{"id":13987,"date":"2019-02-08T09:48:35","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T13:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13987"},"modified":"2019-02-08T20:33:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T00:33:55","slug":"middle-name-challenge-james-a________-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2019\/02\/08\/middle-name-challenge-james-a________-thompson\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle Name Challenge: James A________ Thompson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello,
\nMy husband and I are expecting our first child in March. We opted to not find out the gender and have nailed down our girl name, but our boy name, or should I say middle name, is uncertain. My husband’s family has the following naming requirements for first born males; first name is James, middle name must start with “A.” His last name is very common, Thompson.
\nOne of our faves middle names is Anderson, however, I think the duplicate ending “-son” is an issue.
\nThere are not many A male names that we both like other considerations are Austin and Alexander.<\/p>\n

Other things that impact the name, if we have additional children I would like to use a family surname as a first name and thought Anderson is a surname and would be a cool linkage between all names.<\/p>\n

Please dissect away! And thank you for your help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I would love to see your husband’s family’s naming tradition die out. This may be an ill-advised third cup of coffee + a decade of dealing with baby-name letters talking, but how much longer are we going to let men take decisions away from women by claiming “tradition”? How many men would accept a situation in which the woman said the tradition in her family was to use her own surname for the children, plus her own first name, plus a middle name starting with a particular letter? Sorry, honey, I’d love to let you have input on your child’s name, but I can’t: it’s tradition in my family to take that decision away from the fathers.<\/p>\n

Or could we just change ONE of their three requirements, since you can’t find an A- name you like? What if the baby has his father’s family surname AND the first name his father’s family has chosen, but YOU get to choose a middle name AND it doesn’t have to start with an A? Is there no crumb you can be thrown here? Must a tradition be allowed to force you to choose a name you DON’T LIKE for your child? Why is the tradition (which has no feelings and doesn’t care at all if it’s followed or not) being given priority over you?<\/p>\n

Sigh. Fine. Husband and his family will get to choose everything, and we will help find an A- name you don’t hate. I would start by looking in your family tree for A- names and surnames. And at the very, very least, YOU should get the full decision about WHICH A- name to use: you should not have to find an A- name you BOTH like, especially when there are so few of those. I wish your husband had been the one to apologetically suggest that it would help make the situation more fair if you got to choose YOUR favorite middle name from the list he and his family have severely restricted to names beginning with A-; but since he has apparently not done so, I will be the one to suggest it.<\/p>\n

I don’t think there’s any problem with the repeating -son, if Anderson is the middle name, unless the tradition dictates that you will be saying the names a lot—for example, if the boys in the family are known by their middle names, or by first-and-middle. If you use Anderson later as a first name, the -son\/-son issue will be much more apparent.<\/p>\n

I’m sure you’ve pored repeatedly over the A- section of the baby name book, so I doubt we can suggest anything you haven’t already thought of, but sometimes hearing others express enthusiasm for a name can be helpful. If it were me, and if I had been altered in such a way that I was not kicking and screaming but instead was allowing Paul and his family to continue this tradition of hogging the name decision, here are the names I would have on my list:<\/p>\n

James Abraham Thompson
\nJames Achilles Thompson
\nJames Adrian Thompson
\nJames Aidric Thompson
\nJames Aladdin Thompson
\nJames Alan Thompson
\nJames Albert Thompson
\nJames Albus Thompson
\nJames Alcott Thompson
\nJames Alfred Thompson
\nJames Alistair Thompson
\nJames Ambrose Thompson
\nJames Anders Thompson (not if you want to save Anderson)
\nJames Apollo Thompson
\nJames Archer Thompson
\nJames Arlo Thompson
\nJames Arrow Thompson
\nJames Arthur Thompson
\nJames Atticus Thompson
\nJames Avery Thompson<\/p>\n

With a very common first name and a very common surname, I’d be looking for a distinctive middle name. I probably wouldn’t go as far as Achilles or Aladdin, but I’d want to consider them. My guess is that I would end up with Abraham (for Lincoln), Alcott (for Louisa May), Alfred (just really like it), or Arlo (just really like it).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, My husband and I are expecting our first child in March. We opted to not find out the gender and have nailed down our girl name, but our boy name, or should I say middle name, is uncertain. My husband’s family has the following naming requirements for first born males; first name is James, […]<\/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-13987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3DB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13987","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=13987"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13996,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13987\/revisions\/13996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}