{"id":15335,"date":"2021-04-06T09:31:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-06T13:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15335"},"modified":"2021-04-11T09:25:07","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T13:25:07","slug":"baby-girl-shays-potter-sister-to-innis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/04\/06\/baby-girl-shays-potter-sister-to-innis\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Shays-Potter, Sister to Innis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wise Swistle,
\nWe would love your help deciding on a name for our daughter who is now 8 days old and still nameless. We have narrowed it down to our top two options but just cannot choose. I know it\u2019s very short notice but even if you haven\u2019t got time to answer I\u2019d love it if you just posted our question to hear what your commenters think as everyone always has great ideas here!<\/p>\n

We have a son called Innis (spelt differently but pronounced like that), which is a Scottish name that means river island. We are English\/French (me) and Scottish (my wife). We deliberately chose a Scottish name for our son as I carried him and we wanted the connection to my wife\u2019s family but that\u2019s not a requirement this time. Baby\u2019s surname will be double barrelled and sounds like Shays-Potter (initials C-P). Middle names will be after our grandmothers and we don\u2019t mind about the overall flow, we just want to pick the first name based on its own merits.<\/p>\n

Our top two options are Sorrel and Tarn. Sorrel is my absolute favourite name and I love the idea of a plant name for a baby born on the first day of spring. My wife also really likes it but is worried it sounds like sorrow, especially in her accent, and she finds it slightly hard to say. Tarn is her preferred option, and is more meaningful for us as a family. The word tarn is used in Scotland\/northern England for a mountain lake, and we like the water connection with her brother\u2019s name and the wild\/outdoorsy feel as we are keen hikers and lovers of nature. Tarn is also a river and area in France where we went on our first holiday together, so has a joint Scottish-French connection as well as nice memories for us. I do love it but am worried it\u2019s too short (all the names I love are at least two syllables, even though I do love Tarn I feel somehow that it\u2019s not \u2018me\u2019 if that makes sense) and not namelike enough. Is it too out there?<\/p>\n

Sorrel is the name of my heart that I would be devastated to let go of but I don\u2019t want to use it and for my wife to regret it so I\u2019m leaning towards Tarn. She in turn is leaning towards Sorrel because she thinks (probably accurately) that I love it more than she loves Tarn (which was originally my suggestion) and she doesn\u2019t want me to regret not using Sorrel. So we are at stalemate! We are planning on having one more baby after this so could save either but obviously can\u2019t guarantee it would be a girl. If this baby had been a boy (we didn\u2019t find out until she was born) we would have used Guthrie.<\/p>\n

Sorrel is currently 4001st in the name ranking for England, Tarn has been registered a few times for boys but never for girls. Innis\u2019s name is 3411th in England but 83rd in Scotland. (If you\u2019re interested you can track name rankings for England and Wales at names.darkgreener.com).<\/p>\n

Other options we\u2019ve recently eliminated but could reinstate if we can\u2019t agree between Sorrel and Tarn: Delphi, Petra, Odette, Vesper.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve reached a point where we feel stuck in our own echo chamber and just really want outside opinions on how these names come across to other people!<\/p>\n

Thanks so much,
\nIzzy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

If I put it through the “Which name would I want for myself?” test, I choose Sorrel. Tarn to me sounds almost indistinguishable from the word darn, and reminds me of the words tarnish and torn; sorrel doesn’t sound like the word sorrow the way I say it. Sorrel sounds somewhat name-like, even though it is not currently used as a name in the U.S., because it sounds like Laurel and Coral and the surname Norrell; I can’t think of similar names to bring Tarn into the name realm. But these are United States English impressions of the names, which may not apply.<\/p>\n

I know she’s already 8 days old, so this suggestion could feel like too large a step back, but I do think it might actually help to kick out both Sorrel and Tarn, especially if we’re at the point where both of you feel like you can’t even use your own first choice because of how it would make the other parent feel.<\/p>\n

Just yesterday we covered Our Favorite Names Starting with D<\/a>, so Delphi from your list catches my eye, though I’d make it Delphine. Odette would be my next pick: unusual but familiar.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Thanks so much for posting our question! Just wanted to let you know we decided to go for Sorrel. All the positive comments helped my wife feel more sure about it. We\u2019re still saving Tarn for a future daughter though despite nobody seeming to like it! It was actually quite reassuring to see how many of the problems people had with it were specific to an American accent\/background (e.g. I\u2019ve never heard of the word tarnation). We have a few more years to psyche ourselves up anyway! For now we love Sorrel\u2019s name, she is our hopeful little springtime sprout. Thank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wise Swistle, We would love your help deciding on a name for our daughter who is now 8 days old and still nameless. We have narrowed it down to our top two options but just cannot choose. I know it\u2019s very short notice but even if you haven\u2019t got time to answer I\u2019d love it […]<\/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-15335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3Zl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335","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=15335"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15339,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15335\/revisions\/15339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}