{"id":11548,"date":"2015-08-17T13:11:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T17:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11548"},"modified":"2015-08-17T14:10:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T18:10:32","slug":"baby-boy-richards-brother-to-piper-and-milo-judah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/08\/17\/baby-boy-richards-brother-to-piper-and-milo-judah\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Richards, Brother to Piper and Milo: Judah?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

We are in a baby naming predicament. I currently have 2 kids (a girl named Piper Jade and a boy named Milo Boyd and our last name is Richards). I am 22 weeks pregnant, Due December 18th, with my third baby (boy) and the name that my husband (Dan) and I can\u2019t get out of our heads is Judah. Now if the first thought that comes to your mind when you read this is \u201cHey, isn\u2019t that the guy that betrayed the savior?\u201d Then you would be on the same page as 99% of our friends and family. My husband and I know that Judah is NOT Judas but because of this negative association I am hoping to find a backup name or at least some reassurance that our son will not forever be known as the betrayer of the Savor if we go with Judah. I would love your insight. What are your thoughts?<\/p>\n

Thanks,<\/p>\n

Shannon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s tricky. The name of the Savior-Betrayer is Judas, as you mention, and so Judah ought to be fine. But if a name strongly reminds us of another name, it can be difficult to use it, however unfair that is.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to me that your friends and family aren’t instead objecting to the association with the biblical Judah<\/a>. Now there’s a guy with some scandal.<\/p>\n

I think there are two routes you could go here. One is to stand your ground. The name Judah is rising quite quickly in popularity: according to the Social Security Administration, it hit the Top 1000 in 1997, and by 2014 had risen to #243. As a name becomes more common, it gets less surprising to hear it, and even strong associations begin to dim. I think it’s following Noah and Elijah and Ezra: those names used to be very unusual and super-biblical, but now they’ve been mainstreamed. While it’s still possible to use them in honor of their biblical characters, it’s even easier to use them without taking it into consideration.<\/p>\n

Plus, the name you are considering is Judah, which IS IN FACT different than Judas. Your friends\/family: “Like OUR SAVIOR’S BETRAYER??” You, with look of mild surprise: “No, no: JuDAH.” (Bonus points if you add “You know: the patrilinear ancestor of Jesus.”) (Cash money for a video of you saying conversationally to them: “I mean, he’s only the ancestor because his daughter-in-law dressed as a hooker so he’d have sex with her. But still! Ancestor high-five! Thank goodness he didn’t follow through with his plan to murder her while she was pregnant, amirite?”)<\/p>\n

Will your child be forever associated with Judas the betrayer of Jesus? Short answer: no, of course not. IS your child Judas-the-betrayer? No. Would he even share a name with Judas? No. Will your family cling to this concept so vigorously that even decades down the line they will still be upset about it? Well, you know your family better than we do: WILL they? Is there any similar situation in the family you can look at—maybe another time there was an uproar over a baby’s name and the uproar either died down or it didn’t?<\/p>\n

The other route is to accept it. To think of it as one of those situations many of us have, where there is a name we really want to use, and we can’t use it because it’s the name of someone we used to date and our spouse is still jealous, or the name of our new step-mother and using that name would hurt our mother, or the name of someone who became notorious after we fell for the name. Sometimes there’s theoretically no reason the name can’t be used anyway (“I liked that name LONG before I dated him! I don’t even THINK of him when I say that name!!”), but it just isn’t going to work. We and you may all agree that the name SHOULD BE fine, but that doesn’t mean it IS fine in the context of your particular circle. If you think friends and family will shudder every time they hear your child’s name, it may be in his own best interests as well as yours to choose something else.<\/p>\n

For example, how about another stylish biblical name?<\/p>\n

Abel
\nAbram
\nBarnaby
\nCyrus
\nElijah
\nEzekiel
\nEzra
\nGabriel
\nGideon
\nIsaac
\nIsaiah
\nJoel
\nJonah
\nLevi
\nReuben
\nSimon
\nTobias<\/p>\n

I especially like Simon: I think it’s great with Milo and Piper, and I like that all three first names would have long-I sounds. Perhaps you could use Jude as the middle name, and then all three would have four-letter middle names with a strong D sound!<\/p>\n

You might not like any other name as much as you like the name Judah—but if you decide the name Judah is not usable for your family, the best choice may be your second-choice name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, We are in a baby naming predicament. I currently have 2 kids (a girl named Piper Jade and a boy named Milo Boyd and our last name is Richards). I am 22 weeks pregnant, Due December 18th, with my third baby (boy) and the name that my husband (Dan) and I can\u2019t get […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-30g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11548","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=11548"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11560,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11548\/revisions\/11560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}