{"id":13069,"date":"2017-11-06T10:54:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T14:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13069"},"modified":"2018-02-12T17:48:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T21:48:07","slug":"baby-girl-tuber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2017\/11\/06\/baby-girl-tuber\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Tuber"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle!<\/p>\n

Long time reader, first time writer!<\/p>\n

Before we were married, my husband and I agreed on a couple of things as far as naming our children went: 1) Middle names would be meaningful\/honorific names, as both of our middle names are family names; 2) First names would be their own, and have little\/no tie to family members, unless it was absolutely something we loved; and 3) My family names would take slight precedence, since I added on\/go by his surname and, with three sisters and only female cousins on my father’s side, my surname will likely not be continuing on. My husband told me soon after that he would actually prefer that we use my two grandmothers’ names as middle names for any daughters, since he considers them his grandmothers too, and loves them very much.<\/p>\n

That leads to now. I’m elated to write that I’m pregnant with my first child, a little girl! First girl for either side of our family in 15 years. My much-adored grandmother, Patricia “Pat,” passed away unexpectedly only a few months before I became pregnant, so middle name is a no-brainer, non-negotiable for us. We also don’t like changing the names, so using Patrice or some other variant is a no. We briefly considered using Anne, her middle name, but it doesn’t feel as special or connected to her.<\/p>\n

However, Patricia is not exactly the easiest middle name to work with. I am waffling between trying to find something that sounds GREAT with Patricia (that we also LOVE), and saying “forget it!” and just using what we love regardless of how it sounds. I know, realistically, that most people won’t be familiar with their friends\/co-workers\/acquaintances middle names, so it’s probably more important to focus on how the first sounds with the surname, but I am a Name Nerd, capital-Ns, and it’s proving more difficult than I’d have hoped. I tend to like a lot of longer names that end in -a or -ia, and visually it’s very unappealing to me to repeat that, even if it sounds okay aloud. Add to that, a lot of other names I like end in S or R sounds, and our surname is Swiss-German, sounds kind of like “tuber” with a hard Z\/S, so some of the combinations run into each other or just sound so clunky… I’m just a little stuck. I am even thinking about throwing Rule #3 out and using Patricia as a first name, but I am also having a hard time with that, because I’m not crazy about the nicknames, and losing her is still very fresh, and my husband’s best friend is a male “Pat.”<\/p>\n

I would LOVE some new suggestions, or just your thoughts on our favorite names. I feel like I’ve seen everything and still none of these feel like a great fit. Right now we are calling the baby Potato (get it? Tuber?).<\/p>\n

Our names so far are:<\/p>\n

Antonia<\/p>\n

Ariadne<\/p>\n

Coral<\/p>\n

Eve<\/p>\n

Florence<\/p>\n

Francine<\/p>\n

Frida<\/p>\n

Gloria<\/p>\n

Gwendolyn<\/p>\n

Harriet<\/p>\n

Imogen<\/p>\n

Ingrid<\/p>\n

Iris<\/p>\n

Juliet<\/p>\n

Juniper<\/p>\n

Lilac<\/p>\n

Lucille<\/p>\n

Marigold<\/p>\n

Minerva<\/p>\n

Nadine<\/p>\n

Opal<\/p>\n

Phoebe<\/p>\n

Roxanne<\/p>\n

Sabrina<\/p>\n

Tabitha<\/p>\n

Veronica<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Names that have been vetoed because they are too popular, a close relation, or my husband dislikes:<\/p>\n

Amelia<\/p>\n

Cleo (he says it’s too Miss Cleo)<\/p>\n

Clementine<\/p>\n

Cordelia<\/p>\n

Bernadette<\/p>\n

Dahlia<\/p>\n

Edith<\/p>\n

Fern<\/p>\n

Hazel<\/p>\n

Ione<\/p>\n

Josephine<\/p>\n

Lavender<\/p>\n

Luna<\/p>\n

Margot<\/p>\n

Paloma (initials PP–my husband hasn’t said anything so far about Phoebe, and yes, he knows how it’s spelled, but he HATES these initials. Do you think this is a problem? I’m torn.)<\/p>\n

