{"id":15318,"date":"2021-03-25T15:52:24","date_gmt":"2021-03-25T19:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15318"},"modified":"2021-09-07T12:34:22","modified_gmt":"2021-09-07T16:34:22","slug":"baby-girl-pederssen-sister-to-holly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/03\/25\/baby-girl-pederssen-sister-to-holly\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Pederssen, Sister to Holly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

We are having our second baby girl in late August. Our first daughter is named Holly Clare Pederssen (middle + surname spelled differently)<\/p>\n

We are having the classic dilemma of having used our favorite name for our first child and are bummed that we haven\u2019t had the same clarity for this child as we did for the first. I\u2019ve been reading your blog for years, and am a self-proclaimed name nerd. LOVE baby names.<\/p>\n

Before we even conceived we said THE name for a 2nd baby girl would be Mabel Marais. It was done, that was that. Mabel is BOTH of our maternal great grandmothers\u2019 names. Marais is after a city which we are very fond of, plus we think it\u2019s beautiful with almost any first name we can come up with. Marais is 99.9% set in stone as the middle.<\/p>\n

My issue is feeling like there are other options out there. Mabel is beautiful and meaningful to us, but I told my husband it just sounds \u201csticky\u201d in my mouth. I know you know what I mean. Are there any similar names you can recommend that would be fresh to our eyes and ears?<\/p>\n

Some of our (ok my) guidelines have been:
\n-No name ending with Y or IE as I don\u2019t want to repeat the same sound our first daughter has
\n-No name ending in A (this guideline I\u2019m not as \u201cstrict\u201d on) I\u2019d love it to end in really anything other than Y, IE, A, AH
\n-I don\u2019t like names that can be shortened or nicknamed<\/p>\n

I personally believe that our 2nd daughter\u2019s name has the opportunity to make Holly sound certain way when they go together. It could create a more twirly, girly set of sisters (think: Holly and Mirabel) which I\u2019m not so sure I like. For some reason I\u2019m leaning toward a more androgynous sounding name, BUT wanting it to flow with Holly. I am not a fan of sibling sets that don\u2019t make any sense together. And I\u2019m always cognizant of the fact that it would be \u201cHolly and _____,\u201d but someday it could be \u201cHolly, _____, and _____\u201d if we have a third child.<\/p>\n

Here are some names that have been floating around our house:
\n-Payton Marais (initials PMP, ehh?)
\n-Blair Marais
\n\u2026 Ok that\u2019s really it.<\/p>\n

We like both of those but are looking for more to test out with Holly.<\/p>\n

For a boy I was loving the name Baker. (NOT after the football player) Others we loved were Hayes, Gavin + Corbin. We were convinced it was a boy until we found out. So when we learned she is a girl, we kind of went back to our baby girl name drawing board, per se.<\/p>\n

Am I being annoying and should just go with the name we were so confident with before? Is there another name out there that is \u201cthe one?\u201d<\/p>\n

Thank you in advance for your wisdom and advice, Swistle and commenters!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think it’s normal to re-think even a Very Decided name once an actual baby is on the way, and I also think it’s fun: why give up the thrill of the naming process, just because you may already have the right name? It’s especially pleasant, I think, to be able to think about it as much as you want, always knowing that if you get tired of the process, or stressed by it, you can go right back to the plan of Mabel Marais. And if it’s just cold feet, playing around with other names can sometimes help with that.<\/p>\n

I wonder if you would like May instead of Mabel. May Pederssen; Holly and May. Or, and this would be my own preference, you could name her Mabel to get the family honor name, but call her May for as long as Mabel feels odd in your mouth. (I do know what you mean, and also my GUESS is that effect would fade with time\/use.)<\/p>\n

Payton strikes me as a mismatch with Holly. Holly is a name that was moderately common in my generation, while Payton was virtually non-existent; that’s probably part of it. But also: Holly is a nature name currently used only for girls in the U.S., while Payton is a modern surname name with unisex usage (though leaning more toward girls). It immediately hits my ear in this context as a brother name.<\/p>\n

I can better imagine a Holly and a Blair. Even though Blair wasn’t much more common than Payton in my age group, there was a Blair on the TV show The Facts of Life, so it feels like it’s from a similar era. (I feel similarly about Drew and Reese: I didn’t go to school with any girls who had those names, but Reese Witherspoon and Drew Barrymore were on screen and made those names feel familiar and from the right time period.) It’s a little bit of a surprising combination, but not startling, and I think a third name could make a very nice happy assortment later on.<\/p>\n

Holly and Mabel is a surprising combination to me, though SIGNIFICANTLY less so when I hear that Mabel is a family name on both sides. Holly peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, but I don’t remember Mabel coming to my attention as anything but an Old Lady Name until they used it for the baby on the TV show Mad About You in the late 1990s (and it was a startling choice on the show); more recently, it was the name of a quirky character on the TV show Gravity Falls. (Today’s edition of Swistle is apparently TV-themed.) The name Mabel had dropped out of the Top 1000 completely in 1964, and appeared again as a sort of alternative-vintage-revival choice starting in 2013, along with names such as Matilda. It’s currently almost exactly as popular as Holly (according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, in 2019 Holly was #479 and Mabel was #440)—but headed in opposite directions: Holly gradually dropping more and more out of usage while Mabel gradually gains. In another couple of decades, the generation gap may become more apparent—like siblings named Susan and Shannon, or Jessica and Ava.<\/p>\n

