{"id":14183,"date":"2019-05-24T09:41:56","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T13:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14183"},"modified":"2019-05-24T10:49:31","modified_gmt":"2019-05-24T14:49:31","slug":"alliterative-baby-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2019\/05\/24\/alliterative-baby-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Alliterative Baby Names"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I love your blog and would love your thoughts on alliterative names. My last name is Milk but starts with a W. I love the names Winnie and Willa, and even Wendy, but am really hesitant that they\u2019re too much with the last name. (I don\u2019t really like Gwendolyn or Wilhelmina.) Do you have any thoughts on this? So curious what you think!<\/p>\n

Thanks!
\nMargot<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alliteration is one of those subjective topics where on one end of the spectrum we have people who avoid even a hint of it, and on the other end of the spectrum we have people REVELING in it. There are a few kids in our school system with names similar to Jason Johnson and Lauren Lemon, and I’ve got to say I get a little thrill from the sheer flair of names like that, even though I myself am more toward the avoidant end of the alliteration spectrum.<\/p>\n

In fact, I’d say I generally admire alliteration in other people’s names, which makes it harder to explain why I didn’t want it with any of my own kids’ names. I didn’t make a deliberate rule that I WOULDN’T use any names starting with the same letter as our surname, but I found I ruled them all out anyway.<\/p>\n

I do think alliteration brings extra attention to a name, and exponentially so if the first name or the surname are at all whimsical (the Lemon of Lauren Lemon), or if there is more repetition than just the first initial (the -son of Jason Johnson). Your surname strikes me as just slightly whimsical, and it has only one strong consonant sound. When combined with a repeating Wi-, or even more so with a repeating Wil-, the whimsy is increased and more attention is attracted. And the soft Wil- sound blends very easily, especially for first names that end in a vowel and don’t have many hard consonants, making one word out of two names (WillawiIk, WinniwiIk) [I used a capital i instead of a lowercase L in the surname].<\/p>\n

And so Willa with your surname does seem like Too Much to me: it fails the “Would I want to introduce myself with this name?” test, and it fails it hard. I don’t even want to say the name out loud if I don’t have to. I would not want to introduce myself as Winnie with the surname, either (though I would pick it over Willa, if I had to choose one), but the similar name Winifred would pass my test: three syllables, some nice strong consonants, and better first\/last name separation all combine to make it fall on my own personal subjective side of this line.<\/p>\n

To continue with my own subjective division, here are more W-names I would NOT put with your surname, at least on first pass: Willow, William, Will, Wilma, Wallace, Wynn, Willis, Walker, Wendell. But here are some I think would\/could work for someone who likes alliteration: Whitney, Whitman, Wyatt, Wilder, Warren, Waverly, Walton, Wesley, Westley, Weston, Winston, Walter. Different people are going to sort those differently, of course, and, even in the “would\/could work” section we’ll have all different cut-offs for where “pleasingly alliterative” turns into “VERY ALLITERATIVE INDEED.”<\/p>\n

I would test potential combinations by saying them aloud and listening to others saying them aloud, and putting each one through the “Would I want to introduce myself with this name?” test. I would also make extra sure to test the combinations WITHOUT a middle name: the middle name isn’t usually present, so testing out, for example, Milly Elizabeth Milk can mask how alliterative the first\/last are together. I’d also think ahead of time about whether the alliteration is distinctive enough to make you feel pressured to do something similar with the names of subsequent children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! I love your blog and would love your thoughts on alliterative names. My last name is Milk but starts with a W. I love the names Winnie and Willa, and even Wendy, but am really hesitant that they\u2019re too much with the last name. (I don\u2019t really like Gwendolyn or Wilhelmina.) Do you […]<\/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-14183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3GL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14183","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=14183"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14188,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14183\/revisions\/14188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}