{"id":11712,"date":"2015-11-13T09:50:40","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T13:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11712"},"modified":"2016-06-06T21:22:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T01:22:38","slug":"baby-girl-schemmel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/11\/13\/baby-girl-schemmel\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Schemmel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle<\/p>\n

I love your blog!
\nWe are expecting our first baby in February and it would be great if you could help us. We had a boy\u2019s name picked out all along, but of course it\u2019s a little girl. We are both from Germany but live in Australia. I\u2019m Franziska but mostly go by Franzi, my husband\u2019s name is Andr\u00e9 and our last name is Schemmel.
\nFor a boy we had Charles (Charlie) Eric Arthur. Charlie because we love the name, Eric after my late brother in law and Arthur after my great-grandpa. It could have been so easy. For girls we have almost nothing.<\/p>\n

When we talked about names years ago we decided on Catherine (Katie) if we would ever have a little girl, but now that I\u2019m actually pregnant it just doesn\u2019t feel right. I never thought it would be that hard to pick a name and all the pregnancy hormones aren\u2019t helping either.<\/p>\n

Andr\u00e9 is dead set on Katie and doesn\u2019t like anything else. It\u2019s a nightmare.<\/p>\n

Names I suggested but he vetoed are: Elizabeth, Amelia, Madeline, Savannah, Felicity, Alice, Josephine and Emily. I would love a little Lizzy or Annie or Fle, but no. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t like Katie, she just doesn\u2019t feel like a Katie or Catherine. But then I also thought she is a boy, so what do I know? J<\/p>\n

Should we just go with Katie and be done with it? It\u2019s not bad, he likes it and there is no other name that I really love as much as he loves Katie.<\/p>\n

My second problem are middle names. Fortunately he is happy with whatever I pick. I\u2019ve always loved Isla. That\u2019s the only other name he would consider as a first name, but I\u2019m quite hesitant as no one in Germany can pronounce it right, it\u2019s so short and there are no cute nicknames. My grandma\u2019s name is Gisela and I really want to honour her, but she doesn\u2019t really like her name. I don\u2019t like Giselle, so that\u2019s out. One time I looked at her name and realised Isla is in there. If you cross out the G and E you have Isla! Is it too farfetched? Would it still honour my grandma?
\nFor the second middle name I like Charlotte as it’s my other grandma\u2019s middle name. I don\u2019t want to use it as a first name, as we still want to use Charles if we have a boy in the future, but I love it as a middle name. Do Isla and Charlotte go together? Does it really matter if I love the names?
\nIt would be amazing if you could help us!!!<\/p>\n

Thank you so much<\/p>\n

Franzi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The first thing that needs to happen, it seems to me, is that your husband needs to release his death grip on the name Katie. The baby may or may not end up being named\/nicknamed Katie, but insisting that it’s the only name he likes isn’t helping with the process—especially if his filter for all other names is “Do I like this name better than I like my top favorite name?,” resulting in automatic vetoes for all non-Katie names. In short: no, I don’t think you should name the baby a name you think of as “not bad” and don’t feel is right, just because your husband is being so insistent, especially when there is still quite a bit of time left in the pregnancy to think about names. I do think you should keep it in mind as an option, as you’re clearly already doing.<\/p>\n

I’d suggest seeing if you can hit his reset button with an exercise we’ll call “Yes, But If She COULDN’T Be Named Katie.” Say to him that you realize it’s his favorite name, and that you’re not ruling it out at this point (this phrasing would, I hope, remind him that you certainly MAY rule it out), but that it doesn’t feel right to you, and that you’d like to use the next few months to explore other options to see if there’s something you both love. Ask him to pretend that the name Katie could not be used for some reason. Perhaps it would help him to pretend the two of you already had a daughter named Katie, and now you were naming a second daughter. Start again with the lists of names you like, and\/or have him come up with new names he likes, WITHOUT the complication of comparing every name to the name Katie.<\/p>\n

Since you’re planning more children, another possibility is that this baby is not Katie, but the next baby would be. That is, perhaps the reason it feels wrong to you is that THIS baby is Elizabeth\/Lizzy, and the NEXT baby is Catherine\/Katie.<\/p>\n

If all of this fails and he remains stubborn about using Katie, I think one strong possibility for compromise is the double first name. For example, naming her Anna Katherine, and he can call her Katie and you can call her Annie. Or Eliza Kate, or Emily Kate, or any other combination that sounds good to you both and gives you both the nicknames that feel right to you. I don’t see any problem with parents calling a child by different nicknames; I think the most likely is that the child will choose a favorite as she gets older, or that one nickname will naturally take the lead as the one that fits her better.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is making a deal: he gets to name this baby Catherine\/Katie, but this means you get the final say on the next daughter’s name. This involves a bit of a gamble, but it may come to the point where the baby is about to be born and it is time to cut losses and maximize gains.<\/p>\n

To me, Isla is not a honor name for Gisela, any more than Anika would be an honor name for Franziska. But different families have very different feelings about honor names, and so your grandmother may very well be honored by it—and you may be thinking, “But…I WOULD be honored by an Anika!” It sounds as if your grandmother is still among us; could you ask her what names would make her feel honored? It would spoil the surprise, but may be worth it. If you and she both consider it an honor name, then it works as an honor name.<\/p>\n

I think that in most cases, a person who doesn’t really like her own name would nevertheless feel the full impact of the honor if the name were to be used as a baby’s middle name. I think it is unlikely that your grandmother would think, “Oh! Too bad I don’t really like my name.” Many people feel only neutral at best about their own names, and yet would still love to be honored in that way.<\/p>\n

I do think Isla Charlotte is a nice combination, whether it’s first\/middle or middle\/middle. I’m more hesitant about the combination Isla Schemmel if Isla were to be the first name, but I think it works well enough; Charlotte Schemmel is a lot of SH and L, but it’s rare for the middle name and surname to be said together.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for your help! After reading your post and all the responses I talked to my husband and we set the name Catherine\/Katie aside for the time being. I didn’t think it would be that easy but how can you argue with an name expert? ;) It was so much fun looking for new names together.\u00a0 In the end we decided on Amara Isla (I know you said it’s not really an honor name for Gisela but I told my grandma about it and she loved the idea).
\nHer name was perfect and I loved everything about it until I held her in my arms. At first I didn’t even want to write you because I felt so silly but when I saw her for the first time I knew she is a little Katie. Catherine Isla Schemmel was born February 18th and we love her to pieces ;)<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for all your help!
\nCheers, Franzi
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Hi Swistle I love your blog! We are expecting our first baby in February and it would be great if you could help us. We had a boy\u2019s name picked out all along, but of course it\u2019s a little girl. We are both from Germany but live in Australia. I\u2019m Franziska but mostly go by […]<\/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-11712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-32U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11712","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=11712"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12156,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11712\/revisions\/12156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}