{"id":15590,"date":"2021-10-10T15:39:56","date_gmt":"2021-10-10T19:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15590"},"modified":"2021-11-11T15:47:37","modified_gmt":"2021-11-11T19:47:37","slug":"baby-boy-or-girl-denmark-without-the-d-sibling-to-alana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2021\/10\/10\/baby-boy-or-girl-denmark-without-the-d-sibling-to-alana\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy or Girl Denmark-without-the-D, Sibling to Alana"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi!<\/p>\n

We’re expecting our second and final child in November. We have a daughter named Alana (different common spelling). She has my last name with my husband’s as her middle. We will be doing the opposite for this baby. My last name is like Trash with an O and my husband’s is like Denmark minus the first letter.<\/p>\n

We are not finding out the sex of this baby, but have picked out Calvin for a boy.<\/p>\n

My list of needs\/wants in a name:
\n– a recognizable name that is easily spelled, but not too common. We eliminated Luke because it’s so popular.
\n– does not start with an E (dislike alliteration) and would have a bit of a preference for not an A as well.
\n– preferably no S sounds as I have a bit of a lisp
\n– not matchy-matchy with our daughter’s name<\/p>\n

And my pipe dream is that it has a tie to a cool character in pop culture\/history. My daughter is named after a favourite book protagonist and Calvin is after the comic character.<\/p>\n

Our current top 3 contenders are:
\n-Mia (possibly too popular, is it hard to say with the last name?)
\n-Natalie (is it tricky to say with Alana?)
\n-Paige (seems a bit boring to me)<\/p>\n

Those are in my order of preference. Mia is a video game character we like and none of the others hits that fun criteria. There’s also someone in our smaller city with the Paige Last name combo which probably bugs me more than it should.<\/p>\n

My husband’s preference order is the opposite.<\/p>\n

Other names I like but were eliminated for various reasons:
\n-Saskia
\n-Jade
\n-Maya
\n-Kate
\n-Zo\u00eb
\n-Cassidy
\n-Keira<\/p>\n

Names my husband suggested (Paige has always been his #1 though):
\n-Samantha
\n-Vanessa
\n-Victoria<\/p>\n

Are the possible issues with Mia\/Natalie just in my head? Do they go with my daughter’s name? Or should I just let my husband have this one and go with Paige. Any other suggestions that both of us might like?<\/p>\n

Thanks!
\nHeather<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ooo, I don’t know if it helps, but I associate the name Paige with a character in the comic strip Fox Trot. It’s not as cool an association as Calvin, but it’s something.<\/p>\n

I find Mia a little difficult to say with the surname, but not deal-breakingly so. I also find that the end of Paige blends into the surname in a way I have to do something about: again, not a deal-breaker.<\/p>\n

I am not at all opposed to common\/popular names—but I feel a little dissatisfied at the combination of a relatively uncommon name such as Alana (#206 in 2020, according to the Social Security Administration<\/a>) with a relatively common name such as Mia (Top 10 for the last twelve years in a row). But I DO like the way you have a cool cultural association for both names, and that might outweigh the popularity difference for me.<\/p>\n

(I hesitate to mention this, because I can’t tell if this is just because it’s been in the news so the sound pattern caught my ear—but Mia with her dad’s surname brought Myanmar<\/a> to mind.)<\/p>\n

Just to continue rolling over your choices with every possible objection, apparently: the name Paige feels like a very different style from Alana. It’s a little startling to go from the vowely flow of Alana to the tailored preppy 1990s sound of Paige.<\/p>\n

I wonder if the trickiness you’re seeing with Alana and Natalie includes the word “and”: that is, if the -an and -na of Alana, AND the an- of and, AND the na- of Natalie is all too much. Try saying them without the “and,” and see if that helps or not: “Alana, Natalie, come to dinner!” But it IS still a lot of A and N and L sounds, even without the “and,” so it might just be too many repeating sounds for your tastes.<\/p>\n

I suppose, reading this over, that I am saying that all three of the options are fine—but if I were you, I would look for more options. And, it’s strange to be saying this, because usually I find myself advising people to drop some of their preferences—but in your case, I feel as if you’re not meeting enough of them. All three name options are recognizable and easy to spell, but Mia and Natalie are both very common (Mia is more common than Luke; Natalie was, too, until very recently). You’d like to have a cool pop-culture or historical tie-in, but Natalie and Paige don’t have that.<\/p>\n

I’d like to add back into consideration Vanessa from your husband’s list. Alana and Vanessa sound good together to me, without being matchy; Vanessa is familiar and easy to spell, but almost identical in popularity to Alana (Vanessa was #208 in 2020); there are quite a few Vanessas<\/a> in culture\/history. But I understand if the S-sounds (and\/or other issues) rule it out.<\/p>\n

Would Veronica work? There’s the Veronica Mars tie-in, which is pretty cool. It’s maybe a little sing-song with Alana, though.<\/p>\n

I would really like to salvage Jade from your list, but Jade with your husband’s surname turns into Jay Denmark.<\/p>\n

And what I am mostly hoping is that we can make a collective list of names with good pop-culture and historical associations. Video games! Children’s and YA books! TV shows! Comic strips! Movies! Historical things! Beatrice (Divergent series)! Greta (Thunberg)! Jacinda (Ardern)! Maxine (Waters)! I hope you are better at this than I am, since I have already suggested three with S-sounds!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Despite me being completely convinced that this baby would be a boy, our second baby girl was born last weekend. I let my husband make the final call since our first daughter’s name was definitely my choice. He ended up deciding he liked Mia best so Mia she is! Here’s hoping it doesn’t end up too popular in her social groups going forward! Thanks for all the ideas for me to throw at him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi! We’re expecting our second and final child in November. We have a daughter named Alana (different common spelling). She has my last name with my husband’s as her middle. We will be doing the opposite for this baby. My last name is like Trash with an O and my husband’s is like Denmark minus […]<\/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-15590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-43s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590","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=15590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15643,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15590\/revisions\/15643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}