{"id":15206,"date":"2021-01-27T11:42:58","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T15:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15206"},"modified":"2021-05-23T16:43:09","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T20:43:09","slug":"baby-naming-issue-how-to-decide-which-preferences-to-let-go-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/01\/27\/baby-naming-issue-how-to-decide-which-preferences-to-let-go-of\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: How To Decide Which Preferences To Let Go Of"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for reading this letter! I\u2019m due with my third and last child in May and am feeling utterly lost in picking a girl\u2019s name! Our last name sounds like Crepsky. I wrote to you<\/a> when I was expecting our second child and of course, you were a huge help!<\/p>\n

My husband and I seem to want to choose names that: 1.) have significance to us (family name or notable person), 2.) are uncommon, 3.) we both like the sound of it, and 4.) can be pronounced easily in Spanish (and French if possible) because of our family backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Our first two children\u2019s names fit all four criteria. Ayrton is named after the Brazilian F1 driver and philanthropist who both my husband and I were big fans of growing up. Elia is named after my husband\u2019s maternal grandmother in Chile. They both have two middle names that honour family or friends.<\/p>\n

There are three frontrunner boy names at this point: Rafael (after the tennis player \u2013 we are huge fans), Matias (after my brother Matthew) and Alvaro (after my husband\u2019s favourite uncle). These names are more common than Ayrton and Elia, but I think any would work well since they hold significance, are easily pronounced in Spanish, and I love the sound of them! Middle names will likely be Christopher and Adam after family members.<\/p>\n

The problem is that we can\u2019t seem to find even one girl\u2019s name we like that fits three or four of our criteria. I\u2019ve been reading your site long enough to pick up on the fact that as you have more children, you may need to relax on certain criteria but I\u2019m having trouble weighing out what to let go of. For middle names we will choose my MIL\u2019s name (Cecilia) and either Marie or my maiden name, Darby.<\/p>\n

Two girls names we\u2019ve considered are Matea (after my brother) or Ximena (after my husband\u2019s aunt). But I don\u2019t love the sound of Matea and I feel that Ximena is so very Spanish that it could be considered in bad taste giving her that name if she doesn\u2019t indeed speak Spanish. Neither of these names feel right.<\/p>\n

Two other names we like so far are Louisa and Alma. Luisa fits the language component but not the other criteria. Alma is uncommon and will work well with Spanish speakers. Still, I don\u2019t love the sound of either of the two names as much as our first two children and neither have any significance or history for us which makes it feel like something big is missing.<\/p>\n

I really like the sound of the name Marie (my mother\u2019s middle name) but it\u2019s neither Spanish-adjacent nor uncommon. I also can\u2019t use the name Maria so that\u2019s out. My husband likes Vera and Matilda but those don\u2019t fit the significance, Spanish-sounding or uncommon criteria!<\/p>\n

Any advice about how to think about these competing variables for a girl\u2019s name \u2013 and what would sound best with the names Ayrton and Elia – would be so appreciated!<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Heather<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obviously none of us will be able to add names that would have personal significance. And while some of us will be able to evaluate whether certain names work in Spanish and French, that’s not an area where I have any knowledge. But the real question here is “How do you figure out which preferences to let go of?” And that’s a question I think all of us can help answer.<\/p>\n

I think for me the answer is to get rid of the preferences that are (1) least important and (2) most responsible for ruling out names I love. Well, but that’s the easy answer, isn’t it? If it were that easy, you wouldn’t be writing. What tends to happen is that the MOST important preferences are the ones ruling out the most names—and that cutting the least important preferences doesn’t help bring enough names back into the running to justify the loss of the preference.<\/p>\n

And so my secondary answer is that modifying preferences to work with naming reality can be really hard to do, and that what I’ve personally found most helpful is to realize I’m making deliberate trades\/choices. That is, it can be tempting to spiral, to think “My preferences rule out all the names except the ones I don’t like!!” and feel completely stuck. It can be calming to remember that I am CHOOSING those preferences and ALLOWING them to rule out names, and that I can UNCHOOSE and UNALLOW at any time. Even if I DON’T unchoose\/unallow, it helps settle me to know I COULD. And it helps me to see it as a TRADE: I am TRADING a degree of name-love, in exchange for getting an honor name; I am TRADING a degree of popularity, in exchange for getting a degree of name-love—or whatever.<\/p>\n

