{"id":10828,"date":"2015-01-12T10:55:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T14:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10828"},"modified":"2015-08-19T13:12:15","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T17:12:15","slug":"baby-girl-or-boy-hrtley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/01\/12\/baby-girl-or-boy-hrtley\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl or Boy H@rtley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I am a massive fan of your blog and have been an avid follower for many years (before I was even married or pregnant!)<\/p>\n

I am pregnant and due in April with our first baby and this will also be the first grandchild on both sides<\/p>\n

We haven’t found out the sex and have had a baby name list for a couple of years. We think we have settled on names for both boy and girl, but I keep having doubts about whether people will like them (I know we can’t please everyone) but I am worrying about peoples negative responses<\/p>\n

We have chosen Thelma Jane for a girl, Thelma (husbands grandma’s name) and Jane (my grandma’s name)<\/p>\n

My husband really likes the name and it just happens that they are our grandma’s names, but I am worrying about using an honour name (both our grandma’s are deceased) but I don’t want to offend my husbands other grandma (Sheila) or offend any of our parents if we have another girl in the future and don’t use any honour names for them.<\/p>\n

For a boy we both really like Forrest, but we can’t decide on a middle name. We liked William, but cannot use this anymore. We also like James, (my granddad was called & christened Jim, so not an honour name, but is in a way?!) but don’t love the name…. and worried about it being too similar to Jane (middle name for girl, see above)<\/p>\n

We want something a bit more common to go with the unusual name of Forrest.<\/p>\n

I am very concerned about peoples reactions for Forrest. I keep going through stages of feeling determined that this is the name we both like and have liked for a couple of years, but then I go through stages of feeling really anxious and worrying about people mentioning the film Forrest Gump (not the reason we chose the name) or grandparents who only seem to like regal names (like William, Harry, George, Charles) there is nothing wrong with regal names, but not what we are looking for with a first name.<\/p>\n

My husband is really settled on these names, I think I am too. But I keep questioning if other people will like them, I am worried they will have a negative reaction and then it will change the way I look at the name.<\/p>\n

Other names we have considered for a girl:<\/p>\n

Enid
\nJovie (don’t like the ‘ie’ ‘ey’ rhyming of last of middle name and last of surname, my name is K@yley H@rtley, cant get much rhymier than that!)
\nJerrica
\nDeryn (pronounced Derren)
\nLavender
\nNuala
\nSylvie (same ‘ie’ ‘ey’ rhyming issue)
\nEmerald
\nPenelope
\nMarcella<\/p>\n

Other names we have considered for a boy:<\/p>\n

Zeke (don’t like how it sounds with the surname)
\nMalory
\nSelwyn
\nParker
\nMorris
\nSebastian
\nKip (middle name)
\nSolomon
\nEvander (middle name)
\nGabriel (middle name)
\nAlexander (middle name)<\/p>\n

We don’t like names beginning with H as we feel they clash with our surname and are hoping to have 3 children in total!<\/p>\n

Any help or advice on the names we have considered and advice on middle names for Forrest would be really appreciated, really hoping you can help and thank you in advance :)<\/p>\n

Many thanks,
\nK@yley and Jo$eph H@rtley<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is definitely one of the tricky parts of using honor names: many parents wonder if the people they DON’T honor will then feel NON-honored by implication. I’m not sure if there’s any good way around it, but this may be where the tradition of “only use honor names of people who have died” comes from: if you’ll never know if you were honored or not (or at least, not until after you’ve joined an afterlife and presumably have a renewed sense of perspective about such things), there can be far fewer hard feelings. And if the trade-off for being honored is that you have to be dead and never get to meet the sweet little baby namesake, it no longer seems like such an enviable thing. And that’s the spin I’d put on it if I were you: “We wanted to honor our grandmothers who never got to meet our little girl.” Implication: The actual lucky people here are the ones who get to know the baby.<\/p>\n

Then if you have another child and don’t use honor names, I would do so with the self-assurance of someone who trusts that all the family members understand how such things work: using an honor name, or two honor names, doesn’t mean the parents will now go through the entire family name by name, making sure they have enough children to cover every single person. Using two great-grandmother names in no way commits you to using the other two great-grandmother names, or to using the four great-grandfather names, or to using all four grandparent names. And it is a familiar practice to give honor names to the firstborn but not to subsequent children.<\/p>\n

I do worry about making sure sibling names aren’t too similar, but I don’t worry at all about the middle names being too similar. If you wanted to name siblings Jane and James, I would feel those were too similar; for middle names, I don’t see it as an issue. From your list, my favorite is Forrest Alexander. Or I like Forrest Henry or Forrest Robert. Forrest Joseph, maybe? Or perhaps your husband’s middle name would work? Or do you have a brother or uncle or father or grandfather whose name would be nice? I hope for LOVE-love for a first name, but for the middle I like to find something serviceable: in this case, something to meet your preference of finding something more common to balance the first name, and perhaps something to mollify anyone who doesn’t like the name Forrest. The middle name would also be a good chance to use a name you like very much but don’t want to use as a first name for whatever reason (not a good sound with the surname, wrong style, etc.).<\/p>\n

