Anne writes:<\/p>\n
Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n
I am a first time mom expecting the arrival of a baby girl on October 2nd. We have been thinking of names without really falling in love, but have finally agreed on one we both really like: Isobel.<\/p>\n
I love the spelling, as we both have Scottish heritage and I spent a fondly remembered semester in Scotland during college. Here is my concern, our last name is Wells. Is this too rhymey? Should I not worry because she would likely be called Izzy?<\/p>\n
Other names we have considered are Zelda (the name of my paternal grandmother, also a bit rhymey), Martha, Abigail (I don’t love it enough to overcome the popularity factor), and Ivy (which I love, but was the first name of my husband’s abusive, alcoholic grandfather).<\/p>\n
So, could Isobel Wells be given the green light with the right middle name? Help! I need some reassurance that our daughter’s name won’t sound like it came from a Dr. Suess book!<\/p>\n
Thank you for your help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Isobel Wells has a slightly rhymey sound to me, but nothing in the Dr. Seuss range. I would be inclined to advise you to go ahead and use it, except that many -bel\/-bella names end up going by Bella, and I am not as fond of the sound of Bella Wells. Perhaps the surname would be enough to prevent that nickname and she WOULD always be Izzy, but it’s hard to know what will happen with nicknames.<\/p>\n
I am also alerted by your sentence about not loving Abigail enough to overcome the popularity factor. The name Isobel\/Isabelle\/Isabella was a bit of a popularity phenomenon, running up the charts so quickly it caught the notice even of people not interested in baby names. I think it’s likely that your statement about Abigail tells us that you DO love the name Isobel enough to overcome the popularity factor, but thought I should mention it just in case. Searching for Isobel in the Social Security Administration’s data base would bring up the misleading information that it was not in the Top 1000, which doesn’t give a good indication of how popular the name FEELS with Isabella in the Top 10 for the last decade. The other names on your list show me that in general you’d prefer an uncommon name.<\/p>\n
I wonder if Isadora would be a better fit. It’s quite uncommon; it has the nickname Izzy; there are no rhyminess issues. Isadora Wells.<\/p>\n
Or Imogen, with the nickname Immy.<\/p>\n
Zelda Wells also passes the Dr. Seuss test for me, and it avoid the issues with the nickname Bella. I like that it’s a family name. My only hesitation would be the popular Zelda video game series, but it’s a cool association rather than a negative one.<\/p>\n
It’s too bad about Ivy. Do you like Iris or Ida or Irene or Eileen? Or perhaps something like Genevieve with the nickname Evie.<\/p>\n
Would you want to revisit the idea of Martha? I notice it’s the only name on your list without an issue after it in parentheses. Martha Wells has no rhyminess at all, and the name Martha is quite uncommon at #803 in 2013.<\/p>\n
[Edited to add:] Or would you like Ruth? I’ve encountered two little girls named Ruth over the last few years and it struck me very positively. Both of them often go by Ruthie. Ruth Wells, Ruthie Wells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anne writes: Hi Swistle, I am a first time mom expecting the arrival of a baby girl on October 2nd. We have been thinking of names without really falling in love, but have finally agreed on one we both really like: Isobel. I love the spelling, as we both have Scottish heritage and I spent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Bx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10015"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10054,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10015\/revisions\/10054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}