{"id":13347,"date":"2018-04-16T11:20:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T15:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13347"},"modified":"2018-05-24T08:35:14","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T12:35:14","slug":"baby-boy-or-girl-ernie-with-a-b-sibling-to-xavier-christian-superhero-baby-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/04\/16\/baby-boy-or-girl-ernie-with-a-b-sibling-to-xavier-christian-superhero-baby-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy or Girl Ernie-with-a-B, Sibling to Xavier; Christian\/Superhero Baby Names"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

We need to call on your expertise, and the creativity of your readership to find something to satisfy our (somewhat bizarre) naming criteria!<\/p>\n

We are looking for names:
\n– with some Christian\/biblical link (my criteria)
\n– with some link to a superhero character or a significant player for the Pittsburgh Penguins (husband\u2019s criteria)
\n– that isn\u2019t too obviously connected to said person, or indeed any one person\/character.
\nWe both agree T\u2019Challa is a lovely name, but no.
\n– that isn\u2019t cultural appropriation (so definitely not T\u2019Challa)
\n– not in the UK top 100 (my criteria)
\n– that won\u2019t be a source of ridicule (husband\u2019s criteria – surely we all try to avoid this?!)
\n– that are names in their own right (husband\u2019s criteria). This means I can\u2019t offer him a compromise of we\u2019ll name him Richard but call him Ricky. He would argue we need to name him Ricky.
\n– not a surname name (my criteria)<\/p>\n

We have approx. 6 weeks to the arrival of baby no. 2.<\/p>\n

We already have a son, Xavier (pronounced zay-vee-er) who has the perfect name (not in the UK top 100, saintly, and with a nod to a certain leader of the X-men). The children (we haven\u2019t ruled out having more) will all have my husband\u2019s surname (as do I) which sounds like Ernie but starts with B. A boy would have the middle name John (not a contender for a first name) and a girl would most likely have the middle name Agnes (I would love Agnes as a first name but my husband detests it so I think middle is the best I\u2019m going to get).<\/p>\n

Names my husband likes (simple and popular):
\nOliver
\nJack
\nDaisy
\nSydney
\nThea (I have offered him the compromise of Theodora or Dorothea and he said no)<\/p>\n

I like (old fashioned and a bit foreign?):<\/p>\n

Blaise
\nInigo
\nIvo
\nPascoe
\nPax
\nRaphael
\nAgnes
\nArwen
\nBronwen
\nEvangeline
\nSadie
\nVeronica<\/p>\n

We both agree on Eugene. It\u2019s either \u201cthe one\u201d (variant of Evgeni (Malkin of the Pens)) or it\u2019s horrible.
\nSo we either have Eugene or nothing for a boy, and nothing for a girl!<\/p>\n

Please help!<\/p>\n

Liz<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s a little hard to know what’s a reach and what’s reasonable, so I’m just going to fling out options and let you sort them out. I’m also going to say right at the start that I know about as much about saints and superheros as I do about the Pittsburgh Penguins, which is to say I’ll be picking the names right out of Wikipedia articles without doing much more research than that. Like, if I say a name is a saint name, it means that I searched “Saint” + that name and got a result from a Catholic website, and that’s it; I won’t have looked further to make sure it’s not an embarrassing or controversial saint. I should also say that I know very little about UK baby names or which ones are Top 100. So we are off to a very promising start!<\/p>\n

Arthur. Saint name, and the name of the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers; he was instrumental in getting the Pittsburgh Penguins going. Also I see there is an Art Ross trophy named for an Arthur.<\/p>\n

George. Saint name, and also the name of the first head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n

Paul. Saint\/Bible\/Christian name, and also the name of Paul Coffey of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n

Martin. Saint name, and also the name of Martin Straka of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n

Philip. Saint name, and also the name of Phil Kessel of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n

Dominic. Saint name, and also the name of Dominik Simon of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n

Alfred. Saint name, and also the name of Batman’s butler\/caretaker\/companion and father figure.<\/p>\n

Oliver (on your husband’s list already). Saint name, and also the name of the Green Arrow. But I don’t know if I like it with Xavier: it seems like they might be too similar, and they come very close to rhyming.<\/p>\n

Remy. Saint name, and also the name of Gambit from X-Men. A little singsongy with the surname.<\/p>\n

Pascal. Saint name, and also the name of Pascal Dupuis of the Pittsburgh Penguins.<\/p>\n

For a boy, your choice of Blaise seems pretty much perfect to me: it’s a saint name that sounds like a superhero name. [Edit:<\/strong> Commenter JMV points out that the sound of the surname includes the word “burn,” which could be a major plus depending on just how superhero a parent wanted to go, but makes the name way too punny for my own preferences.]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lois. My mother once mentioned this as a biblical name. When I looked at her in complete bafflement, she said, “Hello?? The mother of Timothy??” The name is mentioned exactly once in the entire Bible, making this an oft-repeated family story illustrating how my mom thinks her level of biblical knowledge is normal. Anyway, the name does in fact appear in the Bible (once) (hello! she’s the mother of Timothy!), and also it’s a Lois Lane reference.<\/p>\n

Diana. I lost interest before I could get to the part about whether she’s actually a saint or just someone in church history, but she does show up on Catholic websites. Also it’s the name of Wonder Woman, which seems like the more important part.<\/p>\n

Jean. Saint name, and also Jean Grey of the X-Men.<\/p>\n

Veronica (on your list already). Saint name, and also from Archie Comics. I realize that’s not exactly a superhero, but I really like the name, and particularly if you’re avoiding nicknames.<\/p>\n

The problem with your husband’s preferences is that they work a whole lot better for boy names than for girl names. Women do not play for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and very few superheros are women. So I’m going to ignore those preferences when looking for girl names from now on. And the children will all have his family’s surname, so it seems like we should do something to lean more toward your preferences anyway.<\/p>\n

Felicity. Saint name.<\/p>\n

Esther. Bible name, and I love it with your surname.<\/p>\n

Claudia. Bible name.<\/p>\n

Priscilla. Bible name, and one I’m ready to start hearing again.<\/p>\n

Lydia. Bible name.<\/p>\n

Anastasia. Saint name, and one of my own favorite names. It’s a little long for avoiding nicknames, but Anastasia Krupnik may help with that.<\/p>\n

Winifred. Saint name, and I like that she’d get a distinctive initial like her brother did. Winnie with the surname would be a little singsong.<\/p>\n

Matilda. Saint name.<\/p>\n

Louisa. Saint name.<\/p>\n

Beatrix. Saint name. I don’t always like alliteration, but I think it’s pretty great here.<\/p>\n

Flora. Saint name.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for your advice and the suggestions from all your readers.<\/p>\n

Eugene Andrew John was born on Sunday morning. Following your readers\u2019 advice we added Andrew (after his dad) to break up the J sounds, and the initials EAJ he shares with me. <\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThank you so much,<\/p>\n

Liz<\/p>\n

PS
\nIf he had been a girl, we still had nothing!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle, We need to call on your expertise, and the creativity of your readership to find something to satisfy our (somewhat bizarre) naming criteria! We are looking for names: – with some Christian\/biblical link (my criteria) – with some link to a superhero character or a significant player for the Pittsburgh Penguins (husband\u2019s criteria) […]<\/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-13347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3th","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13347","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=13347"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13403,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13347\/revisions\/13403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}