{"id":15586,"date":"2021-10-06T10:41:18","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T14:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15586"},"modified":"2021-11-15T13:40:55","modified_gmt":"2021-11-15T17:40:55","slug":"baby-boy-meyer-with-an-s-brother-to-sixth-month-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/10\/06\/baby-boy-meyer-with-an-s-brother-to-sixth-month-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Meyer-with-an-S, Brother to Sixth-Month-of-the-Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello there Swistle!<\/p>\n

We are the Meyer-with-an-s family, expecting a baby boy around Thanksgiving. Big sister shares a name with the sixth month of the year. Her middle name is the same as mine, which is also my mom\u2019s maiden (and happens to be a girl\u2019s first name).<\/p>\n

We have a list of about 5 boy names that we both like, but absolutely can not agree on one. Issues and thoughts on each\u2026<\/p>\n

Andrew – I think this would be the winner except that it is one of our siblings\u2019 names and we want to -100% name a child after this sibling, which is very awkward especially since anyone who knows this sibling will assume we named the baby after him and will wonder why
\nHenry – just sooooo popular
\nGraham – my favorite, husband doesn\u2019t like but can\u2019t explain why
\nAdam – we are both kind of \u201cyeah maybe but eh\u201d about this one
\nPatrick – I think this is husband\u2019s front runner, and I really like it except that he wants to call the baby Pat which I hate. I like Patch as a fun nickname but he thinks it\u2019s too out there.<\/p>\n

To help you get a sense of our style, we also like David but think it\u2019s too boring, John but can\u2019t use it for various reasons, and Avery but can\u2019t get over the \u201cit\u2019s a girl name now\u201d aspect. If this baby was a girl she would almost certainly be named Claire or possibly Elizabeth. So you can see that our style runs pretty classic\/vanilla.<\/p>\n

I think our biggest hurdle is how much we LOVE our daughter\u2019s name. It is so classic, yet unexpected, and kind of \u201cold lady\u201d but fresh feeling. We just can\u2019t find any boys\u2019 name that feel like that. Everything we otherwise like seems too overused and middle aged man boring (David, William, Alan) or too trendy now (Henry).<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s really down to Andrew, Graham, or Patrick, all of which feel classic and familiar but not soooooo heavily used these days, at least in our circles. But there\u2019s the extremely awkward family issue with Andrew, and then that we each prefer a different name of the other two.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve read the entire SSA top 1000 so I don\u2019t know that we are looking for other suggestions, so much as looking for your thoughts on our top choices and help deciding!<\/p>\n

Oh, and middle name will probably be H@stings which is my husband\u2019s middle name. I like the symmetry of our first two kids each sharing our middle names.<\/p>\n

Thanks in advance!!<\/p>\n

E<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I love the name Henry, and it was very nearly my youngest’s name. I see it is Top 10 in the U.S. now, according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, which is surprising to me because I still don’t know a single real-life Henry. But: my youngest kid is 14, and I don’t know as many people with babies\/toddlers these days, so this makes sense. Well. I still love the name, and I like Top 50 names for boys ANYWAY, and in fact my primary concern when selecting a boy name is “But is it too UNCOMMON to use?,” so I would still be Team Henry—EXCEPT, and possibly this is RIDICULOUS but I CANNOT SHAKE IT, I have a “Henry and the Sixth Month of the Year” association, an association that is also a movie<\/a>, and for me that just kills the combination. The movie is over 30 years old, I never even SAW it, I haven’t read anything about Ana\u00efs Nin since college—but still the combination is permanently stored in my brain as Famous Couple, and so FOR ME it wouldn’t work for a sibling set. But that movie is approximately the age of the parents of babies being born today, so presumably I represent a small subset of the population here—and if I encountered a sibling set with that name, I wouldn’t feel as if it were bizarre of the parents to have chosen it, the way I would if I encountered siblings named, say, Juliet and Romeo. I would be aware of both names as existing in many, many contexts other than that one single one that rings a bell.<\/p>\n

