{"id":12999,"date":"2017-10-13T09:54:47","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T13:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=12999"},"modified":"2017-10-13T13:14:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T17:14:51","slug":"baby-boy-wooder-brother-to-brynn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2017\/10\/13\/baby-boy-wooder-brother-to-brynn\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Wooder, Brother to Brynn"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,
\nMy husband and I are excited to be expecting our second (and final) child due in early March, 2018. We have a daughter already named Brynn Marley Wooder and her name was so easy for us to decide on. For some reason I was absolutely certain that this baby would be a girl as well and we had already chosen her name before we even knew the gender, Blair Leo. Then a wrinkle in the naming plan happened when I found out we were having a boy…
\nThe problem with boy names is this: my husband likes somewhat traditional, masculine names for a boy while I like somewhat unique names. We have come up with a few names but none of them feel 100% right.<\/p>\n

The names are:
\nDrew
\nNate
\nOwen<\/p>\n

We ruled out Alexander because of the nickname Al and Benjamin based on the nicknames Benji and Big Ben. My husband has also ruled out names like Hudson, Emerson and Reese because he thinks they sound pretentious.<\/p>\n

We have settled on Leonard as the middle name as it is the name of the residence where we met in university. Our last name is Wooder. We are not set on this baby’s name matching our daughter’s name in any way. We like one syllable names but aren’t 100% set on that.<\/p>\n

I think I am having trouble being truly decisive about names because of the emotional state that I have been in for the last month. My mother tragically passed away after a very difficult battle with cancer and it has left my whole family emotionally raw.
\nIf you could help us decide on a name that would be so appreciated.
\nThank you for your help,
\nWhitney<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Would you be interested in looking for a name to honor your mother? Perhaps her maiden name, or a name with the same initials, or perhaps her first or middle names have versions that would work for a boy.<\/p>\n

We need more data points than just mine, but I will say that I have not run into the nickname Al used for Alexander; the only nicknames I’ve encountered are Alex and Xander and Xan. I don’t think you need to rule out Alexander over the possibility of Al. On the other hand, you’re looking for something more unusual, and according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, Alexander only dropped out of the Top Ten in 2016 after an eight-year stay, and was in the tens and twenties rankings for decades before that.<\/p>\n

It looks to me as if each name on the list of finalists fails to meet either your husband’s traditional\/masculine preference or else your preference for something unusual. Drew is unisex: 216 new baby girls and 793 new baby boys were given the name in 2016. Owen was #23 in 2016, and is a rearrangement of the sounds of Noah, which has been #1 for four years in a row. The name Nathan has been in the Top 50 since 1975; Nathaniel was in the Top 100 from 1978 until 2015; Nate is such a familiar nickname at this point.<\/p>\n

I wonder if any of these would work:<\/p>\n

Ames
\nClark
\nCole
\nDane
\nDean
\nEzra
\nFelix
\nGavin
\nGeorge
\nGraham
\nGrant
\nIan
\nIvan
\nIsaac
\nJoel
\nKarl
\nMack
\nMiles
\nMilo
\nNiels
\nNolan
\nRufus
\nSimon
\nZane
\nZeke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, My husband and I are excited to be expecting our second (and final) child due in early March, 2018. We have a daughter already named Brynn Marley Wooder and her name was so easy for us to decide on. For some reason I was absolutely certain that this baby would be a girl […]<\/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-12999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3nF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12999","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=12999"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13003,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12999\/revisions\/13003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}