{"id":11056,"date":"2015-03-02T09:49:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-02T13:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11056"},"modified":"2015-08-05T18:17:41","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T22:17:41","slug":"baby-naming-issue-a-karl-like-name-that-isnt-karl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/03\/02\/baby-naming-issue-a-karl-like-name-that-isnt-karl\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: A Karl-Like Name that Isn’t Karl"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi there!<\/p>\n

I’ve been reading your blog for years, long before marriage and kids. My husband and I will be welcoming our first child in July. We will not be finding out the sex of our child prior to delivery.<\/p>\n

My husband’s name is Karl, and his father is Carl. My name is Maribelle (pronounced like the Spanish Maribel or phonetically Ma-ree-bell in English.) Our child’s and my husband’s last name sounds like Tolland without the T.<\/p>\n

If we have a girl we plan to name her one of the following names:<\/p>\n

Mariana
\nMarielena
\nMariella<\/p>\n

We firmed our girl names rather quickly as it is a family tradition to name girls with an M name in my family, and my husband was quick to jump on board. We feel the girls names we have selected work in English, Spanish, and Italian- the three languages spoken in our home.<\/p>\n

Now, for boy names we can’t agree decide. We are struggling to come up with boys names we both like.<\/p>\n

My husband wants a Karl-like name that isn’t Carl or Karl. I want to incorporate my dad’s very Hispanic name Jaime (Hi-me) into our potential son’s name but not necessarily as a first name. Ideally the name would also sound good in Italian and Spanish but at this point those requirements aren’t too high on my list.<\/p>\n

My husband likes only the following names which I dislike for one reason or another but mostly because I already mentally associate someone in my life with them and\/or find the name too Hispanic.<\/p>\n

Charles
\nCarlos<\/p>\n

I like the following names and my husband strongly dislikes them.<\/p>\n

Lucas (he has agreed to using it as a middle name)
\nJames (similar to Jaime)
\nCarlson or Karlson
\nClaudio
\nGabriel (our niece is Aubrielle and he feels this would be too matchy)<\/p>\n

I have searched exhaustedly for different variations of Carl or a name that sounds remotely similar to satisfy my husband to no avail.<\/p>\n

Can you suggest some boys names that may satisfy his desire to have a son named Karl without being Karl, sound good with a last name similar to Tolland but without the T, and potentially is well suited with the middle name Lucas?<\/p>\n

Thanks a million,
\nMaribelle<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The only other options I can think of are Carlo and Carlton; I’m hoping commenters will have more ideas.<\/p>\n

Oh, another possibility would be a double name, such as John-Carl or James-Carlos.<\/p>\n

I wonder if there is any way you could come around to the name Charles. It depends, of course, on your particular association with the name. But sometimes associations can be weakened: one way is to dilute it by finding a whole bunch more people with the name:<\/p>\n

Charles Babbage
\nCharles Barkley
\nCharles Darwin
\nCharles Dickins
\nCharles Lindbergh
\nCharles Schulz<\/p>\n

And so on.<\/p>\n

It’s one of the hardest things in baby-naming, I think, when a strong preference (in this case, for a Karl-like name) doesn’t result in any names the parents particularly like or can agree on. At this point, the search for The Name That Satisfies the Preference and Also We Both Love It is very likely a search that’s going to leave you stuck in a never-ending loop. Instead it comes down to weighing the merits of two incompatible preferences: do you want to go with the preference for a Karl-like name, or do you want to go with the preference for a name you both like? Hardest of all will be if the two of you disagree on which preference should take precedence.<\/p>\n

One possibility for compromise is this: if your husband is getting his way on a Karl-like name, perhaps he could be more open to your suggestions of how to get there. It seems as if right now he wants the Karl-like name AND he wants it to be only a name from his two-name list. Carlson seems like the best possibility for a name that would please both parents: he gets a Karl-like name, and you get a name you like. If he really can’t tolerate Carlson, and you really can’t tolerate Charles or Carlos, it may be time to concede defeat. Perhaps Carl\/Karl\/Charles\/Carlos could be used as a middle name instead.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

After more than 72 hours of labor, choosing a name didn’t seem as difficult as it once was for my husband and me. We recently welcomed a boy to our family and named him Lucas Carl which satisfied both my husband and my preferences. So far we haven’t had too many problems with pronunciation in any of three languages spoken by our friends and families.<\/p>\n

Thanks again to you and all your followers for your suggestions as they were instrumental in helping my husband switch from “must have Karl like first name” to maybe it’s better as a second name.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi there! I’ve been reading your blog for years, long before marriage and kids. My husband and I will be welcoming our first child in July. We will not be finding out the sex of our child prior to delivery. My husband’s name is Karl, and his father is Carl. My name is Maribelle (pronounced […]<\/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-11056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Sk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056","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=11056"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11524,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11056\/revisions\/11524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}