I share your feelings about the nickname Pat. I think Patch is cute, and would be worth a try; my prediction is that in today’s naming climate he would end up going by Patrick. But I generally advise against using a name if either of the parents strongly dislikes one of the common nicknames for it. It would be nice to make a compromise something like “We name him YOUR first choice name, but on the condition that we DO NOT use the name Pat”—but there’s just no way to ensure the success of that plan. If the name Pat DID evolve, there’d be no backsies.<\/p>\n

I don’t like the way the -m of Adam goes into the M- of your surname. It’s not at a level that has to be a deal-breaker, but it’s something I would want to think about ahead of time. I think the name itself is great: a name my eyes skip past in the baby name books because it feels so familiar, and yet I can hardly think of any Adams I know.<\/p>\n

If your husband doesn’t like the name Graham, it seems like that’s an easy one to take off the list. On the other hand, we’ve had many letters where the gist was “This is my favorite name and my husband hates it!,” and then we get a follow-up saying “We used the name my husband hated!,” so I know to leave room. I don’t like the way the -m goes into your surname, and it feels like a bigger issue with Graham than with Adam; it comes very close to making a “grandma” sound. I know you said you’re not really looking for additional suggestions, but I will suggest Grant anyway.<\/p>\n

I saved Andrew for last, because I want to find a way to make it work. For my firstborn, I wanted to give him a middle name that was after my favorite grandparent—but that name also happened to be the name of my first serious long-term boyfriend. I did end up using it, and now it doesn’t bother me at all, and feels like a slightly fun story. But…that was a middle name, and many of the people in my life at this point wouldn’t know (1) my child’s middle name OR (2) the name of my first serious long-term boyfriend. Though, also, I don’t know how many of my friends would be able to come up with the name of my sibling or Paul’s sibling, either. So maybe it’s okay? Ug, I don’t know. I guess it kind of depends on how terrible the sibling is. Are we talking about a situation where you would wince hard if you had to describe him, because he has done terrible hurtful things to others? or is he just kind of an uninspiring deadbeat? or is he just not close with whichever of you is his sibling, so it would be odd for his name to be an honor name? Are the people who would be surprised\/confused also people who could be told “It’s NOT after the sibling!” and take that on board? Could you find another Andrew<\/a> (historical figure, author, poet, scientist, artist, whatever) and claim to be honoring THAT Andrew?<\/p>\n

I have encountered the same issue you’re encountering with boy names, which is that it is hard to find names that are both classic AND fresh. This is why Henry is so popular: it hits that mark. Other names that feel similar to me:<\/p>\n

Calvin
\nCharles\/Charlie
\nClark
\nDean
\nElliot
\nEverett
\nFranklin
\nFrederick
\nGeorge
\nGrant
\nHarvey
\nIan
\nLeo
\nLouis
\nNolan
\nReid
\nSimon
\nWesley<\/p>\n

I think one issue is that we’re maxing out the current sets of Fresh boy names (Little Gentlemen names such as Henry, Oliver, Theodore; Hip Biblical names such as Elijah, Noah, Ezra), and we need the next batch—but that next batch has not yet hit its stride at a level that identifies it. (I think pretty soon it’s going to be the -bert and -ard and -ance\/-ence names, but we shall see.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

We got to meet our boy a little early (thankfully, since he was huge!). We loved many of the suggestions from the comments, especially Jack, and going into labor had narrowed it down to Jack Arthur or Patrick H@astings. As soon as he was born we both just felt like he was Patrick, or Patch\/Patcher\/Patchy as we\u2019ve already been affectionately calling. His nickname will definitely be Patch but I think it will be the informal\/family type, not how we introduce him to people. Based on the reaction of all of the hospital staff, it turns out Patrick these days is just about as fresh and unexpected as big sister\u2019s name!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello there Swistle! We are the Meyer-with-an-s family, expecting a baby boy around Thanksgiving. Big sister shares a name with the sixth month of the year. Her middle name is the same as mine, which is also my mom\u2019s maiden (and happens to be a girl\u2019s first name). We have a list of about 5 […]<\/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-15586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-43o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15586","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=15586"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15647,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15586\/revisions\/15647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}