{"id":12258,"date":"2016-08-01T07:58:56","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T11:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12258"},"modified":"2017-03-26T15:08:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-26T19:08:08","slug":"baby-naming-issue-will-a-kyla-be-mistaken-for-a-kayla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/08\/01\/baby-naming-issue-will-a-kyla-be-mistaken-for-a-kayla\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Will a Kyla Be Mistaken for a Kayla?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting our first child (a girl!) after four years of IVF treatments and are thrilled! Back when we were naive and thought we would conceive right away, we picked out names for a boy and a girl, basically ruling out anything\/everything else:<\/p>\n

Colton Mark (nickname Cole, Mark is my husband’s first name and a follows a naming tradition in his family of giving the father’s first name as the son’s middle name)<\/p>\n

Kyla Morgan (Morgan is a family name on my side)<\/p>\n

We’ve been calling the baby Kyla since we found out it was a girl and decided not to tell anyone the name until she is born because we don’t want to hear people’s opinions on it. That lasted about five minutes and we ended up telling a friend of ours who later referred to her as “Baby Kayla”.<\/p>\n

I recoiled in horror and have been second-guessing Kyla’s name ever since. I do not like the name Kayla – it screams 80s to me, and not in a good way. My husband is full steam ahead on Kyla still, but I am not-so-secretly compiling a list of alternative names.<\/p>\n

My first question to you and your readers: have you heard the name Kyla before? Is it too close to the more-familiar Kayla that she will get called Kayla all the time?<\/p>\n

Second question: are there better names out there?! Am I settling too soon on a name I picked out literally four years ago?<\/p>\n

Here’s what else is on our\/my list:<\/p>\n

Morgan – as a first name instead of middle
\nMadelyn – too popular?
\nNicole – my middle name, but is it too 80s?
\nNatalie – the only name my husband has said he likes
\nLinnea – a childhood obsession of mine from the book Linnea in Monet’s Garden but my husband hates it
\nLiliana – husband hates it<\/p>\n

Corinna Noelle – this is the name I named all of my dolls as a child, then daydreamed naming the daughter I would one day have with my crush as a 13 year old. My sister recently reminded me of my obsession and I, oddly enough, don’t hate it and maybe kind of like it?<\/p>\n

Our last name is Polish, full of consonants, starts with Skr- and ends in -ski. I think I lean towards more feminine names to offset the heavy surname.<\/p>\n

Help?!<\/p>\n

Stephanie<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh, yes, I know that feeling, where two names are theoretically similar, and yet one is the name that lives in your heart and the other is a name that makes you shudder. Well. I talk a lot on this site about the “package deal” of a name: that is, every name comes with its own set of upsides and downsides and complications. Some names come with a LOT MORE upsides\/downsides\/complications than others, and some downsides\/complications are much more serious than others, and some upsides are more worth the potential downsides\/complications, etc.—and so it can take some considerable effort to figure out how things shake out on the balance scale. And because all that balance-scale work is very subjective, other people’s votes may or may not be much use.<\/p>\n

I think that yes, part of the package deal of the name Kyla is that it will sometimes be mistaken for the more familiar Kayla. However, I think that everyone who is a regular in her life will know it is Kyla, and the mistakes will come almost entirely in situations where it doesn’t matter: for example, the Taco Bell clerk may call out “Kayla?” when her order is ready, or the school secretary might call down to ask for Kayla to be sent to the office to pick up her forgotten lunch box.<\/p>\n

My vote would be to persevere with the name Kyla. But I also don’t think there’s any harm in considering other options, if that would be fun: it can a little bit of a bummer to go into a pregnancy with all the fun name decisions already made.<\/p>\n

Glancing over your list, the only name that catches my eye is Linnea—but your husband hates it, so I don’t think that’s worth pursuing, unless you think he dismissed it without really thinking about it. Nicole does seem too 1980s to me, or even too 1970s, and also seems too similar to Colton\/Cole.<\/p>\n

I love Corinna Noelle. How does your husband feel about it? It might be necessary to first get him in the right frame of mind: if he’s full-steam-ahead with the name Kyla, he might not be seriously considering new candidates. You’ll know better than I will the right way to reset his thinking, but with Paul I would say, “I know we pretty much decided on Kyla. But it’s been awhile since we decided on that, and I will feel more certain about it if we can first seriously consider other options. So what I’d like us to do is act like we have NOT decided on Kyla, or even pretend that something happened and now we CAN’T use the name Kyla, and give some serious thought to other options.”<\/p>\n

A name similar to Kyla (though perhaps, as with Kayla, similar in ways that don’t appeal) is Lila. And that makes me think of the other rhyming options: Isla, Myla, Nyla.<\/p>\n

Another similar-but-maybe-in-the-wrong-way option: Kaya. I think the spelling\/pronunciation issues might be a bit of a headache.<\/p>\n

My daughter is friends with a Kyra, but that one is constantly mispronounced (KY-ra or KEER-a?) and misspelled (Kira).<\/p>\n

And another in this same theme of similar-but-maybe-in-the-wrong-way: Kiley.<\/p>\n

Clara is an option that shares a surprising number of sounds with Kyla, considering how different the two names are.<\/p>\n

I wonder if you would like Brielle? I thought of it when I saw Noelle and Nicole.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

So I have a three-months-late baby update for you. Baby Kyla Morgan was born on December 22nd at 12:02pm, weighing in at 7lbs 12oz. We decided to keep Kyla Morgan as we had originally planned because after so long Kyla just felt like our baby.<\/p>\n

That being said, we have definitely heard “Kayla” a few times. Most notably, my mother-in-law and father-in-law called her Kayla multiple times over the first couple days of her life! I gritted my teeth and my husband firmly corrected them and we haven’t heard it from them again.<\/p>\n

Thanks to you and your readers for mulling this over with me!<\/p>\n

And of course, attached is a photo of Kyla Morgan at three months old!<\/p>\n

Stephanie<\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle, My husband and I are expecting our first child (a girl!) after four years of IVF treatments and are thrilled! Back when we were naive and thought we would conceive right away, we picked out names for a boy and a girl, basically ruling out anything\/everything else: Colton Mark (nickname Cole, Mark is […]<\/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":true,"_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-12258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3bI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12258","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=12258"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12634,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12258\/revisions\/12634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}