{"id":13398,"date":"2018-05-23T10:11:36","date_gmt":"2018-05-23T14:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13398"},"modified":"2018-09-27T16:39:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T20:39:43","slug":"baby-girl-t-sister-to-jameson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/05\/23\/baby-girl-t-sister-to-jameson\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl T., Sister to Jameson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

I am currently 20 weeks pregnant and due in September so this question is not urgent by any means but it’s something that has been weighing on my mind ever since we found out I was carrying a girl a few months ago.<\/p>\n

We currently have an almost 2 year old son named Jameson Penn who we call both James and Jameson interchangeably. A little back story with the name; my dad’s first name is James, my father-in-law’s middle name is James and my husband’s middle name is James. I love that we were able to choose a classic name with a modern twist that covered three important men in his life.<\/p>\n

We’ve always been on the same page with boy’s names and prefer strong surnames with special meaning behind it. If this baby had been another boy we would have most likely gone with Campbell or Maxwell with the middle name Christopher.<\/p>\n

Here is our dilemma with naming a girl. I remember reading on here once that you have an issue with parents who name their boys strong, masculine names and their girls frilly names (worded differently of course.) I found out recently that my husband has an even stronger opinion about this issue ever since he talked to a higher up in his company with a “frilly” girl name. My husband works as a research scientist for a well know pharmaceutical company in a very male-dominated field. This person he spoke with goes by the name of Ann but recently confided in him that her first name is actually Daisy. She decided later in life (in her 40s) to go by her middle name because she was tired of introducing herself as Daisy at meetings or presentations and felt she wasn’t taken seriously by her male colleagues.<\/p>\n

For the longest time, I’ve had our girl name picked out. The first name would be Tilly, after one of my favorite characters in a book and the name of my husband’s grandma, and her middle name Juliette after my mother-in-law. My MIL’s full name is Julie Jeanette so we just combined it into Juliette for her honor name. I was quickly turned down when I brought this name up to my husband after finding out we’re having a girl however and I have to admit that it does sound like a little girl’s name after thinking it through. Neither of us like the full name Matilda to get the nickname so it is officially off the table. But now we are having the hardest time finding a name that isn’t too girly or “silly” but that we still both like. I’m finding I tend to like girlier names but I understand the dilemma of her needing to “grow into it”, something I never even thought of when we were pregnant with our son. Now when I try on a new name, I picture an adult woman at an interview or giving a presentation and I don’t want her feeling silly with that name or resentful.<\/p>\n

I recently fell in love with the name Annabelle and my husband admits he likes it and she can always go by Ann or Anna when she is older if she prefers, but we are still unsure if it falls into the “frilly” category. My mother’s middle name is Ann so I love the idea of having another child that covers both grandmas like our son covers both grandpas. However, Annabelle Juliette sounds VERY girly and froufrou to me but I haven’t found a close contender that I like nearly as much.<\/p>\n

We’ve thought about naming her Juliette as the first name but my husband’s name is Jeremy and I hate the idea of being the only non-J name in the family. Jeremy, Jameson and Juliette. We have to use Juliette as the middle name as we’ve already told my MIL that we would be honoring her with this granddaughter and I can’t go back on that now.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on this? Are we overthinking it too much? Should we just completely start over from scratch and only consider more serious names? Does this put too much pressure on her someday to be a professional when maybe she’ll want to be a dancer or a stay at home mom like I currently am when she’s older?<\/p>\n

Our last name is a very short, harsh-sounding German name that is a combination of Trout and Trash so I would like the first name to be at least two syllables for a better flow. We tend to like classic, more traditional names that aren’t trendy or can be dated too much. Other than that, we are pretty flexible with styles.<\/p>\n

I promise to send an update and a picture when baby girl arrives.<\/p>\n

Thanks in advance!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

You are remembering correctly that I can get a bit of a bee in my bonnet on this issue. Frilly and girly I don’t mind: frilly and girly can be words people use to mean Very Feminine, and there’s not a thing wrong with being Very Feminine. But I do mind when names for sons are chosen to be solid and dignified and important, and then names for daughters are lightweight and insubstantial and cute—and particularly if it seems important to give the sons honor names, but doesn’t seem equally as important to do so with the daughters.<\/p>\n

So I am absolutely on-board with Annabelle Juliette. It is indeed a very feminine name, and so a person might use the words frilly or girly to describe it—but it is in no way lightweight or insubstantial, and you are using honor names just as you did for your son. And it’s a flexible name, nickname-wise, giving her lots of options for later on. Clearly no parent should feel they ought to put “Pleasing Swistle” on their preferences list—but if you DID by any chance have it on your preference list, you can check that off. If you love the name but want to decrease the frill, you could go for Annabel Juliet—but I like the way Juliette makes the Julie Jeanette connection clearer. Annabel Juliette, maybe.<\/p>\n

Or I can think of a few more names you could consider as given names if you’d like to use Tilly as a nickname, and I’m hoping the commenters can think of still more. One is Ottilie. I haven’t yet encountered this name in person, and it is full of potential pronunciation\/spelling issues, but it’s a very pretty name; I like the German pronunciation<\/a> which is somewhere between oh-TEEL-ee-ah and ah-TILL-ee-ah. I’m afraid in the U.S. you’d hear a lot of AHT-tih-lee. Spelling it Ottilia\/Otilia (as we do with names such as Anneke\/Annika and Tilde\/Tilda) would help, I’d think.<\/p>\n

Another is Tilden. This name is too new to me for me to have an opinion yet, but I would think it would fit in well with other surname\/location names. But I wonder if it might sound wrong with the surname.<\/p>\n

The third is Natalie. It feels like a stretch to get Tilly from that, but I’ve seen bigger stretches.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Dear Swistle,
\nI wanted to give you an update on our baby girl’s arrival after you posted our question and so many people took time out to respond. I was secretly heartbroken that we wouldn’t be using the name Tilly after loving that name for most of my life. Both my husband and I fell instantly in love when we read your answer and the name Natalie jumped out at both of us as the perfect solution. It became even more special when we learned that the meaning of the name is “Christmas day” when we were both engaged and married at Christmastime. Natalie “Tilly” Juliette was born a week early and we are all in love and adjusting to life with two little ones. Thank you so much for your solution and to everyone who helped!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle, I am currently 20 weeks pregnant and due in September so this question is not urgent by any means but it’s something that has been weighing on my mind ever since we found out I was carrying a girl a few months ago. We currently have an almost 2 year old son named […]<\/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-13398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3u6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13398","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=13398"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13789,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13398\/revisions\/13789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}