{"id":14750,"date":"2020-05-20T09:55:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T13:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14750"},"modified":"2020-06-23T11:11:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T15:11:06","slug":"baby-girl-hyatt-sister-to-perry-jennifer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2020\/05\/20\/baby-girl-hyatt-sister-to-perry-jennifer\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Hyatt, Sister to Perry Jennifer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle:<\/p>\n

I am writing for help with the naming of our second and last baby, a girl who\u2019s due at the end of August. Obviously having a baby right now is full of scary uncertainties, so I have been focusing as much of my attention as possible on the fun things like decorating her room and choosing a name. Unfortunately, the name thing has become less fun!<\/p>\n

Here is our situation. The surname is Hyatt but spelled an alternate way. My husband is Justin and I\u2019m Jennifer (so we are intentionally avoiding J names). We already have a 3-year-old whose name is Perry Jennifer. Perry name is an honor name, it was my husband\u2019s late mother\u2019s maiden name. So for this baby, we want to do something similar, and use a family name from each side, in reverse (a first name from my side, a middle name from his side). For the middle name, we are probably going to use Naomi, which is the name of my husband\u2019s grandmother (and the only living great-grandparent to our kids).<\/p>\n

Here is our problem. For her first name, I want to use my maiden name, which is Lilly. Spelled just like that. I think Perry and Lilly makes for a pretty badass pair. I like the symmetry between the two names. And I think that spelling it \u201cLilly\u201d ties it legitimately to my side of the family, which is traceable for several generations both in the United States and in the UK.<\/p>\n

My husband thinks this spelling is confusing. He likes the idea of honoring my side of the family, but wants to spell it Lily to make it more recognizable. To me, this dilutes all the appeal of the name. There are a million Lilys. My name was often misspelled growing up (my family still experiences this) and I think I would feel resentful of having a daughter called by the most common misspelling.<\/p>\n

We are at gridlock over this. I think we could commit to this being the name, if we could commit to the spelling. I really, really want to talk my husband into my preferred spelling. I think I would be very unhappy with the \u201ccompromise\u201d of using the other spelling, which for me would make it a different name entirely. What do you think? Am I just being a crazy preggo, and unable to see that Lily works fine as an alternative to Lilly? Or does my husband need to give me my way on this since honoring a surname includes honoring its spelling?<\/p>\n

Thank you!!<\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\nJenn<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Perhaps this exercise would be helpful. Your first child’s name is Perry, which was your husband’s mother’s maiden name. Imagine if you had preferred the spelling Perri, and thought it seemed more feminine and less confusing. Does your husband think changing the spelling of that honor name to meet your preference would have been a good compromise? or does he think that would have been a pretty radical change, requiring a more significant justification than mere preference?<\/p>\n

Or what about his own surname: I find the alternate spelling you provided to be less confusing and more recognizable than the actual spelling. What does he think of the idea of using that alternate spelling for his kids’ names, just to make things easier? Would he consider himself to have “gotten his own way” on the spelling of the surname, if you had preferred the other spelling, or would he have considered THE WAY IT WAS ACTUALLY SPELLED to be the default, and anything else to be a pretty radical change requiring a more significant justification than mere preference?<\/p>\n

Sometimes a respelling of an honor name can be appropriate. There have been times I have recommended it, even STRONGLY recommended it. But in this case? In a country where we have managed to deal with Sara and Sarah, Allen and Alan, Anne and Ann, Aidan and Aiden, Elliot and Eliot and Elliott, Philip and Phillip, Scarlet and Scarlett, Miles and Myles, Zoe and Zoey, Allison and Alison, Brian and Bryan, Michele and Michelle, Louis and Lewis, Katherine and Catherine, Sean and Shawn, Steven and Stephen, Margo and Margot, Mark and Marc? We can easily deal with Lily\/Lilly.<\/p>\n

And in fact we have LONG BEEN dealing with Lily\/Lilly. The online Social Security<\/a> information starts in 1900, and both Lily and Lilly were in use then: the spelling Lily was the #292nd most popular name in the United States, and the spelling Lilly was a little more common at #264. The downloadable Social Security information goes back to 1880, and again we see both spellings: the spelling Lily given to 41 new baby girls, and the spelling Lilly to 64 new baby girls. This is not some new thing you made up, or some weird new unfamiliar spelling you’re suggesting: it is an established way to spell the name in this country, and for awhile was the more common spelling.<\/p>\n

If this were not a family name, and the two of you could not decide between Lily or Lilly, I would not be able to come down on one side or the other: I would say it was a matter of personal preference, and that you might have to find another way to come to a decision, such as one parent getting their choice of spelling and the other getting more say in the middle name. But in this case, the name you want to use is not Lily\/Lilly, where each parent has an equal vote about what The Better Spelling is, but rather YOUR FAMILY SURNAME, which IS SPELLED LILLY.<\/p>\n

In short, although I do sometimes think it’s reasonable to change the spelling of an honor name, in this case I don’t see any good reason for it. The spelling Lilly is established and familiar. Honor names from your husband’s side of the family have not had their spellings altered, and his family surname will be used unchanged and for both children. You and your family are the ones being honored with the name Lilly, and you feel very strongly about the spelling, as presumably he and his family feel about the spelling of their own surname. The compromises in this situation are already fully established (honor first name from each side, honor middle from each side) without you adding another concession. He is not suggesting a “compromise,” he is suggesting a radical change that would require a more significant justification than mere preference.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Guess what? He came around! Baby girl will officially be named Lilly. I wish I could say that I convinced him with your excellent points about how we used his surname without modification, but ultimately my husband was swayed by the sheer number of people telling us Lilly IS an established name. We changed the middle name, though–another relative just used Naomi, so our Lilly will be Lilly Miranda in honor of my husbands’ mom (Miranda was her first name). Yes, this means both girls are “splitting” two honor names–mine and their late grandmother’s. We love this! <\/p>\n

Thanks so much for the support!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle: I am writing for help with the naming of our second and last baby, a girl who\u2019s due at the end of August. Obviously having a baby right now is full of scary uncertainties, so I have been focusing as much of my attention as possible on the fun things like decorating her […]<\/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-14750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3PU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14750","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=14750"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14811,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14750\/revisions\/14811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}