Pearl (initials PP)<\/p>\n

Persephone (PP)<\/p>\n

Ramona<\/p>\n

Rose and all Rose variations (hurts my heart because Rosemary was one of my favorites, but I understand my husband’s reasons)<\/p>\n

Ruby<\/p>\n

Winifred<\/p>\n

Winter<\/p>\n

Violet<\/p>\n

My husband has a well-known, Hebrew\/Biblical name that has no nicknames. I have a long, feminine, ancient Greek\/Roman name with a million nicknames, and I go by a unisex nickname with most people. We tend to like nature names and older, well-known names, that are either long with easy, intuitive nicknames, or have few\/no possible nicknames (just like our names). We slightly prefer the versatility of nicknames, but it’s not a necessity. Had this baby been a boy, my front-runners were Fox, Adam, Ignatius, and Malcolm, with about 25 other options waiting in the wings. We plan on hopefully having three to four kids, and, if we have another girl, her middle name will be Olive.<\/p>\n

Thanks in advance for any input!<\/p>\n

Mama Tuber<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I first zeroed in on Minerva: it’s very high on my own Sorry I Can’t Use It list, and I just love it, and I think it’s great with Patricia. But I love it less with the surname; I think it’s the repeated -er- sound: Minerva Tuber. My tongue twists around it.<\/p>\n

It’s hard for me to narrow down the list because I think such a large percentage of them are really good (especially since I don’t share your dislike of the look of two names in a row ending in -a), but some that seem particularly good to me are Florence, Gwendolyn, Marigold, and Sabrina. And I’d bring Cordelia, Josephine, and Winifred back from the veto list, if I had that power.<\/p>\n

Harriet Tuber brings Harriet Tubman to mind, but that’s a very positive association and also I’m not sure if your surname actually begins with Tub-.<\/p>\n

I too avoid P.P. initials. They’re not out of the question, and I can imagine loving a name so much I would consider them—but since you are planning more children, I would save the P names for when you’re not using a middle name starting with P.<\/p>\n

I would take Ruby off the list: to my ear the almost-rhyme is a little comical with the surname. Ruby Tuber. I would remove Juniper Tuber for similar reasons. (Luna Tuber and Winter Tuber are already off the list, or else I would remove them as well.)<\/p>\n

I doubt I will be adding anything you haven’t already considered, but here are a few that came to mind when I was looking at other names on your list:<\/p>\n

Felicity
\nFiona
\nGenevieve
\nGeorgia
\nHenrietta
\nMaxine
\nMillicent
\nSimone<\/p>\n

I notice you have some groups of names on the lists that, if you were to use one name from the group, it’s possible you’d feel it ruled out using others in the group. For example, if you used one color name (Violet, Lavender, Lilac, Hazel, Coral, etc.), would that mean you would not want to use any of the others? If you used one plant name (Iris, Juniper, Lilac, Marigold, Dahlia, Fern, Hazel, etc.), would that rule out the others for you? If you used Opal, would that rule out Pearl? It is good to think through such things ahead of time, so you can be sure you’re choosing your top choice from any group that would be eliminated once one name was chosen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

I’m updating sooner than I thought I would because our little girl arrived unexpectedly early! After 36 hours of labor, I was absolutely exhausted and could hardly think about names. My husband initially wanted Juniper, which I love, but when I looked at her, it didn’t feel right. I suggested Phoebe again, which despite the somewhat unfortunate initials, was the only name that really stuck with me. My husband immediately agreed she was a Phoebe, and Phoebe Patricia was welcomed to our family. Thanks for all the advice and input from all the readers!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle! Long time reader, first time writer! Before we were married, my husband and I agreed on a couple of things as far as naming our children went: 1) Middle names would be meaningful\/honorific names, as both of our middle names are family names; 2) First names would be their own, and have little\/no […]<\/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-13069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3oN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069","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=13069"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13217,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13069\/revisions\/13217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}