{"id":15351,"date":"2021-04-17T10:14:43","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T14:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15351"},"modified":"2021-04-26T15:23:03","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T19:23:03","slug":"baby-girl-or-boy-sibling-to-elliott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/04\/17\/baby-girl-or-boy-sibling-to-elliott\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl or Boy, Sibling to Elliott"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

Hoping you can help us out!<\/p>\n

I am due in 2 weeks with my second baby. I haven\u2019t found out what the baby\u2019s sex will be but am hung up on boy names.<\/p>\n

Baby boy names at the top of the list are Nathan, Finn and Nicholas. Others which we have rejected for one reason or another include Hayes, Henry and William.<\/p>\n

Our last name is of British background with an -er ending, think Cooper.<\/p>\n

If this baby is a girl, she will be Kate or Hazel. I would say our naming style is pretty traditional with perhaps a soft spot for 80s names. We probably will have 2 or 3 children.<\/p>\n

My daughter is named Elliott. If my daughter had been a boy, she would have been named Nathan. A few months after Elliott, my sister had a baby and named him Ethan. With Ethan as our nephew (who we are close with), is it acceptable to name our child Nathan? This is the only factor holding us back. We love the name Nathan and would mainly be calling him Nate.<\/p>\n

Finn feels a bit trendy to me and I love Nicholas but not Nick or Nicky, so am reluctant on it. William got ruled out as it\u2019s the name of my husband\u2019s grandfather and I don\u2019t love the idea of naming baby after anyone. Hayes is a bit trendy and I always thought \u201cHaze\u201d so we nixed it. Henry got the axe as the \u201cr\u201d sound is difficult for me to pronounce in my heritage language so a translation or transliteration of the name or any name with a \u201cr\u201d sound would be hard for me to pronounce in that language. We have ruled out names ending in \u201c-er\u201d due to our last name also ending in \u201c-er\u201d.<\/p>\n

Opinions please on the Nathan and Ethan dilemma plus any other suitable names in the vein of my taste are welcome! Thank you so much for the help.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think it’s totally fine to use the name Nathan. A cousin named Ethan seems like a non-issue to me: the names may have the same ending, but they sound and feel enough different—maybe not enough for siblings, but enough for cousins, even close cousins who spend a lot of time together. And if you would call him Nate, that makes it even less of an issue.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is using the name Nathaniel: you could still call him Nate, but it removes even the tiny worry that matching name endings would be a problem. But I don’t think this is necessary at all: if you prefer Nathan, I think you can go right ahead and use Nathan.<\/p>\n

Other names I wonder if you might like: Benjamin, Calvin, Nolan, Simon, Wesley, Wilson. But it seems to me you’ve already found the winner with Nathan.<\/p>\n

The girl-name options catch my interest: the name Elliott\/Elliot has unisex usage in the United States, and is currently used more often for boys; Kate and Hazel, on the other hand, are used exclusively for girls. [Note: according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, there were 6 new baby boys named Hazel in 2019—but in that same year there were 15 new baby boys named Sophia, 11 new baby boys named Elizabeth, 12 new baby boys named Olivia, and 14 new baby boys named Isabella, and yet it still feels accurate to say that all those names are used exclusively for girls.] If I saw a sibling set of Elliott\/Kate, or Elliott\/Hazel, I would assume brother\/sister. This doesn’t mean I would advise deliberately choosing names you like less than Kate and Hazel, just to match the usage of the name Elliott—but if you WERE looking to expand your list of girl-name options, I might be suggesting names such as Keaton and Darcy and Finley and Hollis and Reese and Teagan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I have time to provide an update and love reading others\u2019 so here we go.<\/p>\n

I wrote you 2 weeks from my due date and was stressing because I was sure 1- I was having a boy and 2- that you may not answer my question before I had the baby.<\/p>\n

Well, thank you for your comprehensive and clear answer and also for all the thoughtful commenters. The insight was so helpful and timely, as I ended up having the baby 6 days before my due date. Reading everything took such a load off.<\/p>\n

The baby was a girl so the Nathan\/Ethan dilemma became irrelevant. We named her Kate, which we know will likely make Nathan obsolete if we have a third and it\u2019s a boy. Given we are unsure about the future of our family, we\u2019re more than ok with this trade off.<\/p>\n

Thank you so much again for your expertise and your help, and for that of the commenters! I so appreciate it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, Hoping you can help us out! I am due in 2 weeks with my second baby. I haven\u2019t found out what the baby\u2019s sex will be but am hung up on boy names. Baby boy names at the top of the list are Nathan, Finn and Nicholas. Others which we have rejected for […]<\/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-15351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3ZB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15351","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=15351"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15377,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15351\/revisions\/15377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}