{"id":13144,"date":"2017-12-21T11:25:35","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T15:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13144"},"modified":"2018-07-24T11:02:15","modified_gmt":"2018-07-24T15:02:15","slug":"baby-boy-corn-with-an-h","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2017\/12\/21\/baby-boy-corn-with-an-h\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Corn-with-an-H"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I’m almost crying tears of joy because I finally have a reason to write to you. After two years of trying, my husband and I are expecting our first baby (due next summer).<\/p>\n

Since we’ve been trying for so long, we have already had a few discussions regarding names. Our hands-down favorite girl name is J0seph!ne @nne; it honors my husband and a family member of mine who passed away, and we love the nicknames (I love me some nicknames). If we ever have a daughter, this will definitely be her name.<\/p>\n

Our problem comes from two boy names we love: Alexander and Calvin.<\/p>\n

1. Alexander goes well with our last name (Corn with an H), we love the nickname Alex, and it’s a name only shared by one of our astounding plethora of male relatives. My concern is that Napoleon’s Josephine had a first husband named Alexander. If we had a son and daughter named Alexander and Josephine, is that bad? Or is this a reference that I’m overthinking? I know it’s not like naming your kids Romeo and Juliet, but I don’t want to saddle our kids with something weird.<\/p>\n

2. Calvin is a slight nod to my name, it’s not common in our circles, and it’s not shared by anyone in our family (the trifecta!). My issue is that I know he’d be called Cal sometimes (I’m fine with that, my husband doesn’t love it) and I think Cal Corn-with-an-H sounds weird and choppy. It sounds like someone is saying “cow h0rn” to my ear. Is this hormones making me crazy, or am I on to something here? One syllable last names are hard!<\/p>\n

Other boy names we’re considering: Samuel, Cole (similar issue to Calvin!), Daniel, and Anthony. We like some of these, but Alexander and Calvin are the clear front runners. We have a ton of potential middle names to choose from (again, plethora of male relatives), so that’s not a concern.<\/p>\n

Also, whichever one doesn’t get picked this round is permanently off the list, as I refuse to have sons named Cal and Al. Just nope.<\/p>\n

Thanks so much!
\nCC<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

History is one of my weakest subjects, so it’s not surprising that I have zero association with Napoleon\/Josephine\/Alexander. I think we need opinions from people who are very aware of whatever that historical situation was, to see if they’d think it was weird to have a Josephine and an Alexander as siblings. I’d think it would help that both names are relatively common.<\/p>\n

I lean heavily in favor of the name Calvin. It’s a great name, and it’s more in line with the popularity of the name Josephine (the name Calvin was #148 in 2016; Josephine was #114; Alexander was #11). Plus, it removes any possibility of awkwardness over Historical Josephine’s ex.<\/p>\n

I don’t see any problem with the nickname + surname. It’s pretty important to me that the given name go reasonably well with the surname and with sibling names, but nicknames are much less important. If the nickname formed a bad or embarrassing word with the surname, that would be another matter; but a little choppiness seems like a non-issue—and I don’t hear “cow h0rn.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

Thanks to you and your readers for advice regarding our first child. As it turns out, we didn’t need to worry about a boy name because we had a little girl! J0seph!ne @nne was born on July 10th and we’re obsessed. If J0s!e had been a boy, we had narrowed our choice down to either Alexander Paul or Brendan Anthony; Brendan has been my favorite boy name for years and initially my husband didn’t like it, but he came around to it at the end when it was paired with a significant honor name for the middle spot. Maybe we’ll get the chance to use it in a few years? Thanks again for your help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! I’m almost crying tears of joy because I finally have a reason to write to you. After two years of trying, my husband and I are expecting our first baby (due next summer). Since we’ve been trying for so long, we have already had a few discussions regarding names. Our hands-down favorite 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":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3q0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13144","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=13144"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13550,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13144\/revisions\/13550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}