{"id":13949,"date":"2019-01-10T08:59:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T12:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13949"},"modified":"2019-01-10T06:59:45","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T10:59:45","slug":"baby-girl-lennix-sister-to-jne-janie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2019\/01\/10\/baby-girl-lennix-sister-to-jne-janie\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Lennix, Sister to J@ne (Janie)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

We are expecting a baby girl in March, this will be our second daughter and we plan on our last child. Our first daughter\u2019s name came much easier, J@ne Calist@. Although until I was in labor, we had thought we would name her Calista Jane, but decided at the last minute we preferred the nickname Janie, which she has been known by ever since. Both names are family names, we don\u2019t currently feel like we have a name in the running that is a family name which we feel some guilt about the people our first were named for made them natural choices for us. For family names we have thrown around Evelyn (too popular), Loretta (don\u2019t love), Tomi as a first (i know the horror but we have many generations of Thomas) and a few others that haven\u2019t quite fit the bill. We like strong names for girls that have good nickname options, we like that you don\u2019t hear Jane often in her generation but people seem pleasantly surprised to meet a young Janie.
\nOur last name is Lennix spelled differently. For a middle name we are thinking either Adare or Clare (Clare is a family name as well but we would not use in the first name spot). Our top names in contention right now are: Elowen, Elin\/Ellen, Willa or Ryan (clearly we don\u2019t steer away from gender neutral names).
\nOther names we have thrown out for one reason or another: Caroline, Josephine, Hadley, Fiona, Louise\/Louisa. For a boy we had chosen Rhett.
\nPlease help and best,
\nClare<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I feel as if I’ve been suggesting this name a lot lately, but letters\/issues\/inclinations\/favorites sometimes come in waves and so here I am again suggesting Rose. J@ne and Rose. Janie and Rosie. Rose Adare Lennix.<\/p>\n

I wanted so badly to suggest Lynn: it has that surprising sound on a current child, plus the adorable nickname Lynnie—but I think it shares too many sounds with the surname, and Lynnie Lennix makes me think of Annie Lenn0x (not a negative per se, but I prefer to avoid that “Now where have I heard that before?” feeling), and so I suppose I withdraw the suggestion. Unless you like it. And Lynn Lennix would be a distinctive and memorable name with the repeated L- AND repeated -nn-, which could be fun. I do enjoy running into that kind of name from time to time.<\/p>\n

I would consider the name Tomi to be a loaded political choice right now. The jump from Thomas to Tomi is not an easy natural common one, and using the honor name Thomas for a girl feels unnecessary, and so the entire choice of Tomi feels as if it must have been done very deliberately in order to evoke the association. In an earlier draft of this post I went on to say that if the association was positive one for you, then go ahead: after all, I am strongly in favor of using names such as Ruth (Bader Ginsburg) and Sally (Yates). After proof-reading, I realized I don’t agree with that earlier draft: names equivalent to Ruth\/Sally are names such as Sandra (Day O’Connor) and Peggy (Noonan). The names of people stirring up controversy for entertainment value are not in the same league.<\/p>\n

Even without the association, I would recommend Thomasina over Tomi. “Tomi” seems to say that a strong traditional classic family name needs to be pared down and made cute and light before it can be given to a girl, which sends a message I would want to avoid. (Instead of reducing a male family name to make it work for a girl, I would search the family tree for a strong traditional classic female name.) Thomasina has the strength and weight of Thomas, and the cute\/light versions can be given as nicknames. I would still avoid Tomi, and would go with Tommie or Mina—or I see The Baby Name Wizard<\/a> mentions Tamsin, which is cute.<\/p>\n

Parents are all over the spectrum about sibling-name compatibility: some prefer strong compatibility, some just prefer them not to clash\/rhyme, and some deliberately avoid compatibility. I am more toward the end of favoring compatibility, and so I would not pair J@ne with Ryan. J@ne is classic, traditional, used in the U.S. all but exclusively for girls; Ryan is a unisex surname name used in the U.S. much more often for boys. Used together, they are a little awkward as a sister\/brother pairing—but many parents have different naming styles for girls than for boys, so it wouldn’t be startling. As names for two sisters, they are a little startling.<\/p>\n

I like Willa and Ellen a lot with J@ne. Each is a lot of L with the surname, but not at deal-breaking levels. (I wanted to suggest Alice, but Alice Lennix takes an extra-L situation and raises it with a -ce\/L- slide problem.) Ellen has the nickname Ellie, which could pull it ahead of Willa for me; I can’t think of a nickname I like for Willa. What I might do with the name Willa is use the middle name to create a nickname: J@ne Calista and Willa Josephine; Janie and Willa Jo—something like that. Or I might go with the long form Willamina, with the nickname Willa (or Mina).<\/p>\n

With Loretta in your family name list, and Rhett chosen for a boy, I wonder if you would like Etta for a girl.<\/p>\n

One of my mother’s favorite names is Evelyn, but pronounced like the name Eve followed by the name Lynn (she would not try to get this to fly in the United States). But I wonder if you would like the honor name Evelyn better if you split it like that into a first\/middle: Eve Lynn Lennix. It’s a little awkward to say the full name, but it’s so rare to say the full name. Eve Lennix; J@ne and Eve; Janie and Evie.<\/p>\n

More suggestions:<\/p>\n

Audrey
\nCelia
\nClaudia (I might do a C._. nickname with the middle initial, as on The West Wing)
\nCora
\nElizabeth (Bessie, Betsy, Libby, etc.)
\nFlora (Florrie)
\nFrances (Frannie\/Francie\/Frankie)
\nGrace (Gracie)
\nHarriet (Etta\/Ettie)
\nHope
\nIvy
\nMargaret (Maisie, Maggie, Daisy, Margo, Greta, etc.)
\nMeredith (Merrie)
\nMolly (or Mary with the nickname of Molly)
\nNadia
\nPolly (or Mary with the nickname of Polly)
\nRuby
\nSabrina
\nSally (or Sarah with the nickname of Sally\/Sadie)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, We are expecting a baby girl in March, this will be our second daughter and we plan on our last child. Our first daughter\u2019s name came much easier, J@ne Calist@. Although until I was in labor, we had thought we would name her Calista Jane, but decided at the last minute we preferred […]<\/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-13949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3CZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949","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=13949"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13957,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949\/revisions\/13957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}