{"id":12272,"date":"2016-08-15T07:45:09","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T11:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12272"},"modified":"2016-10-09T08:13:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-09T12:13:19","slug":"baby-girl-write-sister-to-mabel-gemma-and-alice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/08\/15\/baby-girl-write-sister-to-mabel-gemma-and-alice\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Write, Sister to Mabel, Gemma, and Alice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

We just found out that our fourth (and last) daughter will be delivered almost a month early, and we still have not found a name for her. Part of the problem is that we LOVE our other three daughters’ names! Our oldest is Mabel Kaye (initials M and K to honor my sisters), and our twins are Gemma Grace and Alice Devon (after my great aunt, Emma, and great grandmother, Alice). It is proving an impossible task to find a name we adore that goes well with Mabel, Gemma and Alice. In fact, most of the rules we originally considered have gone to the wayside, with only two remaining. We would like for this baby to have her own first initial and would also like her name to have a positive meaning. I worry about using a name with the letter R in it, as our last name is Write (spelled differently). Our three daughters all go by their first names, but we have a variety of nicknames for each, so this is an important consideration in choosing a name for our baby.<\/p>\n

Names I like:
\nColette
\nSicily\/Cecily
\nRose- too short with last name? Too much with the double R sound?
\nClaire- a good friend has a Claire
\nLouisa- I worry people will pronounce it with a “z” sound
\nBlythe- too clipped with one syllable last name?
\nLibby- more of a nickname, but I can’t think of a full name I like to get to this<\/p>\n

Names my husband likes:
\nVivian
\nLucy- too common?
\nRosemary- too much for a child?
\nViolet- not sure how well this works for an adult and it’s become more popular
\nEdith- dislike the nickname Edie
\nEleanor- we often call Alice “Ali” and know we’d shorten this to Ellie
\nCora- “ruh” sound blends into last name<\/p>\n

Names we like but feel we can’t use either because of a family\/friend with this name or because it is too close to one of our girls:
\nSybil
\nClara
\nLilah
\nTessa
\nMatilda
\nKaris
\nStella<\/p>\n

Help! If this was your daughter, what would you name her given the names of her sisters? Please share any thoughts on the names we have listed and any suggestions you may have for other names!!<\/p>\n

Thank you so much!<\/p>\n

Tracy<\/p>\n

P.S. My c\/s is scheduled for August 23rd, so I am losing sleep trying to decide on a name! I am so worried we will be sitting in the hospital three days after our daughter is born still debating her name, or worse– choose a name we later decide we don’t love\/doesn’t fit her! Please help! I promise to update with a picture!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Asking me what I’d choose if this were my daughter was a riveting question. Immediately I had a different way of approaching it: instead of working from your lists, I only looked at the names of the first three girls, and then I got out my name book. Mabel, Gemma, Alice, and…<\/p>\n

Beatrix
\nCamille
\nClaudia
\nCleo
\nCordelia
\nEliza
\nFelicity
\nFiona
\nFrances
\nImogen
\nIvy
\nJuliet
\nLydia
\nOlive
\nPhilippa
\nRosalie
\nRosamund
\nRuby
\nSimone
\nViolet
\nWinifred<\/p>\n

Winifred is the one that particularly electrified me when I came to it. If I were reading a book about four little girls having adventures, it would be about Mabel, Gemma, Alice, and Winifred.<\/p>\n

I found I didn’t mind a repeating R sound with the surname. It sometimes hit my ear as not-ideal, but not as enough of an issue to rule the name out. Well, I did cross out Pearl, but that was more because of an issue I was having going from a -rl sound to a R- sound.<\/p>\n

I found myself inclined to rule out names that started with the final sound of Alice, especially if they also had an L sound: Celeste, Cecily, Celia, etc. (Celia is in fact the same letters of Alice arranged differently.) But of course that is only an issue if you’re saying the names in order. Still, I found myself not adding them to the list: Alice and Cecily sound so similar to me, even though they’re quite different names.<\/p>\n

Simone is one that stayed, in part because of the visual advantage of starting with an S instead of a C, and in part because it has no L sound. I would expect this name to get more popular after this year’s Olympics, but it’s hard to tell: sometimes parents rule out a name for just such a reason. I remember when the new baby prince was named George, and people were writing saying now they couldn’t use the name George.<\/p>\n

Now that I’ve made my list, I’ll go though yours. Rose Write is distinctive in a way that will come down to personal preference: some people will find it snappy and memorable, and others will feel it’s too much R or too many word names. Same with Ruby Write from my list, I think.<\/p>\n

Blythe Write is a little hard for me to say: the -the of Blythe wants to blend right into the R sound of the surname. Not enough to cross it off the list, but it knocks it further down the list for me. The same thing happens for me with Edith Write: I get a -thrite sound.<\/p>\n

I think spelling it Luisa would increase the success rate of getting the S pronounced softly, but that spelling doesn’t seem as good with the sibset. I do think part of the package deal of the name Louisa would be hearing it often with a Z sound.<\/p>\n

I don’t think the name Rosemary is too much for a child, and I think it works nicely in this sibling group.<\/p>\n

Violet was the very first name I added to my own list. I then wavered, and then decided to cross it off, and then left it on. I think the name works very well for an adult, and I think Vi is a great nickname, or there’s Lettie. But I find I persistently associate the name with the word violent in both sound and appearance. It’s not as strong as the sweet little flower association, and yet it persists. I wish I didn’t have this association, and so I have left the name on the list.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

Thank you so very much for your help with our baby’s name!\u00a0 I really appreciate your suggestions for a name for our fourth daughter.\u00a0 I was also blown away by the thoughtful responses from your readers!\u00a0 I reread their comments many times, including during the two days after our daughter was born when we still couldn’t commit to a name.\u00a0 My husband and I had never considered, but immediately loved, the name Sylvie (suggested by your readers).\u00a0 What a cool name!\u00a0 In the end we worried about it being confused with Sylvia and how annoying it would be to have to explain her name was “just Sylvie”.\u00a0 After lots of back and forth with Sylvie and Lucy, we went with the name my husband had suggested from the beginning– Lucy!<\/p>\n

Now that we’ve gotten to know her, Lucy Rose suits our girl perfectly!\u00a0 As a bonus, my great aunts were named Lucia and Rose, so my family was quite pleased.\u00a0 We are so happy with our decision and love the nicknames used by her sisters (Lucy Goosey, Baby Lou, Lulu, Luce).<\/p>\n

And so our family is complete– Mabel, Alice, Gemma and Lucy.<\/p>\n

Thanks again!<\/p>\n

Tracy<\/p>\n

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Dear Swistle, We just found out that our fourth (and last) daughter will be delivered almost a month early, and we still have not found a name for her. Part of the problem is that we LOVE our other three daughters’ names! Our oldest is Mabel Kaye (initials M and K to honor my sisters), […]<\/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-12272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3bW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12272","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=12272"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12350,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12272\/revisions\/12350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}