{"id":12045,"date":"2016-04-15T09:46:31","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T13:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12045"},"modified":"2016-04-15T09:51:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T13:51:45","slug":"baby-naming-issue-names-to-honor-an-adolf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/04\/15\/baby-naming-issue-names-to-honor-an-adolf\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Names to Honor an Adolf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I am a long-term reader, and love thinking about names. Now I am not pregnant, and we are not trying either, but I do love thinking about names and playing with possible combinations. And lately I have been thinking about possible honor names.<\/p>\n

Luckily, there are a ton of great names in both of our families to choose from. However, the one person I would really really like to honor is my grandfather, who passed away last year. We were very close, and he was a great man throughout his life. If there was anyone in my family I would really like to honor it would be him. But, unfortunately, he was born in Germany in the 1920s and was named Adolf.<\/p>\n

I don’t think the name Adolf is still usable, not even as a middle name. It conveys a certain message, and certainly not one a child of German heritage should have, even though I objectively like the sound of it. Sadly my grandfather didn’t have a middle name, and his last name is a very long German word that is very much unpronounceable and can in no way be used as a first name. He did have a nickname – Adel (pronounced like Uh-dl). Do you think this nickname might potentially be usable, or would this defeat the purpose of an honor name? Other versions would be using something that sounds similar, like Adam (starts with Ad) or Adelia or Delphi for a girl, but these all just seem to be a little far fetched.<\/p>\n

Let me know what you think? I would love to honor him, but I do not want to burden any future children.<\/p>\n

Ann<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Generally you will find me on the conservative end of the spectrum for honor names: really I like the name to be the same as the honoree’s name, and I find all other options significantly less honory, sometimes to the point of not feeling honory at all. However, in the case of the name Adolf, I am absolutely on board with not using the name.<\/p>\n

The question now is: How far can we go from the honor name and still feel as if it’s an honor? People are all over the spectrum on this one. At my end of the spectrum, I have a hard time seeing the honor of a shared first initial or shared meaning; but at the other end of the spectrum are parents who use the name Sophia Rose and because they love how it successfully honors all four grandparents at once: Ronald, Ruth, Phil, and Sandra.<\/p>\n

I think I would shoot for two goals: first and foremost, for the name to make you think affectionately of your grandfather; second, for the naming story to make sense. Naming stories don’t HAVE to make sense, of course: there’s no review board, and you don’t have to share the naming story with anyone. But I find it useful for testing if, in our efforts to make something work, we have strayed outside the bounds of reason. It’s very easy to make a first jump, and then take a second jump from that landing place, and end up with something that can be connected only with a trail of breadcrumbs.<\/p>\n

My favorite in this case would be to use the name Alfred. I think the name is adorable and ready for a serious comeback, and to me it feels similar enough to Adolf that I looked it up in The Oxford Dictionary of First Names<\/a> to see if they might have come from similar sources. (No.)<\/p>\n

For a girl, I think of names such as Agatha, Delphine, Daphne, Adelaide; nothing clicks quite well enough, but there’s a slight tie.<\/p>\n

I do think “We wanted to honor my grandfather, but his name is Adolf, so…we just had to do the best we could!” works very well, explanation-wise.<\/p>\n

I am not seeing much potential in the nickname pronounced Uhdl. The name Abel LOOKS like Adel, which seemed like a promising path at first, but now I am starting to feel as if the naming story is slipping: a name that looks like (leap #2) a nickname (leap #1). But does the sight of the name Abel make you immediately think of your grandfather? Then I think this option has potential.<\/p>\n

Another possible path: according to The Oxford Dictionary of First Names, Adolf means “noble wolf.” Wolf would make a fairly rad middle name, and has the additional advantage of sharing the -olf of Adolf.<\/p>\n

We could continue with this idea by looking for more names that mean “noble” and\/or “wolf.” Baby Names Made Easy: The Complete Reverse-Dictionary of Baby Names<\/a> has these possibilities:<\/p>\n

Ada: “noble”—from the same Germanic Ad- of Adolf
\nAdelaide: “noble and kind”—shares the same Germanic Ad- of Adolf, and adds kindness
\nAdele: “noble”—but the singer Adele is a strong association
\nAdeline: “noble”
\nAdler: “noble eagle”—excellent symbolism reboot, plus shares the Germanic Ad-
\nAlbert: “noble, bright”
\nAlice: “noble, kind”
\nAlphonse: “noble, battle-ready”
\nArwen: “noble maiden”
\nAudrey: “noble strength”
\nCannon: “wolf cub”—awww, baby wolf
\nConan: “wolf”
\nDella: “noble”
\nEthel: “noble”
\nGandolf: “wolf’s progress”—good symbolism reboot, shares -dolf, but strong Gandalf assoc.
\nGrady: “noble”
\nHeidi: “noble, kind”
\nLowell: “wolf cub”—but sounds like when my kids say “LOL” as a word
\nNoble: the word itself is a possibility
\nOberon: “noble bear”
\nOwen: “highborn, noble”—the “highborn” puts the wrong spin on “noble,” it seems to me
\nPhelan: “wolf”
\nRafe: “wolf counsel”
\nRalph: “wolf counsel”
\nRandall: “wolf’s shield”
\nRandolph\/Randolf: “wolf’s shield”—and shares -dolf
\nRudolph: “famous wolf”—famous reindeer, too
\nShaw: “wolf”
\nTala: “wolf”
\nWhelan: “wolf”
\nZeva: “wolf”<\/p>\n

Because one person’s huge reach is another person’s intuitive leap, I’ve included even the options where my own feeling is that the connection is getting pretty slim. For one thing, you might have information that gives the name an additional connection, such as if Rafe were the name of your grandfather’s dad, or if Whelan were the name of the town where he grew up, or if Randall were your maiden name.<\/p>\n

And this brings me to another source of honor names I do not generally reach for, but many people do: names of things connected to your grandfather, such as the names of towns he lived in, schools he attended, professions, hobbies, siblings, favorite flowers\/colors\/foods, other names in his family tree, whatever. Or you could look for German names in general.<\/p>\n

Or there’s the idea of sharing multiple initials. If your grandfather’s surname started with K., for example, you could make it your goal to find first\/middle names with the initials A.K.<\/p>\n

And finally, there is the idea of abandoning the whole thing. It is fairly common for parents to really want to honor a beloved person, and yet be unable to make it work. I always feel sad when that happens, because I love honor names—but sometimes it turns out to be an unsolvable equation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I am a long-term reader, and love thinking about names. Now I am not pregnant, and we are not trying either, but I do love thinking about names and playing with possible combinations. And lately I have been thinking about possible honor names. Luckily, there are a ton of great names in both […]<\/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-12045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-38h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12045","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=12045"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12049,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12045\/revisions\/12049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}