{"id":11823,"date":"2016-01-12T09:26:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-12T13:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11823"},"modified":"2016-02-16T20:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T00:01:02","slug":"baby-girl-phlth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/01\/12\/baby-girl-phlth\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Phl@th"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting a baby girl in early February – our first and maybe only child. I’ve been nerding out on name blogs since before I got pregnant, but it’s hard to find one that works in reality. Neither of us want a popular name – nothing in the top 100 or so. However, we keep coming up with names that are relatively rare but perhaps too similar to popular names. Ideally, I’d like a longer, elegant name, with a two syllable nickname ending in the -ee sound to call her at home. I’m picky about nicknames – I don’t like ones that sound too common or sound like a boy’s name. Our last name sounds like Phl@th.<\/p>\n

My husband really likes Lenora (ranked around #1600 in 2014), which I think is lovely, but the issue is with what nickname to use. He says Nora, but when you combine the number of girls named Nora (#49) and Norah (#163), the name “Nora” actually ranks in the top 25. So if we call her Nora, or if she decides she wants to go by Nora, we would have inadvertently given her a popular name. Other potential nicknames are Nori, or Lennie, which is also problematic because it sounds like the nickname for an old man Leonard. Some alternatives to Lenora we are considering are Lenore, which doesn’t flow as nicely, and Leona.<\/p>\n

Our other top name is Mirah. Again, the name itself is fairly rare (together, Mira and Mirah ranked around #600). However, it sounds very similar to more popular names such as Mia and Mila, so I worry that Mirah would still seem trendy and not unique. I’m also having a hard time committing to Mirah because it’s only two syllables. We don’t want to lengthen to Mirabelle because someone close to us has that as a last name. We are considering Vera as an alternative, but we don’t like it as much, and Vivi might be too trendy of a nickname.<\/p>\n

We considered Rosalie, until I discovered that when you add up all names that include some form of Rose, there are about 7,000 girls who could go by Rose\/Rosie as a nickname, which is essentially in the top 25. We also like Violetta, pronounced Vee-oh-letta, but Violet is climbing in popularity, and it would be too annoying to us that it would often be mispronounced with a long i sound.<\/p>\n

Other names I like that my husband vetoed: Felicity, Fiona, Melody, Miranda (another way to get to Mirah), Camilla<\/p>\n

I would love to get some perspective from you and your readers about whether our favorite names come off as too popular or trendy.<\/p>\n

Thank you!
\nJulia<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lenora makes me think of the name Linnea (lih-NAY-ah), nickname Linnie.<\/p>\n

The spelling Mirah is not one I’m familiar with; I wouldn’t be sure how to pronounce it. My first guess would probably be like Myra, because the spelling makes me think of the name Micah. If I knew it was a short-I sound, I might think the emphasis was on the second syllable, like the words hurrah and mirage—not because I’d think that was likely, but because the puzzle-solving part of my brain would be wondering why the H was at the end, as I would if I saw the name Kirah or Emmah.<\/p>\n

I think it’s normal to be attracted to the sounds that are currently popular, even if you’re looking for a less popular name. Lenora feels unusual to me, but the nickname Nora feels very current. Mirah, even with an unusual spelling, feels current to me, fitting in with Kira and Lilah and Aria and so forth. The best way to avoid names that are popular (or could become popular) is to choose sounds that are not currently in favor—but that means choosing a name many people won’t like the sound of, including you. I’m not sure it’s worth it.<\/p>\n

Remember that if you restructure the rankings by adding up spellings, nicknames, etc., you have to restructure ALL the rankings. That is, if Rose and Nora are added to the Top 25, they kick out two names that are currently residing there. Or, perhaps they themselves get kicked back out of the Top 25, by other names that would join the Top 25 if we combined spellings\/nicknames.<\/p>\n

I think it’s excellent to use the available data and to make sure you’re not falling into traps—but a number that looks large when it’s national (such as 7,000 girls who could theoretically use the name or nickname Rose) can be hard to figure out at the local-school-classroom level. And there’s no way to predict the particular local classroom, either: we’ve had only one Rose and one Nora in all the kids’ classrooms combined, but another commenter could easily report that her child has had Roses, Rosalies, Rosies, and Noras in every single classroom and extracurricular.<\/p>\n

I suggest asking yourselves this question: “Which name do we LIKE BEST?” Pretend for a moment that popularity is not an issue. Pretend it doesn’t matter if your daughter occasionally encounters another child with the same name, or if her name is occasionally confused with another name, or if other people think the name you chose is popular or trendy. When your minds are as clear as you can get them, think: “If we could use any name we wanted, which one would it be?”<\/p>\n

The thing is, you CAN use any name you want. You can use the name you like BEST. And if other people also like that name, that’s happy! If other people think the name is trendy—well, I agree that’s annoying. But if you’d used a different name, other people might think the name was weird, or boring, or trying too hard, or silly, or any number of other things people think about names.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Our daughter Mira Lark “Phl@th” was born earlier this month. We were still debating her name the day after she was born — we also considered Lenore or Miranda in the hospital, but decided to go with Mira because even though it’s not perfect, we kept coming back to it and it seemed more right than the others. I told myself to stop caring that it sounds trendy. The feedback from you and your readers about how the h confuses the pronunciation in Mirah convinced us to drop the h. We chose Lark because I like irreverent word names for middle names, my husband likes birds, and it flows well with the first name almost like a three syllable name. Interestingly, the scientific name for a genus of larks is Mirafra, which was a pleasant coincidence. Although we didn’t want to use Mirabelle as a given name, I’m using it as a cute nickname for her.
\nThanks for the help!
\nJulia<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle, My husband and I are expecting a baby girl in early February – our first and maybe only child. I’ve been nerding out on name blogs since before I got pregnant, but it’s hard to find one that works in reality. Neither of us want a popular name – nothing in the top […]<\/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-11823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-34H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11823","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=11823"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11897,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11823\/revisions\/11897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}