{"id":12529,"date":"2017-01-24T09:41:37","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12529"},"modified":"2017-01-24T09:41:37","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T13:41:37","slug":"baby-girl-coil-trying-to-use-the-honor-name-judell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2017\/01\/24\/baby-girl-coil-trying-to-use-the-honor-name-judell\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Coil; Trying to Use the Honor Name Judell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi! We are expecting a little girl in March and we are having trouble coming up with a name. Our surname sounds like Coil, and my grandma and our favorite person in the world’s name is Judell. I LOVE how unique her name is but it will always be a grandma name to me. We thought about Adele, but we didn’t want people to think we named our daughter after a singer, as angelic as her voice might be.<\/p>\n

Her middle name will be Kay…Do you have any suggestions?<\/p>\n

Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Judell is pronounced as I’d guess (joo-DELL), then it is a member of a highly-sought-out group of middle names: two-syllable names with the emphasis on the second syllable. That type of name tends to work with many, many first\/last combinations, and it’s also a little hard to find, which is why so many of us have Nicole or Marie. You’ve said the middle name will be Kay and that you’re looking for a first name, but in case those preferences aren’t yet set in stone, I will still start by suggesting Judell as the middle name. The middle name is the perfect place for the name of your favorite person in the world, when the name isn’t what you want as a first name. (I’d be inclined to go straight to suggesting Kay Judell, but I’m not as fond of the sound of Kay Coil.)<\/p>\n

If you definitely want the honor name (1) altered and (2) as a first name, then I’d start as you did already: by looking for names with similar sounds. Adele is out, but perhaps:<\/p>\n

Delaney
\nDella
\nJada
\nJude
\nJudith
\nJulia
\nJune<\/p>\n

The main issue, it seems to me, is that none of those do a very good job of calling the honoree to mind. Delaney, for example: my name is Kristen, and if a grandbaby were named Tenley after me I would have trouble bragging about that to my group of grandma friends. If you aren’t set on the middle name, you could consider something like Jade Ella Coil, or Julia Della Coil, or Delaney June Coil: something that breaks the name up and redistributes it, increasing the honor by adding more pieces of the name.<\/p>\n

Or you could reproduce the TYPE of name Judell is. Do you know how it was chosen? For example, were her parents considering Judith but decided to change the ending to make it more unusual? Or was she named after a Judith and an Eleanor? Or was she named for a Grandpa Jude? Depending on the answer + the equivalent available names in your family, you might be able to make a name the same way.<\/p>\n

In some families, matching the initial(s) is considered an honor name. If this is the case in your family, any J name would work. Josephine Kay, Jillian Kay, Juliet Kay. Even better would be matching first and middle initials if possible.<\/p>\n

You know your mind better than I do, but I would suggest not entirely ruling out using Judell as-is for the first name. You said it will always be a grandma name to you, but I am not sure that would be the case if the name were on your baby girl. My guess is that we have among us many parents who used a grandparent name for their child and have found the name able to stretch to both. I can picture Judell on a grandmother, but I’m imagining seeing it on a class list and I think it’s got a lot of potential. You could say “She’s named after my grandmother,” and call her Jude or Ella for short.<\/p>\n

And I will push one more time for my top-favorite option, which is to leave the name intact and use it as the middle name. It’s such a good place for honor names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi! We are expecting a little girl in March and we are having trouble coming up with a name. Our surname sounds like Coil, and my grandma and our favorite person in the world’s name is Judell. I LOVE how unique her name is but it will always be a grandma name to me. We […]<\/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-12529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3g5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12529","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=12529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12530,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12529\/revisions\/12530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}