{"id":10910,"date":"2015-01-31T11:34:05","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T15:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10910"},"modified":"2015-02-01T20:25:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-02T00:25:56","slug":"10910","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/01\/31\/10910\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Campbell, Brother to Elizabeth (Liza), Wallace (Wally), and Amelia (Mia)"},"content":{"rendered":"

SWISTLE! can you PLEASE HELP US.
\ni am writing this from my hospital bed so please forgive any typos or bad grammar or whatever!
\nMy name is Rose Campbell and my husband is Nathaniel. When I was pregnant the first time and we had a list of baby names on our fridge, my mom said something really disparaging about one of them (ok, she called one of our top choices a stripper name). It was WILDLY out of character for my mom–she was a wee bit high on post surgery drugs–and she was mortified, but it really turned us off sharing our name choices. So, we haven’t ever since. Fast forward eight plus years and I just gave birth to our fourth and last kid, a boy. The first family member I happened to reach was my older sister. I told her the name Nathaniel and I had chosen and there was just this dead silence on the other end. Finally I got her to tell me what was wrong.
\nSwistle, the name we chose is the name of the guy who assaulted her in high school. (she is 6 years older than me and although I knew she had been assaulted for some reason I never knew the guy’s name).
\nobviously this puts the name right into completely unusable territory. we see my sister a fair amount but even if we didnt–can you imagine?
\nSo we need to find another boy name, like right now. the 2nd middle\/ last name for the kids is Isaacs Campbell (Isaacs is Nathaniel’s family surname–he took mine because Bucking The System and also he is not close to his family and mine is awesome).
\nOur other kids–
\nElizabeth Clare, mostly called Liza. Clare after my favorite aunt. Elizabeth after husbands grandma Bethany. Liza because it’s a kickass nickname.
\nWallace John, mostly called Wally. John is my dad, Wallace was a friend who died young. We don’t think he will be called Wally forever, but can see it lasting throughout childhood, and maybe he will be the sort of teenager and\/or adult who can pull off the nickname Wally.
\nAmelia Josephine, mostly called Mia. Amelia is my moms middle name, Josephine is MIL’s best friend\/husbands surrogate mom.<\/p>\n

For this boyo we want something that “goes” with the other names–so a longer more traditional name with a shorter kicky nickname. Trouble is we settled on a name quite awhile ago and before that we went thru a bunch of names and rejected them for various reasons. here are the ones we can remember going thru and rejecting:
\nDaniel
\nJames
\nThomas
\nChristopher
\nSamuel
\nNathan
\nEdward, Andrew, Matthew, William, Leonard\/Leopold, August\/Augustus, other names that repeat an initial
\nFinnegan
\nTobias
\nTheodore<\/p>\n

So…can you help us? PLEASE? I hate the idea of taking this little dude home with no name!<\/p>\n

Thank you so much,<\/p>\n

Rose and the gang<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

This letter caught my attention not only because you put a cute picture of a fox at the top but also because this has got to be the best reason I’ve ever seen on this site for a hospital-stay name change. For your sister’s sake, let’s get to work.<\/p>\n

I think the quickest and easiest option would be to go with whatever your second-choice name was, if you had a second choice. When we were naming Henry, we had seven finalist names, then we narrowed it down to three, then to two. If I’d suddenly found our first choice was unavailable, I would have been pretty happy with our second choice, considering how much back-and-forthing we did. However, this would not have worked with all our babies: with two of them, there was The Name Choice and then a big gap and then a bunch of names we were Fine with but never seriously considered. It sounds like that’s more similar to your situation.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is to switch the first and middle. But I know this option wouldn’t have worked for me, since I have a different technique for choosing the first name than for the middle.<\/p>\n

I think it works fine to have a different naming style for the boys and the girls in a family, but I do like the boy names to go together and the girl names to go together (e.g., I wouldn’t want to mix Elizabeth\/Liza with Miracle\/Mira). So as I looked down your list to see which names I liked best with the sibling group, I looked particularly for the ones I thought went well with Wallace\/Wally. My favorites (even though I think every single one is from the repeats-an-initial list) are Edward\/Teddy\/Ned, Leonard\/Leo\/Lenny, Leopold\/Leo\/Leap\/Lee, Augustus\/Gus. Of those, I think my own choice would be Edward\/Teddy\/Ned. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Edward; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Teddy.<\/p>\n

Because all the names of your other children are after important people in your lives, I feel disinclined to offer suggestions: it seems as if it would work better for your naming style to go back into the important-people list and find more options there. (Also, I am a little worried I will suggest THE VERY NAME that had to be changed!) But if you WERE looking for more ideas, I think Albert would work nicely. I’ve warmed to this name recently, for a variety of reasons (Colin Firth playing Prince Albert; a very positive association with a nice, cute, good-with-kids guy named Albert; Bertie Wooster making me feel affectionate toward -bert\/Bert- names in general; getting close to the right amount of time passing since the name was last in style; etc.), and I think it’s a good brother name for a Wallace, and I like both Al and Bertie as nicknames. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Albert; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Bertie\/Al.<\/p>\n

Frederick is another name in the Albert category for me: until recently I might not have considered it, but now I feel like pushing it on people as a not-yet-rediscovered treasure. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Frederick; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Freddie.<\/p>\n

And I love Louis (I am thinking of the pronunciation that could also be spelled Lewis, as opposed to the one that could also be spelled Louie). I love to say it. Elizabeth, Wallace, Amelia, and Louis; Liza, Wally, Mia, and Louie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Swistle! Thank you and your commenters SO MUCH for the invaluable help! We weren’t sure what we were going to go with until about an hour ago…we ALMOST went with Jonathan\/Jonty but although we both liked the nickname we couldn’t get behind Jonathan.
\nBut even though we had rejected Theodore in the first round, Swistle your delight in the nn Teddy and the commenters delight as well–sorry that makes no sense, I’m a little tired–made us really love it again. We don’t love quite as much as the original name we picked but we definitely love it ENOUGH. So our boy is Theodore George Isaacs Campbell. Not super thrilled with the rhyming-ness of his middle name but oh well, it’s kinda cute.
\nthank you again SO SO MUCH!<\/p>\n

Rose, Nathaniel, Liza, Wally, Mia and baby Teddy!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SWISTLE! can you PLEASE HELP US. i am writing this from my hospital bed so please forgive any typos or bad grammar or whatever! My name is Rose Campbell and my husband is Nathaniel. When I was pregnant the first time and we had a list of baby names on our fridge, my mom said […]<\/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-10910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3iyiG-10910","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910","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=10910"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10919,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10910\/revisions\/10919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}