{"id":10452,"date":"2014-09-12T09:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10452"},"modified":"2014-09-12T10:43:11","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T14:43:11","slug":"baby-boy-or-girl-aley-sibling-to-moses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/09\/12\/baby-boy-or-girl-aley-sibling-to-moses\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy or Girl Aley, Sibling to Moses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi There!
\nI am pregnant with my second, due in February. My first is a son, Moses Gabriel Aley. We call him Moses, or Moze (was taken from the film Paper Moon with Ryan O’neil). The middle name Gabriel is after my brother Gabriel, Gabe, who is deceased. My husband is James Donley Aley the Fourth. The agreement when we named Moses was if we had another boy he would be called James Donley Aley and he would be the Fifth. UNLESS a dear brother of my husband were to conceive a child before we did again, he was stuck on the name and we said that would be fine. I understand this is all very unconventional but James the Third named James the Fourth after he’d already had three boys before so it seems fitting to family tradition.<\/p>\n

Now, seven weeks after the birth of Moses, his grandmother died suddenly. Mother of James the Fourth. She was Judith. If this baby is a girl, and we wont be finding out until birth, we would like Judith in her name. We have mentioned keeping the girls name we had all set for Moses were he a girl, Iona. Iona is an island in Scotland near where I have family and my deceased brother, Gabriel, and I always both independently wanted the name for a girl. We went as kids. So, Iona Judith Aley? Maybe. But now Judith is really growing on me as a first name. My only qualm is the nickname Judy (much like the obvious yet unforeseen irritation in others insistence that Moses should be Moe, HATE.) And also that it was so popular in the fifties she would have the same name as a lot of retirement aged but not old quite yet women. like, has it been long enough that its cute yet?<\/p>\n

My other thought is this. If this baby is a boy, and we do use James Donley Aley the Fifth, I have the crackpot idea of calling him Judd. A shout out to Judith but also a name i just kinda like better. James I like, Jamie I don’t, Jimmie might be a criminal, or awesome, J.D. no way in hell. Oh! and the thing is, the brother is also expecting a baby a few weeks after ours. So if they use the Fifth I am actually at a total loss. Except I still like Judd. Except my fella doesn’t. Jude does not work for me for a male, but absolutely for a female.<\/p>\n

I think that is all. Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It sounds as if a second discussion with your husband’s brother may be needed. If I’m following this, your husband is JDA IV, but your husband’s brother has asked if he may use JDA V for his own son, and you and your husband have said yes. But also, you and your husband have decided between yourselves that if you had a second son, you would name him JDA V. Does your brother-in-law know that this was your arrangement, and so it’s a clear-cut situation of “Whoever has the next boy will use JDA V”? If not, it needs to be clarified in case they’ve decided on the name for sure and now both couples are about to have boys.<\/p>\n

If that’s all been made clear already, then the situation as I understand it is that if you have a boy, you will use JDA V; and that if you have a girl and your brother-in-law has a boy, THEY will use JDA V. This leaves your brother-in-law and his wife in a bit of a tense situation as they wait to see whether you will have a boy or a girl, but we will not worry about them until they write to us. (“Dear Swistle, We have decided on a boy name for our baby, but we won’t know if we can use it or not until shortly before the baby is born. Let me explain….”)<\/p>\n

On the other hand, you say that your brother-in-law is expecting a baby a few weeks after you, and that if he uses JDA V, you’re at a total loss for a name for your boy. This makes me think the discussion is still needed to clarify who is doing what. If you deliver first as expected, and if you have a boy, you will need to know if the name JDA V is available to you or not—and whether your brother-in-law would feel the same way about its availability to you. It would also be a good idea to see if your brother-in-law is planning to use the name for a future boy even if he has a girl this time. All these things have huge potential for misunderstanding, so I think if I were you I would start by making sure everyone knows what the plan is.<\/p>\n

When a child is the fifth holder of a family name, I think nearly any everyday-usage name can be justified. I know two families who are only up to IV, and both have abandoned all pretense of actually USING any of the given names: both children go by names completely unconnected to their proud family naming traditions. I think Judd would work very well, and don’t see any reason you shouldn’t use it—well, any reason except that your husband doesn’t like it. Perhaps he could try to come around to the nickname you like, since he is getting a full namesake?<\/p>\n

If he continues not to like it, though, I do think you can pick just about anything you want to use, connected to the name or not. If I hear of a James called, say, Ezra, I blink and wonder what on earth is going on; if I hear of a James V called Ezra, I understand immediately (and feel some empathy for the mother, combined with a fresh dislike of the concept of previous generations taking naming fun away from later generations). I used Ezra just as an example, but actually that would be a very nice fit with Moses.<\/p>\n

If none of the other Jameses are being called Donley, I think that might be a very cute option. The name Don is a bit out of style at the moment, but Donley has a surname sound that brings it into fashion.<\/p>\n

Does your mother-in-law’s maiden name work as a first name? If it did, that would be another option for an everyday name that would honor her.<\/p>\n

Or do you like Judah? It sounds very similar to Judith, has similar biblical \/ Old Testament connections, and makes a very good brother name for Moses. It has the additional benefit of seeming to come from the initials JDA. You could use Judah as the given name (if it turns out the plan is for your brother-in-law to use JDA V), or as the everyday name for your own JDA V.<\/p>\n

For a girl, it’s true that Judith has not quite worked its way around to being fashionable again. It hit its peak in the early 1940s, which means we might start looking for it again in the next generation. This is soon enough in the future that we could think of current usage as being ahead of the times rather than behind them.<\/p>\n

I think, too, that the biblical story of Judith is so striking, it gives the name a timelessness it doesn’t have on its own—similar to Esther, or Ruth.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure how much trouble you would encounter with people calling her Judy. Certainly the Judiths I know (one my age, the rest my parents’ age or older) all go by Judy—but the use of nicknames has changed since then. All the Jameses I know who are my age or older go by Jim, but if I meet a little boy named James I don’t default to Jim\/Jimmy at all, and would in fact avoid it unless specifically told to call him that. It may be the same with Judith.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many people are not tuned into naming trends\/practices, or are inconsiderate\/scornful about other people preferring a certain version of their own names. There are plenty of stories of people acting fake-joking indignant that a child is not to be called Billy, or Beth, or Kathy—or worse, insisting on doing it anyway. I suspect it is part of the package deal of all such names, but that for the most part you will find your peers and your child’s peers cooperative with clearly-stated preferences.<\/p>\n

And certainly Jude seems to me like the appropriate contemporary nickname for Judith, just as Will seems more appropriate than Billy for young Williams. In fact, the ability to update the nickname in that way makes the name significantly more usable. I would even go beyond “usable” and say that thinking of Jude as a nickname for Judith puts the name Judith back on my radar.<\/p>\n

I also think Iona Judith is a wonderful choice. Both Iona and Judith work with Moses as sister names; each gives a different spin to the feel of the name Moses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi There! I am pregnant with my second, due in February. My first is a son, Moses Gabriel Aley. We call him Moses, or Moze (was taken from the film Paper Moon with Ryan O’neil). The middle name Gabriel is after my brother Gabriel, Gabe, who is deceased. My husband is James Donley Aley the […]<\/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-10452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2IA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10452","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=10452"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10457,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10452\/revisions\/10457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}