{"id":12847,"date":"2017-07-24T08:23:23","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T12:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12847"},"modified":"2017-07-24T08:27:49","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T12:27:49","slug":"baby-girl-or-boy-lind-sibling-to-sophia-and-ava","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2017\/07\/24\/baby-girl-or-boy-lind-sibling-to-sophia-and-ava\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl or Boy Lind, Sibling to Sophia and Ava"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

I am so sorry not to have discovered your blog before this, the middle of my third pregnancy, but am hopeful that you can help me and my husband out with our big naming problem! His\/the kids’ last name is pronounced Lind. If we have a boy (which I suspect we won’t), his name will be my maiden name, which has been our chambered boy name for each pregnancy so far. We haven’t completely decided yet, but believe we will probably try for one more baby after this one, and also have a second boy name ready if we need it.<\/p>\n

Our big problem is finding a girl name. Ironically, we chose our two daughters’ names very easily–but that was before realizing that our theoretical name preferences are wayyyyy out of step with our actual ones! Our 3-year-old is Sophia and our 18-month-old is Ava. Believe it or not, we were going for unique names both times, only to choose names that have been in the top five for the past several years.<\/p>\n

When we named Sophia, we had no idea what sorts of resources were out there for discussing and analyzing names–we just talked to each other and decided that Sophia was a pretty, elegant, RARE vintage choice, which was exactly what we wanted. We were among the first in our social circle to have kids, so we just didn’t know better. After Sophia was born, we started to gain a sense that the name wasn’t as uncommon as we thought (right away I noticed that NO ONE reacted with the delight and surprise I had been expecting, and then another Sophia was born in our social circle a few weeks later), but it wasn’t until Ava came along that it really hit home. Why? Because for the past 18 months, I don’t think two weeks have gone by without someone saying to me, “Wow, my nieces\/neighbors\/kid’s friend and her sister are named Sophia and Ava! What a coincidence!” After the first couple times, I finally found the SSA website and a few baby name blogs, including your own, and was aghast to learn how NOT unique these names were, both generally and in our state (where Ava was number 1 the year ours was born).<\/p>\n

I can’t tell you how disappointing this has been to me. I can’t imagine the girls’ being named anything else, but there are times when I feel genuinely embarrassed to introduce them by name, because I feel that everyone is thinking, “Wow, don’t their parents have any creativity?” I used to have thoughts like that about other people’s kids’ names, so please don’t try to convince me that it doesn’t happen! The one thing that has helped is that we often call them by random nicknames (Lulu and Lottie), so at the very least strangers don’t have to know they have two of the most common names in the present universe.<\/p>\n

So that brings us to naming our third child, if it is a girl. This baby feels impossible to name because we have boxed ourselves into a corner I don’t like. Several people have already suggested Olivia to me, apparently believing this must be my style since it’s another top-fiver. And indeed, maybe we should just go with that, because what’s the point of doing otherwise? It IS a pretty name (although not one that I would have picked in a vacuum, because I’m not drawn to that long O at the beginning). I’d prefer not to repeat an initial, but Amelia is another one that would fit in with the other girls’ names. Lila is a favorite of mine, but won’t work with the last name.<\/p>\n

However, I can’t help but feel that we have a shot here at coming up with something that recasts the set, so to speak, and jazzes it up a little bit. Obviously if we named her something like Urania, it would stand out in a bad way, and wouldn’t fix the problem. But am I overlooking something in the in-between area that would make the group feel slightly less faddish?<\/p>\n

By the way, I hope this question doesn’t offend anyone with daughters named Sophia or Ava. Obviously, I think they are beautiful names or I wouldn’t have used them! I think it’s the SET, and not so much either name individually, that feels faddish to me.<\/p>\n

I would really, really love your help with this! We aren’t concerned with a middle name (we just use names of significance to us at the time, and can choose that toward the end based on the first name we pick), so the focus is just on making sure the first name works. The baby is due on Thanksgiving, but the other two were both three weeks early…<\/p>\n

Thank you so much, if you’re able to help!<\/p>\n

– VAN<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think what I might do is try to spin the sibling group as Vintage Hollywood Glamour. Sophia (Loren), Ava (Gardner), and ? You certainly could go Olivia (de Havilland) here, but you don’t love the name and I don’t suggest it. I might go more this direction:<\/p>\n

Audrey (Hepburn) (repeats an initial)
\nCatherine (Deneuve)
\nElizabeth (Taylor)
\nEsther (Williams)
\nFaye (Dunaway)
\nGrace (Kelly)
\nGreta (Garbo)
\nHelen (Hayes) (a little hard to say with the surname)
\nIngrid (Bergman) (hard to say with the surname)
\nJune (Allyson)
\nKatherine (Hepburn) (she spelled it Katharine but I’d go with Katherine)
\nLana (Turner) (probably not with the surname)
\nLillian (Russell) (probably not with the surname)
\nMae (West) (a little difficult with the surname)
\nMarilyn (Monroe) (probably not with the surname)
\nRosalind (Russell) (absolutely not with the surname)
\nVanessa (Redgrave)
\nVeronica (Lake)
\nVivian (Leigh) (she spelled it Vivien but I’d go with Vivian)<\/p>\n

I wish my search had turned up a well-known actress named Margo, because that’s the name I thought of while reading the letter. Margo Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Margo.<\/p>\n

Or Genevieve. Genevieve Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Genevieve. It makes me think of Jenny Lind, in a good way. If she goes by Evie, that might be too close to Ava.<\/p>\n

I also like Eliza. Eliza Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Eliza.<\/p>\n

Or Eloise. Eloise Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Eloise.<\/p>\n

Or Esme. Esme Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Esme.<\/p>\n

Or Dahlia, which is similar to Lila but I think works better with the surname (though it’s still a little tricky). You could call her Dolly, which goes nicely with Lulu and Lottie. Dahlia Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Dahlia.<\/p>\n

Or Flora. Flora Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Flora.<\/p>\n

Or Bianca. Bianca Lind; Sophia, Ava, and Bianca. I really like that one.<\/p>\n

But even before thinking about spin, I’d want you to make a list of the names you love—without, at first, consulting the SSA charts. Just: what would you name this baby if you hadn’t found out about the popularity issue? You’re feeling self-conscious about your previous choices, but the spin that might bring the best chance of long-term happiness is “We like popular names. *SHRUG*” I do understand on a visceral level the stomach-dropping sensation of thinking you’ve chosen a name for a particular attribute and then finding that not to be the case. But if you can force yourselves to retroactively spin your style as something more like “having our finger on the pulse of current naming style” or “deftly choosing the enduring, quality names from among the trends” or something like that, it may help with long-term feelings about the names. Does anyone else know that you were trying for rare? If not, it can be our little secret. No one has to know that you didn’t know. You can practice a casual little laugh: “Oh, I know it’s so popular! But we just loved it!” Or to downplay the whole thing while not making your first two children feel you regret their names: “We just chose our favorite name each time.”<\/p>\n

I’m a fan of sibling-name coordination, but I don’t think it’s a huge deal when there’s a shift partway through. As long as you’re choosing based on your own tastes, it’s likely the names won’t clash: the most likely thing is that you’d choose another pretty, elegant, vintage name, and the only gap would be in popularity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle, I am so sorry not to have discovered your blog before this, the middle of my third pregnancy, but am hopeful that you can help me and my husband out with our big naming problem! His\/the kids’ last name is pronounced Lind. If we have a boy (which I suspect we won’t), his […]<\/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-12847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3ld","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12847","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=12847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12850,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12847\/revisions\/12850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}