{"id":10412,"date":"2014-08-29T09:43:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-29T13:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10412"},"modified":"2014-08-29T09:45:05","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T13:45:05","slug":"twin-baby-boys-c0nlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/08\/29\/twin-baby-boys-c0nlin\/","title":{"rendered":"Twin Baby Boys C0nlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello! I could really use some naming help!<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting twin boys on Thanksgiving and are really struggling with names. These are our first babies, and their last name will be C0nlin, which I feel goes with most things. I haven’t found a name yet that I struck out just because of how it sounded with the last name.<\/p>\n

So far, we’ve been able to pick one name. We’ve decided on Silas for one of the boys, but are drawing a complete blank on the name for the other boy. We don’t really want matching names, though I want something that at least sounds like it would come from the same family.<\/p>\n

We haven’t decided on Silas’ middle name, but we have picked the middle name for the other boy – Prentice, after my grandfather. So, we need a name that doesn’t end in a “s” sound. For example, Silas Prentice does not work in my mind, which is why Prentice is reserved for the other boy. I suggested William for Silas’ middle name (after my husband’s father – I like the idea of both boys having family names for middle names). But my husband is conflicted because he kind of wants to stick with his family’s tradition of assigning animals as middle names (his middle name is (seriously) Raging Buffalo; and his brothers’ middle names are: Spouting Whale, Bear, and Wolf…). I think the animals are a bit random – I have never met anyone less like a Raging Buffalo than my husband. Plus, I think it would be weird to give one boy an animal middle name while the other has a family middle name (my heart is set on naming the other one Prentice, and husband has agreed to that already because it’s so important to me). What do you think? Is that weird to name them so differently?<\/p>\n

Anyway, as for the other boy’s first name, the name I like the best is Dugan, followed closely by Jude. However, my husband won’t agree to those. He thinks Dugan is cute, but isn’t sure it’d be a good name for an adult male. And he just doesn’t really like Jude at all. He suggested Max, but I’m not on board with that one (and I don’t think it sounds good with Prentice).<\/p>\n

Other names we’ve considered and both liked okay, though not enough to necessarily pick them are: Blake, Luke, Gavin and Dylan.<\/p>\n

We also really like Brody, Bryce and Cody, but already have cousins with those names. We really like Jackson (or Jack) too, but it’s too close to my name (which is pronounced Jackie, though spelled differently).<\/p>\n

Coming up with Silas was hard enough, so I don’t know how we’re going to find another boy’s name! Any suggestions you can provide would be greatly appreciated!<\/p>\n

Thanks for your help!!<\/p>\n

Jackie<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I entered this question into my spreadsheet, I put “Raging Buffalo” in the description field just so I could enjoy it again and again.<\/p>\n

I do enjoy sibling names to coordinate, and I especially enjoy twin names to coordinate. However, I also think twins are an excellent opportunity to handle a situation where each parent wants something different, AND I don’t think middle names matter very much for coordination: that is, I ENJOY it when it works out for them to coordinate, but I think middle names tend to disappear after the birth announcements are sent out, so coordinating them is a low priority even for me.<\/p>\n

In your situation, I think twins are an excellent opportunity to handle two different parental preferences, and I would go with using your grandfather’s name for one twin and your husband’s family’s naming tradition for the other. Those seem like nice balanced honors. I do think I’d lean more toward the Bear\/Wolf type of name, rather than the Raging Buffalo \/ Spouting Whale kind of name. Fox, perhaps. Robin. Falcon. Or maybe Peregrine, to sound a little more like Prentice. I do think I’d be careful not to make the animal name too cool, if possible.<\/p>\n

You know, the more I think about this, the less certain I am. I’m picturing one boy having a Cool Awesome Animal middle name, and the other saying, “Yes, Prentice was my great-grandfather’s name.” They feel like equivalent levels of honor in theory, since each represents an honor for one side of the family, but will the BOYS see it that way? I wonder if you would like to do double middle names? Each boy could have a great-grandfather’s name (perhaps your other grandfather, since the animal names are from your husband’s side, or another male honor name from your side) AND an animal name. This might also give you more flexibility pairing Prentice with Silas: Silas Peregrine Prentice, for example.<\/p>\n

I was intrigued by the challenge of finding a good animal middle name. Some animals seem too vicious, like the name of the toughie in an over-the-top action movie: Viper, Tarantula, Snake, Spider, Piranha, Cobra, Scorpion. Other animal names seem too comical: Penguin, Squirrel, Meerkat, Gopher, Wombat, Frog, Hippopotamus, Chicken, Chipmunk, Cow. Names that seem name-like are harder to find. Badger, maybe. Buck. The big-cat names: Panther, Lion, Cheetah, Tiger, Jaguar, Leopard. Possibly Antelope. Koala. Cardinal would be nice, though then I’d probably want a songbird for the other name as well: not Cardinal paired with something really tough like Jaguar, for example. Maybe Cardinal and Oriole, or Cardinal and Sparrow. There’s Wolf and Bear, if you don’t mind repeating, and Fox, which is my favorite, and Coyote. Crane and Peregrine and Falcon and Hawk and Eagle. Dolphin, maybe. Otter.<\/p>\n

For first names, my first suggestion is Grady. It reminds me of Brody and Cody from your can’t-use list, and I can picture handsome old-time farming brothers named Silas and Grady.<\/p>\n

My second suggestion is Jared. Again, I can picture the brothers, working their farm. Also, I knew a couple who could not find ANY name they could agree on for a boy, and then they found the name Jared and both loved it, so I think of it as a problem-solving name.<\/p>\n

Ditto for the name Derek: another couple I knew couldn’t settle on anything, and then they found Derek. Silas and Derek.<\/p>\n

More possibilities:<\/p>\n

Asher
\nCaleb
\nElliot
\nEmmett
\nEverett
\nEzra
\nGabriel
\nGage
\nGarrett
\nGeorge
\nGriffin
\nHenry
\nJasper
\nJoel
\nMicah
\nNathaniel
\nOliver
\nPaul
\nSawyer
\nWesley
\nWyatt<\/p>\n

I see a lot of long-U sounds (Luke, Dugan, Jude) and D-sounds (Jude, Dugan, Cody, Brody, Dylan) in your lists. I might look around for other names with those sounds.<\/p>\n

D sounds:<\/p>\n

Dane
\nDaniel
\nDavis (maybe too matchy with Silas)
\nDean
\nFrederick
\nReid
\nRudy
\nTheodore
\nWade<\/p>\n

(I would also have suggested Gideon, Landon, Declan, Hudson, Holden, etc., but I wasn’t sure those worked well with your surname.)<\/p>\n

Long-U sounds:<\/p>\n

Hugh
\nHugo
\nJoshua
\nJulian
\nLouis (maybe too matchy with Silas)
\nRudy
\nSamuel<\/p>\n

(I would also have suggested Ruben, Houston, Truman, and Lucien, but again wasn’t sure about those with the surname.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello! I could really use some naming help! My husband and I are expecting twin boys on Thanksgiving and are really struggling with names. These are our first babies, and their last name will be C0nlin, which I feel goes with most things. I haven’t found a name yet that I struck out just because […]<\/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-10412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2HW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10412","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=10412"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10415,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10412\/revisions\/10415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}