{"id":10984,"date":"2015-02-10T12:53:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T16:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10984"},"modified":"2015-07-09T21:12:55","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T01:12:55","slug":"baby-girl-fitzpatrick-with-a-kirk-sister-to-arlo-randy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/02\/10\/baby-girl-fitzpatrick-with-a-kirk-sister-to-arlo-randy\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Fitzpatrick-with-a-Kirk, Sister to Arlo Randy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I have a middle name conundrum I would love some advice on! I’m due in June with a little girl. I have a boy named Arlo Randy. Arlo was just a name we liked and Randy is my husband’s father’s name who passed away while we were pregnant with my son (it is also my passed uncle’s name and my part of my brother’s name so it was a no brainer!) Our last name is like Fitzpatrick- but Kirk instead of Fitz.<\/p>\n

Our baby girl’s name will be Thia. My mother’s name was Cynthia and she died when I was 22- I’ve wanted to use the second half of her name since then. I know it is not the traditional way to spell Thea- but it makes sense with the name it’s honoring, and it still is pronounced the same (people are familiar with ending ia- Sophia, Mia- right?) I am a little worried about that, but maybe not enough to change it?<\/p>\n

Anyways, my real question is the middle name. I always thought I wanted to name my daughter after my grandma’s middle name, Viola. Thia Viola. My great grandma happened to be Cynthia Viola as well. So it would pay extra homage- maybe too much? Maybe this girl needs a middle name that is hers alone? Arlo has his own name and an honor name, so should Thia?<\/p>\n

Another twist is that my grandmother turned kind of nasty when my mom fell ill and said some hurtful things to my siblings and me. For the 20 years before that, she was like a second parent (my mom was a single parent) but at the end of my mom’s life, she turned on us (and passed away 6 months after my mom did, so I didn’t have time to see if it was just grief making her mean).<\/p>\n

So I’m all sorts of confused about honoring her, having 2 honor names, if Thia Viola even flows on it’s own or goes with Arlo Randy.<\/p>\n

If we decide not to do an honor name, I like:<\/p>\n

Thia Arwen
\nThia Wynn
\nThia Nelle (husband vetoed)
\nThia Wells (husband vetoed)
\nThia Violet (similar to Viola, kind of an honor nod?)
\nThia Anne (my middle name. Husband’s mom’s middle name, though hers is without an ‘e’.)<\/p>\n

If it matters, our boy name would have been Ramsey Lee or Keller Lee. Lee was my mom’s middle name.<\/p>\n

Thoughts? Advice? I’m losing sleep over this and I have 19 weeks to go!<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading,
\nKaeleen<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I did first read Thia as THIGH-ah. I think once I knew it was supposed to be like Thea, I would eventually get it right, and your explanation would help the spelling make sense, but as I was answering the letter I kept reading it wrong. It SHOULD read with the long-E sound to me, because of Olivia and Amelia and Aria and Julia and so forth—but for whatever reason, it didn’t. Maybe it has to do with the Thi- coming at the beginning of a word? Thiamin and thigh have the long-I, but thief has the long-E. (I think thiamin is the primary source of my trouble with it.) I wish we could have a poll, but the polls still aren’t working. I showed the name to Paul, and he said, “I’d first see it as THIGH-ah, but I’d know no one would name their child that, so then I’d guess THEE-ah” (“thee” with a soft TH, not the buzzy TH of the word “thee”). That sums up the way I saw it, too: I think I’d first see THIGH-ah, but then realize it HAD to be THEE-ah, or maybe TEE-ah (like the Th- of Theresa). It’s unfortunate that one of the possible mispronunciations involves the word thigh, making it somewhat more than the usual “more than one way to pronounce a name” issue.<\/p>\n

The grandmother honor name is another complicated issue; I can see why it’s a fretful one. Is Viola pronounced with a VEE or a VYE? That would add another issue for me: if Viola has the long-I sound, it makes it even harder for me to say the first -i- correctly: the long-I of Viola, and the similar appearance of the two names, makes me want to say both with a long-I. But that is not likely to come up: most people won’t see the two names together on a regular basis. And of course if it’s VEE, that HELPS with the pronunciation of Thia—though then the combination seems a little sing-song.<\/p>\n

I think I could go either way on whether or not she should have one honor name or two. One of my five children has two honor names, and those still feel like his own names—I think because we used relatively common names, so I’m accustomed to encountering them on other people, and so it feels more like duplicating than sharing. It also shows I’m not picky about sibling names being completely consistent: our plan was to use honor names as middle names, but then we found one we really liked as a first name, so we let our preference for the name take priority over the preference to make things consistent. Another family might do it the other way around, depending on how they rank their preferences.<\/p>\n

I think for me, the combination of your mixed and stressful feelings about your grandmother’s last 6 months, plus your mixed feelings about using two honor names for this child when you used one honor name for the first child, might tip me toward a non-honor middle name. If you plan to have more children, perhaps Viola could be set aside for a possible future daughter.<\/p>\n

I find that with a soft, vowel-ending name like Thia, I prefer more consonants in the middle name, especially at the beginning of the name: Thia Wynn and Thia Anne feel so soft, like I almost can’t get a grip on them to say them. Arlo is another soft, vowel-ending name, but then Randy has its nice consonants to balance it; I’d look for something similar for Thia. Thia Miranda would be the feminine equivalent, or Thia Violet from your list does it (but has the same long-I issue as the VYE pronunciation of Viola).<\/p>\n

Because I found Thia Viola potentially misleading, pronunciation-wise, I might look especially for middle names that have the same -ia- as in Thia. But because the first and middle names are unlikely to come up together very often, and because your surname is nicely full of consonant sounds, neither of these two issues I’ve raised (consonants and -ia- matching) are ones I’d give heavy priority; more like tools I’d use to help me make a list, if I were having trouble coming up with one.<\/p>\n

I wonder if you’d want to use Gracyn as the middle. I’d added Grace to the middle name list below, and then thought of the first half of your mother’s name. Thia Gracyn gets the whole Cynthia in there.<\/p>\n

Thia Bianca
\nThia Bridget
\nThia Claudia
\nThia Frances
\nThia Grace
\nThia Jane
\nThia Jillian
\nThia Jocelyn
\nThia Liviana
\nThia Louise
\nThia Marigold
\nThia Rose
\nThia Rosemary
\nThia Rowan
\nThia Ruby
\nThia Simone
\nThia Valentina
\nThia Victoria
\nThia Vivian
\nThia Winifred<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hello Swistle!
\nName update! I asked for some help naming my baby girl back in February! I was so appreciative of everyone’s advice!<\/p>\n

We had our little girl on June 17.
\nWe ended up naming her Thia Patrice. My sister’s middle name is Patrice, and I decided that my relationship with my Grandma just was too confusing to name my daughter after her.\u00a0 My sister was elated with this news! I like the repeated sound of the -ia and -ice and I love that she’s named after the two most important women of my life.<\/p>\n

Thanks again!<\/p>\n

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Hi Swistle! I have a middle name conundrum I would love some advice on! I’m due in June with a little girl. I have a boy named Arlo Randy. Arlo was just a name we liked and Randy is my husband’s father’s name who passed away while we were pregnant with my son (it is […]<\/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-10984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Ra","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10984","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=10984"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11477,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10984\/revisions\/11477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}