It can also help to remember that it is absolutely fine and normal to have one set of preferences for some children, and change those preferences for other children, and that society at large is not noticing\/caring. Think of all the families that have naming traditions for the firstborn, or for the firstborn and secondborn, but not for subsequent children. Or all the families that want to use ALL honor names, but unfortunately run out of honor names after the first few kids. Or all the families that start with matching initials, but soon run out of names they like.<\/p>\n

Anyway, to get back to my point, what I find useful is realizing that if I want my most important preferences, I may have to TRADE other preferences to get them. (“Trading” a preference feels less dire than “giving up” a preference.) I could easily be wrong, but it sounds to me from your letter that your most important preference is that the name have personal significance to you. To get that preference, you may need to trade a less important preference—for example, that it be a name you love, or that it be a very unusual name, or that it work well in Spanish.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps it will turn out there just aren’t any more girl names of sufficient personal significance to be worth making that trade. Names of Personal Significance isn’t a very flexible category: as with honor names, we each have our own batch of them and we can’t readily add or subtract names—we’re kind of stuck with what we’ve got (and even more so when the names have to have Personal Significance for TWO people). It’s always a little sad when parents would really love to use honor names but run out of them before they run out of babies, but it’s such a very understandable situation and it might be what’s happening here. In that case you might be very sad to let go of that preference, but maybe it’s a preference that’s working against your purpose at this point: i.e., if there are only a couple of Significant Girl Names in the barrel, and both of those names require you to give up ALL your other preferences, then maybe it’s not worth it—even though it may have been your most important preference to begin with.<\/p>\n

It is also possible to RELAX a preference rather than eliminating it. For example, your preference for Very Unusual Names. You mention that Louisa doesn’t meet that preference, but according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, it was the #683rd most popular girl name in the United States in 2019; that makes it a very uncommon name. It’s not as uncommon as Elia or Ayrton, but it’s still Really Quite Uncommon. Vera and Matilda are more common (Vera was #252 and Matilda was #447)—but still Pretty Uncommon. If you could relax that preference from Extremely Uncommon to Quite Uncommon, you could open up a whole new field of options. Or possibly that WON’T work, and the only way to get Quite Uncommon names will be to relax the preference for them to work well in Spanish. It seems likely that the subset of names that work well in English and Spanish might be names that are much more common in your circle than they are nationally.<\/p>\n

Something you have very likely considered already and rejected: could you use your maiden name as a first name instead of as a middle? The name Darby is not currently in the Top 1000 in the United States. Its usage is right between Ayrton and Elia. I don’t know if it meets the language requirements, but perhaps that could be the preference that gets ditched for the third baby, or perhaps she could be called a nickname that works with the other languages. Darby Cecilia Marie Crepsky; Ayrton, Elia, and Darby.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am hoping lots of others will now tell stories of how THEY decided which preferences were most important, which preferences needed to be eliminated, which preferences needed to be relaxed, which preferences were worth trading, etc.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle!
\nExcited to send in my name update. Thank you so much to you and your commenters for all of your\/their input! We had a baby girl on May 16th. Your response freed us from feeling tied to all four of our criteria. We decided to let go of the significance\/family connection criteria and it opened up a new list of possibilities. So, we scanned baby name books, made new lists, and went to the hospital with four possibilities. Once she was here it seemed clear to me which of the four suits her and fits the best with her sibling\u2019s names. Introducing: Amaya Marie Cecilia Crepsky (7lbs13oz).<\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle, Thank you so much for reading this letter! I\u2019m due with my third and last child in May and am feeling utterly lost in picking a girl\u2019s name! Our last name sounds like Crepsky. I wrote to you when I was expecting our second child and of course, you were a huge help! […]<\/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-15206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Xg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15206","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=15206"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15411,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15206\/revisions\/15411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}