{"id":10634,"date":"2014-11-14T10:19:01","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T14:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10634"},"modified":"2015-02-23T13:35:57","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T17:35:57","slug":"baby-naming-issue-what-if-you-love-classic-names-with-traditional-spellings-and-also-a-modern-name-with-an-alternate-spelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/11\/14\/baby-naming-issue-what-if-you-love-classic-names-with-traditional-spellings-and-also-a-modern-name-with-an-alternate-spelling\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: What if You Love Classic Names with Traditional Spellings…and Also a Modern Name with an Alternate Spelling?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle!<\/p>\n

I am pregnant, due in January with a little girl. We are over the moon! We had a boy name all set in stone, and are thrown for a bit of a loop!<\/p>\n

Here’s the issue.<\/p>\n

I’ve always been a huge fan of easy to pronounce, classic (but a bit on the trendy side) names. I loathe creative spellings and always have.<\/p>\n

So naturally, I’ve completely fallen in love with a unique name of which I want to stray away from the classic spelling. Help!<\/p>\n

The name is Everleigh. I heard it first about 5 years ago when celebrity Cam Gigandet named his daughter Everleigh Rae. I was hooked! I thought it sounded whimsical and beautiful– a name you’d see in a fantasy movie. I didn’t even care that a celebrity had used it, or that it wasn’t a classic name. The spelling seemed normal to me, at the time. I loved how feminine it looked.<\/p>\n

Then, about a year ago, another celebrity, Channing Tatum, named his daughter Everly. I started to wonder about the spelling. In searching, I found that Everly (spelled this way) was originally a boy’s name, and that this is the way it should be spelled (if I’m sticking to my naming rules at all at this point).<\/p>\n

I can’t help but love Everleigh, spelled this way. I’m such a stickler for a ‘proper spelling’ with a ‘proper name’ that I don’t know how this spelling\/name would be perceived by others. Part of me knows I shouldn’t care, and that we should name her whatever we want, but the other side of me knows the world can be a cruel, judgmental place. Would people think this was a cheap way to spell Everly? Have people even heard of this name? Is there anything else you can suggest? Needing some guidance!<\/p>\n

If it helps at all, other names I love:
\nPenelope
\nAubrey
\nPrimrose
\nNatalie
\nAnneliese
\nClara
\nLydia<\/p>\n

Thank you so very much,
\nLB<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are two issues here, I think. The first thing I would want to figure out, before working on the spelling, is whether Everleigh is not only an outlier name for you, but also a problematic<\/em> outlier. I bring this example up a lot, but it’s particularly applicable here: when I was pregnant with my first child, I saw Teri Hatcher on a talk show and she mentioned her daughter Emerson Rose. I FLIPPED for the name. It was not my usual style at all, but it seemed PERFECT. We started calling the fetus Emerson right away. And I am very glad we had a boy, because I like sibling names to coordinate, and if we’d started with a girl named Emerson, I’m not sure where we would have gone from there: none of the other names on my list go with it at all.<\/p>\n

So if you hadn’t provided a list, that would have been my first homework assignment for you: make a list, and see if you like any of the other names (girl names and boy names) as a sibling name for Everleigh. People have different preferences for sibling name coordination, and different feelings about which names DO coordinate, so you may look at your list and think of MANY combinations you like. Or you may look at your list and realize, as I did later with the name Emerson, that using a name outside my usual style would have painted me into a very difficult corner: there’s nothing wrong with pairing Emerson with, say, Clarissa or Genevieve or Elizabeth, but I’d prefer not to. If it is also the case for you that you look at your list and you don’t like any of the names with Everleigh (and this may very well NOT be the case), then I would suggest using it as a middle name and spelling it however you like best.<\/p>\n

If on the other hand you look at your list and you think a lot of the names go well with Everleigh, then we can turn our attention to the second issue, which is the spelling. I too prefer to use traditional spellings. However, there are non-traditional spellings and there are NON-TRADITIONAL SPELLINGS. For example, I think you and I would agree that we didn’t want to spell Penelope “Pynnellapy.” But if you’re like me, you’re on board with Katherine\/Catherine\/Kathryn and Madeline\/Madelyn: you might personally prefer (even strongly prefer) one spelling over another, but none of them feel like violations or make you cringe the way Jaxxon or Emmaleigh might.<\/p>\n

With modern names such as Everleigh\/Everly, I’m not sure I’d say there IS a traditional spelling. I found a commenter online claiming that the name was old and traditionally male, but I’m not having any luck verifying that claim: as far as I can tell, it’s a surname name that came into usage only recently. Historical\/origin information for the the name seems to be based on its use as a surname, not as a first name. Very likely in the long history of humankind there HAVE been people with it as a first name, but it’s never been in common enough usage to have established a standard spelling. As a surname, the traditional spelling would be Everly. As a first name, we will have to wait and let time sort it out: maybe one spelling will emerge as the standard; maybe several spellings will all be considered standard; or maybe the name will be used only briefly and a standard will never be established. In 2013, the spelling Everly was used for 804 new baby girls, and the spelling Everleigh was used for 295 new baby girls. Another 119 were named Everlee, and another 71 were named Everley.<\/p>\n

As to your concern that people won’t have heard of the name, I do think you’ll encounter some of that, since the usage of the name is relatively new and because not everyone loves baby names and follows them intently, but I think most people the age of your peers and your daughter’s peers will have encountered it—or will encounter it soon. Look at its progress on the Social Security site:<\/p>\n

\"(screen

(screen shot from SSA.gov)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"(screen

(screen shot from SSA.gov)<\/p><\/div>\n

The online data starts in 1880. Neither Everly nor Everleigh were in the Top 1000 at all from 1880 until 2012\/2013—but look how fast they’re jumping up now that they’re here: Everly was #907 the first year, and already #383 the year after that. Perhaps it will stay around that level, or perhaps in next year’s data we’ll see another huge leap.<\/p>\n

It’s not uncommon for people to THINK they like\/dislike certain things about baby names, and then find out otherwise once they start the actual naming process. The most frequent, I think, is for people to think they hate common names—and then find that their whole list is made of common names. It can be an odd adjustment, but I think it’s better to make the adjustment (“Huh! I guess I don’t hate common names as much as I’d thought! Or in fact at all!”) than to give up the names you like on principle (“All my favorite names are Top 20, but I HATE Top 20, so I must NOT like those names after all and will choose something else instead”). If you love classic names with classic spellings, but you also love Everleigh, it could be that you like classic names with traditional spellings AND modern names with alternate spellings. And how nice if you do: it gives you a much broader field for browsing. And there is room to use both styles: classic\/traditional first names with modern\/alternate middle names, or the other way around. Lydia Everleigh, for example, or Everleigh Sophia.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Name update!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hello Swistle! Just wanted to thank you and your readers for all the comments and encouragement to use the name and spelling of a modern name I love. Everleigh Anne was born January 8, and we are so in love with her, and her name. Our families are really happy with it, too. Thanks again!<\/p>\n

\"EVERLEIGH_170115_0037\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle! I am pregnant, due in January with a little girl. We are over the moon! We had a boy name all set in stone, and are thrown for a bit of a loop! Here’s the issue. I’ve always been a huge fan of easy to pronounce, classic (but a bit on the trendy […]<\/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":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Lw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10634","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=10634"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11041,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10634\/revisions\/11041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}