{"id":15218,"date":"2021-01-28T11:41:13","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T15:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15218"},"modified":"2021-05-17T12:22:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T16:22:50","slug":"baby-boy-boat-with-an-f-sibling-to-millie-and-howard-howie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/01\/28\/baby-boy-boat-with-an-f-sibling-to-millie-and-howard-howie\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Boat-with-an-F, Sibling to Millie and Howard (Howie)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting our third child, a boy, at the end of May 2021. We already have a daughter Millie Jean (middle name after my grandmother) and Howard Gorman (named after both my husband\u2019s grandfathers).<\/p>\n

Our last names sounds like \u201cBoat\u201d but with an F.<\/p>\n

I am having a difficult time coming up with a name for this little guy. I feel like I used all the good names with my other children!<\/p>\n

To add to the issue, my husband has rejected everything so far. The only name he has liked is \u201cCody\u201d which while has the E sound like Millie and Howie feels too 90\u2019s for what I consider the more classic\/vintage names of Millie and Howard. I don\u2019t dislike it but it feels like there are better options.<\/p>\n

Names we\u2019ve considered (and have been rejected by my husband):<\/p>\n

Thomas
\nRobert (my husband\u2019s middle name)
\nSamuel
\nBennett
\nWesley<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve ran through all the male family names and I don\u2019t know that there is anything particularly good that we could use except possibly Gregory after my husband\u2019s father.<\/p>\n

Are there names similar to Cody that might work?<\/p>\n

Help and thank you in advance!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obviously there are no rules that sibling names must go together in any way, and there are many good reasons to do otherwise. But the name Cody is a STARTLING CLASH with Howard. If you had just Millie, it would be fine: Millie is more vintage\/antique revival while Cody is 1990s Live with Regis and Kathie Lee—but it’s not uncommon for parents to have different naming styles for boys and girls, so it could work just fine. But once you went with Howard\/Howie, in my opinion Cody went out of the running.<\/p>\n

(Again, there are no rules, and we COULD make it work if the circumstances were right. Let’s say you had felt forced to use the name Howard for your first son because of a family tradition on your husband’s side of the family. And let’s say that as part of that deal, you very reasonably negotiated Full Naming Rights for the next child; and your long-time favorite name, also the name of your dear brother, was Cody, and you were writing because you were anxious now that that represented a startling style clash. Well, in that case I would say ABSOLUTELY Howie and Cody could work just GREAT together, and that it was good there was such a nice easy explanation ((“Family naming tradition!”)) for the startling clash of Howard and Cody.)<\/p>\n

I do have one way to save Cody, if you want it, and that is for you to use it as a nickname for a name similar to Howard. I’m not really seeing any names-similar-to-Howard that would work with the nickname Cody, but on the other hand I tend to be (1) picky about what counts as a nickname for what and (2) not good at coming up with creative nicknames (others have come up with Bix for Beatrix and Jet for Juliet and Cole for Nicholas, and I would never have come up with any of those). So perhaps some commenters can use their skills here. And perhaps you have a family name with good strong C and D sounds in it that you initially passed over but it would click into place with this idea.<\/p>\n

But I don’t actually suggest trying to save Cody, or for us to all spend a lot of time trying to find a name similar to Cody that your husband might consider accepting as a Cody substitute. Instead I suggest that the next step in this process is for you to take a break from your role of coming up with names, and your husband take a break from his role of rejecting all your ideas, and instead the two of you switch jobs for awhile: HE does the work and research involved with coming up with a list of names he likes and is willing to use for this baby, and YOU evaluate his choices. A role swap can be very clarifying for some couples.<\/p>\n

This might also be a good moment in the process for the two of you to take a look at the balance of family names so far. There is no reason family\/honor names MUST balance out, and in fact in many cases and for many good\/valid reasons they DON’T balance. But I still feel it is good to check in, just to see how things are going, especially in situations where the parents are having trouble agreeing and it might help to know whose turn it is to have their wishes honored. Is your household’s surname from your husband’s family? And then your son has first and middle names after your husband’s family. And your daughter has, as her middle name, one name from your family. Okay! So I would certainly recommend a good search of YOUR side of the family tree before choosing names for this baby! But if that has already been done, and there are no names left that you want to use, then I think we should lean a little more toward your name preferences this time around—and especially if there WERE family names you liked from your side but that your husband dismissed.<\/p>\n

