{"id":14612,"date":"2020-03-23T09:50:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T13:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14612"},"modified":"2020-10-26T14:25:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T18:25:21","slug":"baby-rhymes-with-fenwick-sibling-to-alice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2020\/03\/23\/baby-rhymes-with-fenwick-sibling-to-alice\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Rhymes-with-Fenwick, Sibling to Alice: Willa Katherine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I am due with my second baby in June. We don’t know the sex, but if it is a girl my husband and I both love the first name Willa. In debating middle names, we’ve somewhat settled on Katherine. However, my question is: Does Willa Katherine sound too much like Willa Cather, the famous author? Does it matter? I know she’s not incredibly well-known today, but I feel like those who know, know, and she’s definitely history’s most famous Willa.<\/p>\n

If the general consensus is yes I would love some other suggestions for a middle name that sounds nice with Willa. I feel like the middle name has to be somewhat sophisticated – for example, I love the middle name June, but Willa June started to sound a little too “down on the farm” for me. I hope that’s ok to say.<\/p>\n

My older daughter’s name is Alice. Our last name rhymes with Fenwick. Would love your opinion and help with other options!<\/p>\n

Best,<\/p>\n

Emily<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

For me, Willa Katherine strongly evokes Willa Cather—enough so that it almost has a jokey\/wordplay sound to me. But I do a lot of reading and I work in a library, so I might not be representative. I wonder if for most people, the association would just make the name sound right, without them knowing why it seemed to go together so well.<\/p>\n

Whether it matters is another topic, and depends on things like whether you think the middle name will be used much, and whether you’d be pleased or annoyed by people mentioning the association to you \/ thinking you did it on purpose \/ thinking you did it accidentally. Do you think you’d want to call her “Willa Katherine,” or do you think you’d always call her Willa and the Katherine part would disappear between the birth announcement and high school graduation?<\/p>\n

If it were me, I would want to find another option–but with regret, because Willa is a little tricky to find a middle name for, and Katherine is such a lovely fit with it.<\/p>\n

Willa Bethany
\nWilla Caroline
\nWilla Celeste
\nWilla Claire
\nWilla Constance
\nWilla Cordelia
\nWilla Eleanor
\nWilla Florence
\nWilla Frances
\nWilla Genevieve
\nWilla Harriet
\nWilla Margaret
\nWilla Noelle
\nWilla Rosalie
\nWilla Violet<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I wanted to give you a name update on the Willa Katherine\/Cather situation – I had a big healthy baby boy! Ha! It was extra exciting because a doctor had referred to the baby as “her” during an ultrasound (after explicitly saying she would use the male pronoun) then apologized, all flustered. So I was certain it was a girl, and the eventual surprise was even more exciting since I have an older daughter. I contacted the doctor afterwards thinking I had read too much into her reaction and she confirmed, no, she got it wrong and thought he WAS a girl! So lots of surprises all around. Oh, and his name is Benjamin James, and he goes by Bennie :). <\/p>\n

Thanks for including my email on the blog! <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle! I am due with my second baby in June. We don’t know the sex, but if it is a girl my husband and I both love the first name Willa. In debating middle names, we’ve somewhat settled on Katherine. However, my question is: Does Willa Katherine sound too much like Willa Cather, the […]<\/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-14612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3NG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14612","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=14612"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14996,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14612\/revisions\/14996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}