice to others on considering future siblings and the realisation that nickname options were important to me. Most importantly, though, we both LOVE her name. I took everyone’s advice that I would lose any associations I had with the name Amelia and I am so glad I did, because you saved me from needlessly discarding the ONLY name that my husband & I both loved. I must admit that we do still call her Bean or Mia Bean much of the time – it looks like she is stuck with it!

We really appreciated everyone’s input – you and your readers came up with so many great suggestions & we have filed them away for any future daughters as so many of them will go perfectly with the name that we chose! I’ve attached a photo, her first, taken when she was less than ten minutes old. My best friend Abbigail is a photographer in the states and flew over to be with me at the birth and capture our first moments as a family of three. Incidentally, she & Amelia now share the initials AES. :)