The whole time I was writing the above, I was ITCHING to get started on a list of names that would work with Howard. (And with Millie, too, but I am more concerned about “brother names” or “sister names,” less concerned about brother\/sister names—because of the aforementioned normality of style differences.) Because Howard is a family name, I don’t think names MUST go with it, and I think everything on your name idea list works, with the possible exception of Bennett—which has more of a surname-name crisp preppy contemporary sound to me and doesn’t seem like it works as well with Howard’s warm vintage coffee-and-doughnut-in-a-diner appeal. …I lost track of that sentence somewhere. What I was saying was that because Howard is a family name, I don’t think future sibling names MUST be the same style, and I think your name list works well for names of an adjacent\/compatible style. But it feels much more fun to come up with names of the same style and time period—and I think that, unlike with the name Cody, you’re going to end up feeling extremely Cutting Edge when all these names start coming back into fashion.<\/p>\n

According to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, which has online records starting in 1900 (downloadable starting in 1880), the name Howard was nicely popular in the early-to-mid 1900s: it was Top 50 when the ranked records began in 1990, and stayed there until 1943. So what I’m going to do is check in with the Top 50 in 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940, and see what little Howard’s friends and classmates would have been named back then. In addition to the ever-popular James\/John\/William\/Charles\/Thomas, we have:<\/p>\n

Albert
\nAlfred
\nArthur
\nBernard
\nCarl
\nClarence
\nEarnest
\nEdward (repeats ending of Howard)
\nFrancis (Frank)
\nFrank
\nFred
\nGeorge
\nLawrence
\nLouis
\nOscar
\nRalph
\nRoger
\nStanley (repeats ending of Millie)
\nWarren<\/p>\n

The way my heart flutters at a number of those, while I simultaneously think “Oh, but I don’t know, is it too…Old Man?” is what makes me think these names are NEARLY RIPE and will soon be back in our midst. Think of all the pets that people named Jack and Sam and Max right before those names stopped being Old Man and started being Extremely Preschool. NEXT UP: Alfred and Louis and Stanley!<\/p>\n

I was going to say which names I had particular soft spots for, but it would be quicker to say which ones I don’t like as much (I am not going to do that). I will pick JUST A FEW. I have had a soft spot for Roger ever since hearing that an old-timey nickname for it was Hodge. HODGE. I have a soft spot for Warren not only for political reasons<\/a> but because of a long-time family friend who was good-natured and warm and kind. George and Louis and Frederick and Franklin are all already on my own boy-name list, and Albert and Alfred are names I probably wouldn’t use in my own family’s sibling set but feel very warmly toward and would like to see used more. I have a soft spot for Clarence because of the book Life with Father by Clarence Day, which I got in a $3\/bag library book sale and have read many many times since then. I gave up awhile ago trying to push people into using the name Carl\/Karl, but I still think it’s a great underused name. I have a soft spot for Earnest, one of the few male names that can be considered a Virtue Name. I’ve had a soft spot for Edward ever since I started using it as a blog pseudonym for one of my kids.<\/p>\n

I suggest taking another look in your family tree to see if you can find any of these warm, endearing names that might look a whole lot fresher on a sweet little baby with older siblings named Millie and Howie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I wanted to share a name update with you. I thoroughly enjoyed your response to my question and I loved the reader suggestions in the reply. <\/p>\n

I will say that after reading your response, I was able to get my husband to move on from the name Cody (LOL). <\/p>\n

So, our little guy arrived a couple of weeks early. My husband and I had somewhat of a short list of names but nothing was really standing out to either of us so at the time of birth we were nameless (which was also the case with our other children so nothing new and I wasn\u2019t stressed). I had taken a liking to Henry but felt it was more popular of a name than I wanted to use. <\/p>\n

After he arrived and spending some time, we decided on…<\/p>\n

Walter Gregory<\/p>\n

He is just precious. He completes our family and our trifecta of old people baby names!<\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle! My husband and I are expecting our third child, a boy, at the end of May 2021. We already have a daughter Millie Jean (middle name after my grandmother) and Howard Gorman (named after both my husband\u2019s grandfathers). Our last names sounds like \u201cBoat\u201d but with an F. I am having a difficult […]<\/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-15218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Xs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218","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=15218"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15399,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15218\/revisions\/15399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}