{"id":12379,"date":"2016-10-26T11:30:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T15:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12379"},"modified":"2017-01-12T19:49:50","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T23:49:50","slug":"baby-girl-ramires-naomi-or-go-back-to-the-drawing-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2016\/10\/26\/baby-girl-ramires-naomi-or-go-back-to-the-drawing-board\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Ramires: Naomi, or Go Back to the Drawing Board?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 29 weeks pregnant and still struggling to choose the perfect name for our baby girl. After considering several, we thought we settled on Naomi as the perfect first name.\u00a0\u00a0 Our second place name was Kelly, which was still a little to British and gender neutral for our taste.\u00a0 We’ve also considered Valentina, Cecilia and Jill.\u00a0 Recently, I have decided that while I still love the name, Naomi does not sound nice with our last name Ramires. (Ramirez with an \u201cs\u201d)\u00a0 The whole process seems to have started over again.\u00a0 I have read several name books and looked at all of the websites and apps.\u00a0 Nothing feels quite right.<\/p>\n

My husband likes only names that sound traditionally\/classically American or Italian. We both would like the name to be easily spelled and pronounceable.\u00a0 Finally, it has to sound right with the last name Ramires.<\/p>\n

We have three other stipulations:<\/p>\n

– Can\u2019t be in the top 50 most popular names of the year
\n– Can\u2019t end in the sound \u201crah\u201d
\n– Can\u2019t be gender neutral<\/p>\n

Should I just stick with Naomi and hope she gets a better last name someday?\u00a0 Or, do I keep searching for the perfect name?\u00a0 Is this just a normal part of the naming process?<\/p>\n

Thank you for any help and advice you can provide.<\/p>\n

Best,<\/p>\n

Michaela<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

My vote is that there’s nothing wrong with the sound of Naomi Ramires. I’ve been saying it over and over, and it continues to sound nice to me. If Naomi felt perfect and nothing else seems right, I think there are two main possibilities:<\/p>\n

1. This is cold feet. It’s normal to doubt the name once it’s chosen. There were options, they were considered…and now it’s over? Maybe it’s not right. Maybe we should think more. What if there’s a better name out there, and we just haven’t thought of it yet? Maybe we should start over.<\/p>\n

2. This is not necessarily about Naomi sounding wrong with Ramires, but is instead about having actual doubts (as opposed to cold-feet doubts) about the name Naomi, possibly for reasons that need more poking around to discover.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From this distance, it’s hard to guess which one it is. It sounds more like cold feet to me, but I don’t want to dismiss it as cold feet if it’s genuine concern. If you really don’t want to use the name Naomi anymore, then it’s good to have this time to re-think. I might suggest taking a week off from thinking\/talking about baby names at all, and then begin again.<\/p>\n

But if you really DO want to use Naomi, and you HAVE gone back to the drawing board and you don’t want any other name, and your only concern is about how Naomi sounds with the surname, then I recommend this exercise: Get out a yearbook or an employee directory or a class list or a phone book, or fast-forward to the credits of a movie. Look at all those names. A lot of them are not ideal, if you consider them closely. And yet it doesn’t end up mattering: they just seem like normal names.<\/p>\n

I don’t even see Naomi Ramires as non-ideal to begin with. But if it doesn’t sound quite right to you, it may still fall into this nice wide “non-ideal but absolutely doesn’t matter and just seems like a normal name” category.<\/p>\n

I also recommend removing the word “perfect” from your baby-name search. I don’t think it’s a useful word, and I think it can unnecessarily increase stress. A baby’s name doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be a good serviceable choice. If you happen to find one that feels perfect, then that’s a lucky bonus—but it doesn’t have to be perfect in every way to be an excellent and satisfying choice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

We decided on Naomi Raquel Ramires.\u00a0 I was definitely having cold feet. Still struggling with the middle name, I decided to just let my husband choose. Naomi’s middle name is his sister\u2019s first name. It is perfect. I couldn\u2019t imagine her being named anything else.<\/p>\n

Thank you!<\/p>\n

Best,<\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle, I\u2019m 29 weeks pregnant and still struggling to choose the perfect name for our baby girl. After considering several, we thought we settled on Naomi as the perfect first name.\u00a0\u00a0 Our second place name was Kelly, which was still a little to British and gender neutral for our taste.\u00a0 We’ve also considered Valentina, […]<\/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-12379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3dF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379","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=12379"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12513,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions\/12513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}