{"id":15508,"date":"2021-07-14T11:18:43","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T15:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15508"},"modified":"2021-07-14T11:18:43","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T15:18:43","slug":"baby-girl-or-boy-cmero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/07\/14\/baby-girl-or-boy-cmero\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl or Boy C@mero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read your blog for YEARS and now find myself needing your assistance. We are due in November with our first baby and are not finding out gender. We are very set on a boy\u2019s name (Samuel) and should have no issues with a middle name.<\/p>\n

We are STUCK on girl\u2019s names. Our top two favorite names are Emilia and Everly (both E names completely unintended). We think for this first girl we are leaning with Emilia. We originally were going for Amelia but changed to the Emilia spelling for the nickname option of Emi, which we love. So first question: will Emilia have to go through her life spelling her name over and over? Are we making a mistake choosing Emilia over Amelia?<\/p>\n

Our second (and biggest) problem is middle names. We actually really love boy names on girls but want to stick with a traditional girls name for first name and possibly a boy-ish name for middle name. However, are having a truly difficult time finding one that flows well with Emilia. So far we have come up with:<\/p>\n

Emilia Logan (current front runner)
\nEmilia Parker
\nEmilia Ryan (we know some Ryan\u2019s, so iffy on this)
\nEmilia James
\nEmilia Evan (not sure we love the double E\u2019s)
\nEmilia Riley<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve said these names aloud so many times that they\u2019re all starting to sound the same and like none of them flow well. Can you and your readers give us some insight or suggestions? Should we give up the desire for a boy name?<\/p>\n

We definitely plan for more kids, hopefully no more than 2 girls because really the only other girl name we have is Everly. We would probably do the same naming style for her if we can get Emilia to work.<\/p>\n

Please help give this kid a name! :)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yes, a girl named Emilia will have to spell her name over and over. But my name is Kristen and I have to spell it over and over, and it’s no big deal: some names just have more than one spelling, and it gets to be a habit to clarify: “My first name is Kristen: K<\/strong>-r-i-s-t-E<\/strong>-n.” It helps that the popularity of Em- names has made the Emilia spelling significantly more common in recent years: it spent decades not even in the Top 1000, but as of 2020 is the 40th most popular girl name in the United States (the spelling Amelia is #6). And if she uses the nickname Emi, that too will help guide people’s minds to the correct spelling.<\/p>\n

I am not personally a fan of the trend of giving girls names-currently-used-more-often-for-boys as middle names, primarily because it annoys me that the trend does not go the other way: we are not hearing of a similar edgy trend of baby boys being given middle names such as Jane and Rose. (If the middle name candidates for Samuel include such names, then I withdraw my complaint.) But my own preferences are irrelevant for any babies not my own, and I think the middle name position is a terrific place for names you’d like to use as first names but have decided not to for one reason or another. I don’t see any particular flow issues with Emilia + any of the middle names you list: I think they all work well. I tripped a little bit over Emilia Parker C@mero—but the three names will hardly ever be said together, so that feels like a non-issue. One thing to watch out for: making sure you don’t accidentally use any names you may wish to use for future boys (or names that would rule out other names for you, if your preference is to avoid even similar names).<\/p>\n

As far as I know, there is no way to find out usage information on middle names—but based solely on what people mention in their letters to this site, I can tell you that James seems to be far and away the most common of the names-currently-used-more-often-for-boys chosen as a middle name for girls. This could be a plus or a minus, depending on what you’re looking for.<\/p>\n

If it helps, we can also look at the 2020 usage of these options as FIRST names in the U.S.<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Logan: 992 F, 9086 M
\nParker: 2121 F, 3797 M
\nRyan: 678 F, 5286 M
\nJames: 63 F, 12250 M
\nEvan: 87 F, 3389 M
\nRiley: 5309 F, 1350 M<\/p>\n

From this we can see that the name James is currently the most used-more-often-for-boys of the options, usage-wise: 12,250 new baby boys named James in 2020, and only 63 new baby girls. The name Riley, in contrast, is currently used more often for girls than for boys—and the numbers above don’t even take into account all the other spellings (another 2,677 new baby girls and 127 new baby boys named Rylee; another 1,742 new baby girls and 15 new baby boys named Ryleigh; etc.).<\/p>\n

If Emilia Logan is your front-runner, I don’t see any reason not to go with that, or any reason to choose a different name instead.<\/p>\n

Since this is your first child and you’re planning more, I’ll mention that I do notice that Emilia and Everly are very different styles, and also that Emi and Evvie are very similar-sounding nicknames, in case either of those situations affects which name you wish to use now. I would expect a child named Emilia to have sisters with names such as Eleanor and Sofia and Violet; I would expect a child named Everly to have sisters with names such as Emerson and Hadley and Brinley or (maybe not those exact ones, because of the repeated -ley—but names LIKE those). The two names aren’t startling together (the shared E- helps, I think: Amelia and Everly looks a little more surprising to me), and not all parents prefer for names to coordinate in style, but it’s the sort of thing I like to think about ahead of time, just to make sure I don’t make things difficult for myself later on. (We very nearly used the name Emerson for our first child, without realizing that our usual style for girls was more like Josephine and Elizabeth, names I don’t think coordinate well with Emerson, and we DO like at least some level of coordination; luckily, our first child was a boy, and by the time we had a girl we’d realized.) (Not that it would have mattered, since we had only one girl. BUT ANYWAY.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I\u2019ve read your blog for YEARS and now find myself needing your assistance. We are due in November with our first baby and are not finding out gender. We are very set on a boy\u2019s name (Samuel) and should have no issues with a middle name. We are STUCK on girl\u2019s names. Our […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-428","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15508","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=15508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15509,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15508\/revisions\/15509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}