{"id":11188,"date":"2015-04-15T09:35:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T13:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11188"},"modified":"2015-09-03T09:20:16","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T13:20:16","slug":"baby-boy-hadleigh-lennox-or-leo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/04\/15\/baby-boy-hadleigh-lennox-or-leo\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Hadleigh: Lennox or Leo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

My husband and I would love your help and advice in choosing a name for our first baby, a boy, due at the end of April.<\/p>\n

We both agree we’d like two middle names, one of them being a family middle name of his, John. Our surname rhymes with Hadleigh.<\/p>\n

His favourite name is Lennox William John, and mine is Leo Alexander John. Other names we’ve considered are Flynn, Baxter, Louie and Cohen, and James as an alternative middle name (I prefer James to John but my husband wants to keep the tradition of using John).<\/p>\n

We really prefer either Lennox or Leo to the other names we’ve considered but both have positives and negatives.<\/p>\n

Lennox – we like Lenny for short but cannot stand Len. Also wondered if this name is a bit too feminine?<\/p>\n

Leo – worried this is now too popular but like that it cannot be shortened any further.<\/p>\n

We plan to have at least one more baby in future, and I feel that Leo would suit other names better than Lennox, but I do like the Lennox is slightly more original.<\/p>\n

So we’re stuck and cannot choose between the two! Any advice around using either of those two or other names you suggest greatly appreciated.<\/p>\n

Thank you in advance!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Social Security Administration reports than in 2013 the name Leo was used for 9 girls and 3,473 boys. The name Lennox was used for 153 girls and 351 boys. So the name Leo is about ten times as common as the name Lennox, and the name Lennox is currently a unisex name used more often for boys.<\/p>\n

I generally advise parents not to use a name if they hate the nickname. It can be possible to avoid a nickname if everyone involved wants to avoid it, but of course the child himself might decide to use it—particularly if you call him Lenny when he’s younger.<\/p>\n

The name Leo is more popular than Lennox, but is still not what I’d consider off-puttingly popular: as of 2013, it wasn’t yet in the Top 100 (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see it there when the 2014 data comes out in a few weeks). I’d suggest looking up the popularity<\/a> of the other names you might consider for a future child and seeing if their popularity is more like that of Lennox, or more like that of Leo.<\/p>\n

Looking at the other names you mention, I think Lennox goes better with the style of Baxter and Cohen, and Leo goes better with the style of Louie; I think both names go well with the style of Flynn. I’m also going to link here to an earlier post we did on the name Cohen, in the hopes of avoiding revisiting the issue in this comments section: Baby Naming Issue: Cohen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My own vote would go to Leo. It would be nice if the deal could be sweetened by letting your husband have his preferred middle names: he’s already getting his way with the name John, so if he could have William too, that would give the name-selection a nice balance.<\/p>\n

If you decide Leo is just too popular for you to want to use it, perhaps Cleo would work for a possible future girl.<\/p>\n

I might also suggest Milo and Hugo and Nico, if you haven’t already considered them. All are less common than Leo: Milo was at #314 in 2013, Hugo was at #438, and Nico was at #484.<\/p>\n

I’d also suggest Felix (#296).<\/p>\n

Or Cole (#114).<\/p>\n

Or Malcolm (#444).<\/p>\n

Or Brooks (#301).<\/p>\n

Or Lawson (#511).<\/p>\n

Or Clark (#456).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

Well our wee boy is nearly 4 months old and I have been meaning to write in and thank you for your input and let you know the name we chose after you and your readers gave us some great advice to consider. It was Leo vs Lennox with 2 middles names, one being John \u2013 a family name of my husband\u2019s. About half of your readers who commented said go with Leo and the other half with Lennox, so we read further into why they suggested what they did.<\/p>\n

A few people came up with the potential sing-songy \u201clee\u201d sounds of Leo with the surname Hadleigh \u2013 a good point which we hadn\u2019t actually considered. And then there was the thought of nicknames for Lennox, some of which we weren’t entirely happy with. In the end we saw past the sing-songy \u201clee\u201d sounds and decided on the sweet and simple Leo.<\/p>\n

Your other suggestions for names were great; in fact Felix was also on our list but I forgot to mention that in my original post.<\/p>\n

As per your advice, I let my husband choose the middle name as Leo was my favorite option. He came up with Hunter which was not on our list and not my favorite name but I\u2019ve come around and quite like it now. So we have a Leo Hunter John and he suits his name just perfectly :-)<\/p>\n

Thank you and your readers again for your help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! My husband and I would love your help and advice in choosing a name for our first baby, a boy, due at the end of April. We both agree we’d like two middle names, one of them being a family middle name of his, John. Our surname rhymes with Hadleigh. His favourite name […]<\/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-11188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Us","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188","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=11188"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11594,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11188\/revisions\/11594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}