{"id":14674,"date":"2020-04-17T09:16:20","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T13:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14674"},"modified":"2020-07-31T12:25:43","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T16:25:43","slug":"baby-girl-or-boy-r0ss-smn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2020\/04\/17\/baby-girl-or-boy-r0ss-smn\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl or Boy R0ss S@m@@n"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swistle:
\nI had a plan: I was going to go into labor, meet this baby, and pick out a name once we could look it in the eye. Then, social isolation madness hit my husband, and he has spent the last two weeks of coming up with name lists, brackets, rankings, reading multiple name books cover-to-cover, and worrying that we don’t a plan. For the sake of household sanity, could you and your readers weigh in and save us from each other?<\/p>\n

This is baby #1 (and probably only), and is due first week of June. Baby is of surprise sex.<\/p>\n

The challenge(s):
\n1) I’m Hispanic-Irish, my husband is Arab. This baby will be raised in a tri-lingual home, and will have immediate family who only speak Spanish or Arabic. I have a classic Irish name (Caitlin), but most of my life have gone by Catalina (the Spanish translation); or the nicknames Cate\/Cati (CAH-tea). It doesn’t drive me crazy, but I’d rather give my kid ONE name that they could use with their whole family, if possible.
\n2) Baby will get a double-barrel last name- R0ss S@m@@n.
\n3) We have a strong preference for non-Bibilical\/Torah\/Quran names, as we’re both non-religious people in very religious families.
\n4) Middle names aren’t a thing in his family\/culture, and I am already overwhelmed picking a first name, so options we’re leaning toward are “none” or “my favorite nurse during the delivery” or joke noun like “Trouble\/Danger\/Adventure”.<\/p>\n

Girl name we both like:
\nCora: neither of us is CRAZY about this name, but we’re both happy with it as the overwhelming frontrunner for a girl.<\/p>\n

Also on his list:
\nAmani
\nLeila
\nLinnea
\nLucy
\nNorah
\nWilla
\nYasmin<\/p>\n

Also on my list:
\nXiomara: CEE-oh-mah-rah (This doesn’t really work in English or in Arabic, or with our last names, but it’s my favorite name of all time.)
\nRuth<\/p>\n

Boy names we both like:
\n??<\/p>\n

On his list:
\nAmir
\nTariq
\nTheo<\/p>\n

On my list:
\nCalvin
\nOscar<\/p>\n

I am definitely the person in this naming partnership who keeps shooting down ideas, so if I’m being ridiculous, feel free to tell me.
\nThanks for any guidance you can throw our way-
\nCate and Khaled<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I almost didn’t answer this one, because it seems too easy for a girl, and too difficult for a boy (I don’t know how names would be pronounced in Spanish\/Arabic). But I kept seeing it in the spreadsheet and at least wanting to do the easy part.<\/p>\n

If the baby is a girl, the baby’s name is Cora Xiomara R0ss S@m@@n. You both agree on Cora, so I will assume it meets all the requirements about sounding right in the applicable languages. And it’s a great name, and you’re both happy with it. Then, it sounds like your husband doesn’t have any investment\/interest in the middle name, and your favorite name of all time can’t be a contender for the first name, so let’s put it as the middle name so you can enjoy it there. I think you would be very happy every time you filled out a form for her, and X. is an extremely cool middle initial.<\/p>\n

From your boy name lists, my favorites are Theo from his and Calvin from yours. I’m not crazy about how Oscar blends with the surname: the -r\/R- issue plus the Os-\/-0ss\/S@- issue, but that sort of thing can be very subjective.<\/p>\n

I assume since they’re on your lists that Theo and Calvin both meet the no-Bibilical\/Torah\/Quran requirement, but just in case it is important, I want to point out that name elements such as theo\/thea\/teo\/tea are commonly considered to mean “God” (Theodore and Dorothea and Matteo and even Matthew are all considered to mean “gift from God”); and certain religious denominations would make an immediate leap from Calvin to John Calvin and Calvinism. I don’t think this should rule either name out: I am not a fan of name “meanings” beyond the pure fun aspect of it, and I didn’t know who John Calvin was until I was in college fulfilling my religious-studies course requirement. I still think Calvin & Hobbes and Calvin Klein long before I think of John Calvin, and would never assume a Calvin was named for John Calvin. But these things fall for me into the “not in any way a dealbreaker, but I would still like to have thought of them beforehand” category.<\/p>\n

I think your husband’s girl-name list shows more potential for compromise than yours, and so if the two of you don’t want to follow my bossy instruction to use Cora Xiomara, I wonder if you might experiment with leaning toward your husband’s list if the baby is a girl, and toward your list if the baby is a boy. Are there names on your husband’s girl-name list that you could fall for, if you played the “What if I HAD to choose one of them?” game? Could he feel content with the name Calvin, if the baby were a boy?<\/p>\n

I also wondered just briefly if you might want use R0ss as a first name for a boy. I think it is so fun when one parent’s surname works as a first name. But I hate to give up the double surname. I think I like the surname-as-first-name option better in cases where otherwise one parent’s surname would not be a significant part of the child’s name.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Swistle:
\nOne of your commenters suggested the name “Samir” and my husband looked at me and said “That’s it, that’s the name”.
\nSamir Felix R0ss S@m@@n arrived on his due date, and has been an extraordinarily calm baby since.
\nThank you ladies- your conversation was really helpful, and found us a perfect name for our boy: a name from his Arab heritage, easy to pronounce in Spanish, got an easy Anglo nickname if he wants it, and we can call him Sami while he’s little and squishy. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Swistle: I had a plan: I was going to go into labor, meet this baby, and pick out a name once we could look it in the eye. Then, social isolation madness hit my husband, and he has spent the last two weeks of coming up with name lists, brackets, rankings, reading multiple name books […]<\/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-14674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3OG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14674","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=14674"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14873,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14674\/revisions\/14873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}