I think it can be reassuring in a bit of a backwards way to realize that no matter what you name your child, a significant portion of the population will think you have made a poor choice. I know you know this, since you mention not being able to please everyone, but I’m not sure it has FULLY sunk in. That is: NO MATTER WHAT you name this child, some people won’t like it. NO MATTER WHAT. Which is what leads us to the other half of the saying: You can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself<\/strong>. You will not catch Swistle saying that this means you should completely ignore all of society around you: the child will have to wear this name in that society, and so by “please yourself” I don’t mean “shrug off valid issues, such as whether Chicky McBawkBawk is a name that will please the child as much as it pleases us.” But if you have decided on the perfectly nice names Thelma and Forrest, and those are your favorite names, it’s not going to solve the “some people won’t like the names” problem to choose different names; it will only change which people don’t like them, and for what reasons.<\/p>\n

My guess is that even if you get your share of negative reactions to the name, it won’t alter the way you feel about the name any more than ANY set of negative reactions would have altered the way you felt about ANY name. There is “Oh, like Forrest Gump?,” and there is the flat little “Oh” of someone so bored by the name they can hardly comment, and there is the “THAT’S an interesting name” of someone who feels incorrectly that they are doing an excellent job being tactful, and there is the “Oh, I know SO MANY of those!,” and there is the “…How did you come up with THAT?,” and there is the “Oh! Is that…a family name?,” and the “Oh, yes, that’s quite a popular choice these days!,” and so on. It’s not so much a matter of avoiding negative reactions; it’s more an issue of picking the ones you’d rather deal with—and of realizing that even a negative reaction is a fleeting thing, and no one truly deep-down cares if you use a name they don’t love, especially as the years (or in fact MINUTES) go by and they find other things to occupy their minds.<\/p>\n

Thelma in particular may require a brief adjustment, because it’s so rare these days. It was last in the Top 50 back in the early 1900s, which makes me suspect it is getting to be time for a revival: the usual pattern is Popular Name, then Mom Name, then Grandma Name, then Great-Grandma Name, then back to Popular Name. I remember when the name Emma was such a surprise (and remember when Julia Roberts named her daughter Hazel?), and Emma was last in style in the late 1800s along with Cora and Clara and Grace and Ella; the early 1900s (Ruth, Hazel, Martha, Louise, Pearl) are next up.<\/p>\n

You may especially encounter an initial resistance from older generations, since to them it may be an “old lady name”: names the current generation sees as Great-Grandma-or-older names, older generations would naturally see as Mom or Grandma names. Emma and Henry were recently “old lady \/ old man” names, and my parents are probably not the only ones of their generation who still think of the name Henry as somebody’s elderly great-uncle. I found that my first reaction to the name Thelma was neutral surprise (according to the archives, the name has come up on this blog only twice total, and this is one of those two times), and that the surprise quickly tilted positive: my inclination was to encourage you to use it, rather than to try to talk you out of it. And I think “She’s named for her great-grandmother” is an especially charming assist for those who have a little trouble with the transition to the next generation of names (as all of us likely will have, in our turn): honor names are always in their own category of fashion.<\/p>\n

If you use Forrest, some people WILL make the association with Forrest Gump: I don’t think that’s avoidable. They will say, “Oh, like Forrest Gump!,” and you will say pleasantly, “Oh—no, we just liked the name,” and that will be the end of it. Later on, a few people will say “Run, Forrest, run!” when he is running, but they will not intend it meanly; they will feel they are making a funny reference to one of movies’ most beloved characters. The same is likely to happen with people informing him that life is like a box of chocolates. (It can be a little lesson to us all about avoiding saying the first joke\/association that comes to one’s mind.) You might be able to reduce the association by spelling it Forest, giving it a nature connection instead, but many people will make the association anyway. If I were you, I would consider it part of the package deal of this name: if that element will drive you crazy, I would look for a different name; otherwise, every name has its own set of issues, and at least the association is a positive one. Thelma may have a similar issue with the movie Thelma and Louise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

Thank you for featuring my naming query! I was so excited when i saw it on your blog :)<\/p>\n

Our little boy Forrest James arrived on 16th April 2015 at 07:57am by emergency caesarian weighing 9lb 7oz<\/p>\n

We absolutely love his name and it suits him perfectly. We have had a few, “oh what an unusual name” or “oh as in Forrest Gump?” or “oh what made you think of that” but we just reply saying thank you we just liked the name.<\/p>\n

Please find attached a picture of our gorgeous little man :)<\/p>\n

From the H@rtleys :) xx<\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle, I am a massive fan of your blog and have been an avid follower for many years (before I was even married or pregnant!) I am pregnant and due in April with our first baby and this will also be the first grandchild on both sides We haven’t found out the sex and […]<\/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-10828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2OE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828","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=10828"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11568,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10828\/revisions\/11568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}