It kind of sounds like I’m trying to talk you out of Mabel, and I’m not (I love the name AND I love a double family honor name); this is merely the downside of being CHATTY about baby names. I start looking into it, and typing what I find, and before I know it I’m talking about not-really-equivalent pairs of names (Susan, Shannon, Jessica, and Ava were\/are all much too common to compare to Holly and Mabel, but they came to mind as representative examples of their eras). Holly, while a peer name for me, is not the same as other peer names such as Michelle and Shannon, nor the same as peer names such as Elizabeth and Sarah: while not a timeless name like Elizabeth\/Sarah, it feels much more usable than the quite-tied-to-their-era Michelle\/Shannon. Michelle and Shannon need to wait their turn to come back into style, and Elizabeth and Sarah are always in style, but Holly feels more like, say, Jillian and Veronica: just because they were used back then doesn’t mean they’re not still working great now.<\/p>\n

Holly has a further advantage because it’s a nature name. Nature-type names come in and out of style like any others (Heather and Holly and Amber back then, Violet and Hazel and Ruby WAY back then and also now), but they have a certain permanence because of being Actual Things (and usually Actual Pretty Things). It also potentially gives us a nice way to tie sibling names together. Perhaps you don’t want to catch yourself humming “The holly and the ivy \/ When they are both full grown” day and night (and that’s a bit of a competitive song for siblings anyway), but Holly and Hazel, or Holly and Ruby, or Holly and Violet, have a pleasant little tie-in without being too cute (though it would be a good idea to think ahead to a possible third girl and whether you might feel pressured to go with another nature name).<\/p>\n

So in short, I think those are the areas I’d be starting with if I were you: the Jillian and Veronica names (contemporaries of Holly that still sound great), and the Hazel and Ruby names (contemporary\/vintage choices that fit thematically—especially if the theme is more subtle, as with a name such as Laurel). Well, and then I’d move on to “any other names that seemed like they’d work with Holly,” so this list is a bit of a jumble.<\/p>\n

(Also, you will notice I ignored for the time being the preferences for avoiding names ending in -y\/-ie\/-a and names that could be nicknamed. This is partly in case you are moved to reconsider those preferences in the face of difficulty, and partly to make the list more widely usable by others in a similar naming situation.)<\/p>\n

Abigail\/Abby
\nAnna\/Annie
\nAvril
\nBethany
\nBridget
\nBrynn
\nClaudia
\nCleo
\nDarcy
\nEmily
\nGinny
\nHazel
\nHope
\nJill
\nJillian
\nJocelyn\/Joss
\nJoelle
\nJoy
\nLaine
\nLaura
\nLaurel
\nLynn
\nMallory
\nMaren
\nMelinda
\nMelody
\nMorgan
\nPaige
\nPhoebe
\nRobin
\nRuby
\nSadie
\nShelby
\nSusanna
\nTess
\nVeronica
\nViolet<\/p>\n

The group is going to differ on some of those, of course: one person’s “This name is still beautifully usable!” is another person’s “Wow, that is such a MOM NAME!,” is another person’s “I didn’t even hear that name for the first time until after high school!” It depends a lot on our own personal experiences with the names, and where we grew up, and how old we are, as well as our impressions of the name Holly (Holly Golightly is a very different impression than Holly Hobbie, which in turn is a very different impression than the Hollys I went to school with, who are now mothers of half-\/nearly-\/fully-grown kids).<\/p>\n

But don’t let your eye skip past some of those just because they’re familiar. Lynn, for example: I recently encountered a small child named Lynn and was BLOWN AWAY by it. I hadn’t Truly Seen the name Lynn for DECADES: my eye just went right past it as the filler middle name of maybe a third of the women I know. But as a first name, and NOW! It’s trim and unexpected, familiar yet extremely underused, feminine yet not a bit frilly. Lynn! Lynn!<\/p>\n

Or Robin. I went to school with more than one Robin, but all I have to do is say the name a few times to bring back the bouncy fresh birdlike sound.<\/p>\n

Or Bridget. I only know one Bridget my age, and her name is so much fun for me to say, I have to be careful not to overdo it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hello Swistle,<\/p>\n

This past March, the same evening after I sent you my email request for naming help, we found the name Brynn and it was almost like it had a shining halo above it, saying, \u201cthis is her name.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following day, I read your response on your blog and it felt like fate that you had included it in your list of names to go with Holly.<\/p>\n

Our (ten pound !!!!) Brynn Marais was born last week and we are so happy with our naming decision. Thank you for your input, and we also very much appreciated reading the perspective of fellow name-nerd commenters \u2013 you guys are my people!<\/p>\n

Photos attached of the sisters Holly Clare and Brynn Marais\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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

Dear Swistle, We are having our second baby girl in late August. Our first daughter is named Holly Clare Pederssen (middle + surname spelled differently) We are having the classic dilemma of having used our favorite name for our first child and are bummed that we haven\u2019t had the same clarity for this child as […]<\/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-15318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Z4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318","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=15318"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15557,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15318\/revisions\/15557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}