{"id":11804,"date":"2015-12-28T12:54:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T16:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11804"},"modified":"2016-08-25T14:46:52","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T18:46:52","slug":"baby-boy-or-girl-eaves-with-an-r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/12\/28\/baby-boy-or-girl-eaves-with-an-r\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy or Girl Eaves-with-an-R"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting our first baby in mid June. We’re both from large families and are hoping for around 6 of our own.<\/p>\n

We’re fairly traditional in terms of taste in names, but like the more unused classics. I’d say that our theme is “British Parliament:” names that sound like they could belong within old, established English families. Our last name is English\/Scottish and rhymes with Eaves, starting with R.<\/p>\n

The problem is that we’d like to name the baby after my husband, if he’s a boy. His name is Tyler James, and though I’m okay with having a junior, I’m having trouble deciding what to call him so he’ll fit in with the names we’d like to give future children (i.e. a brother named Winston). Tyler is too ’90s to me, not to mention confusing around the house but I’m not a big fan of calling him James, because of a negative association and because of the double S sound when you add in our last name. I’d be okay with nicknames for James, just not TJ or JT.<\/p>\n

Would love your thoughts and advice- chances are, even if this baby is a girl, we’ll run into our “junior” situation one day!<\/p>\n

All the best,<\/p>\n

Madeleine<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The more I work on baby-naming questions and issues, the more I notice that SO MUCH of choosing names boils down to making choices that eliminate other choices. On one hand, of course that’s what it boils down to: when you choose one name, you are not-choosing all the others. But it took me a long time to realize that the same thing happens with preferences, and with style categories, and so forth: certain choices rule out other choices.<\/p>\n

Your letter is an excellent example: you want to use traditional\/British\/classic names, AND you want to have a junior, AND you want sibling names to coordinate. Because your husband’s name is a modern surname name and not at all traditional, British, or classic, something’s got to go: the three preferences can’t all be met. You can have a junior, and also give the rest of your children British Parliament names, if you give up the preference for sibling-name coordination. Or you can have sibling-name coordination and British Parliament names, if you give up the preference of having a junior. Or you can have sibling name coordination and a junior, if you give up the preference for British Parliament names. The trick is to choose which element of the three is least important to you.<\/p>\n

Doesn’t that sound simple? But we know it isn’t, not at all. For one thing, the desire for a junior may not be evenly spread between you. You mention that “we’d” like to name the baby after your husband, but then you say you’re “okay with” that. So it may be that of the three elements that can’t co-exist, your husband would rank “having a junior” as most important, and you would mark it as least important.<\/p>\n

The proposed solution seems to be to give your husband a junior—but then never call the child by any of his own names, because those names are not your style and\/or have negative associations. This is where I start to ask just how important it is to have a junior, and WHY it is so important: at the point where you are giving a child names you don’t like and won’t use, the price of having a junior seems too high for the value received. At some point I think the line needs to be drawn: “We wanted this, and under different circumstances we could have had it, but in these actual circumstances it is not going to work even if we try to force it. It is sad, but there it is.”<\/p>\n

It is probably increasingly clear that my own vote for least-important element is the junior. But if there is no getting around that, then my vote is to name him Tyler James and call him James. James goes just fine with names such as Winston: it may be plainer and\/or more common than you’d prefer, but the style coordinates and doesn’t clash. The concern about the repeating S sound seems so minor compared to the other issues at stake here, I think it’s a well-worthwhile trade: a minor preference abandoned so that you can keep all three major ones.<\/p>\n

Only you know if you can get past the negative association you have with the name James. But it seems to me that if you don’t like the first name and you have a negative association with the middle name, that brings us back to the idea that sadly it is just not going to work to have a junior in this situation. Perhaps your husband could be mollified by using Tyler as the middle name for one child and James as the middle name for another.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

You (and your incredible readers!) helped us out on your December 28th ’15 post. We had our baby boy on June 21st and named him Tyler James. So far he’s being called Jay and James and we’re both happy with our choice!<\/p>\n

You eloquently explained the issue of conflicting preferences in names and led us to some meaningful discussions for priorities in naming our brood, so thank you for that. We are also planning on using some of the terrific suggestions for names in the comments for future kids, so thanks to all!<\/p>\n

Madeleine<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! My husband and I are expecting our first baby in mid June. We’re both from large families and are hoping for around 6 of our own. We’re fairly traditional in terms of taste in names, but like the more unused classics. I’d say that our theme is “British Parliament:” names that sound like […]<\/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-11804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-34o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804","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=11804"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12286,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11804\/revisions\/12286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}