{"id":14838,"date":"2020-07-10T10:49:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T14:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=14838"},"modified":"2020-12-09T21:01:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T01:01:53","slug":"baby-girl-radcliffe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2020\/07\/10\/baby-girl-radcliffe\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Radcliffe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello Swistle!<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting our first baby this fall and we just found out it\u2019s a girl! I thought naming a girl would be easy, but I was so wrong! We have a few names on our short list but could use some help with middle names or looking at some names we haven\u2019t considered. I\u2019m not super into honor names, but don\u2019t mind a gentle nod to a loved one. Our last name is similar to Radcliffe and our short list includes: Ivy, Frisco (our favorite place to visit in Colorado), Felicity and Marigold (a nod to my grandmother, Marilyn).<\/p>\n

I am struggling with the middle name. I always thought I would use my middle name which is Elizabeth. It has been in my family for generations and is my husband\u2019s mother\u2019s name. Im not sure sounds that great with any of the names on my list. I am also oddly concerned with the initials… IER doesn\u2019t look that elegant to me. We will likely have 2 kids in total… but seeing how this first one goes before we make that decision :)<\/p>\n

Let me know what you think!<\/p>\n

Expectant mom Radcliffe<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Especially for first-time parents who may wish to have more children, I like to advise starting the naming process by thinking bigger-picture about your overall naming style, and also looking ahead to sibling names. The story everyone here is tired of by now is that when Paul and I were expecting Rob, but didn’t yet know he was a boy, we were very keen on the name Emerson for a girl—but we hadn’t noticed\/realized that Emerson is a strong outlier for our usual naming style (other girl names we like include Elizabeth, Genevieve, Margaret, Josephine, Penelope, Jane, Ivy, etc.), so if we HAD named our first child Emerson, we would have had a huge struggle coming up with sibling names that fit our tastes AND worked well with the name Emerson.<\/p>\n

The name that stands out to me as an outlier on your list is Frisco. Ivy, Felicity, and Marigold are all traditional feminine names with a whimsical\/storybook\/British flair, and they would be lovely together as a little group of sisters; Frisco is a unisex place-name not currently used as a baby name in the United States, and it would sound odd as a sister name for any of the other names on the list. Other issues that stand out to me about the name Frisco: the similarity to the words Crisco and frisk\/frisky, and confusion with the nickname people from San Francisco hate.<\/p>\n

In a different situation, I might suggest Frisco as a middle name: it’s challenging as a first name, but might work great as a fun and meaningful middle name. But never mind that, because really what I want to say is USE ELIZABETH FOR SURE. It’s your own middle name! It’s been in your family for generations! In the long run<\/a> I don’t think any of the concerns you mention are going to be actual concerns, and we just recently did a post<\/a> where it turned out MANY of us regretted not using our own names in our children’s names. Plus, I think it sounds WONDERFUL with all the other names! Ivy Elizabeth! Felicity Elizabeth! Marigold Elizabeth! ALL FABULOUS. But even if it DIDN’T sound so great, I think that’s another concern that melts away with time: it’s so rare to say the whole name together.<\/p>\n

(Depending on how similar your surname is to Radcliffe: if it’s VERY similar, I think if I were you I would remove Ivy from the list, because of Radcliffe’s association with Ivy League schools. If you really, really, really wanted to use Ivy, and it was the only girl name you could agree on, and the main concern you were writing to us about was the Ivy League thing, I would likely say never mind, it’s not that big a deal. But with other good options on your list, it’s an association I’d want to avoid.)<\/p>\n

Anyway. I don’t want to help you find another middle name. I want you to use Elizabeth. I see no room for regretting using it, and I see a LOT of potential for regretting NOT using it. Let’s focus instead on finding you a few more first names to consider.<\/p>\n

Annabel
\nBeatrix
\nCecily
\nClarissa
\nCordelia
\nDahlia
\nEloise
\nFiona
\nFrancesca
\nGenevieve
\nHarriet
\nHenrietta
\nImogen (Midge!)
\nJosephine (Posey!)
\nLouisa
\nMatilda
\nMillicent
\nMinerva
\nOlive
\nPenelope
\nPersephone (Percy!)
\nRosemary
\nWinifred<\/p>\n

Some of these have initials I thought you might not prefer, but I included them anyway because none of them seemed like deal-breakers to me, and I am generally someone who prefers to avoid awkward\/word initials. Part of it is that I was reminded by those recent posts I linked to that I have not thought\/cared really at all about my children’s initials since they were babies. Part of it is that NONE of the initials seem like they come even CLOSE to being important enough to be worth giving up using Elizabeth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hello!<\/p>\n

I have an exciting update! After a lot of thought and help from you and the comments, we just kept coming back to Ivy. Happy to announce that Ivy Elizabeth was born in November : ) Thank you so much for your help and making sure I kept Elizabeth as part of her name. <\/p>\n

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

Hello Swistle! My husband and I are expecting our first baby this fall and we just found out it\u2019s a girl! I thought naming a girl would be easy, but I was so wrong! We have a few names on our short list but could use some help with middle names or looking at some […]<\/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-14838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Rk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14838","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=14838"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15092,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14838\/revisions\/15092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}