{"id":15853,"date":"2022-05-12T13:06:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T17:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15853"},"modified":"2022-05-12T13:29:21","modified_gmt":"2022-05-12T17:29:21","slug":"baby-girl-stove-marriott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2022\/05\/12\/baby-girl-stove-marriott\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Stove Marriott"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

I’ve been a long-time reader of your blog, and I finally have the opportunity to ask advice from you and your readers! My husband and I are expecting a baby girl (our first) in the beginning of August. Our style tends towards classic, feminine names, with a preference for names that are “vintage revival” or reflect Irish heritage. My last name is Stove with an “n” instead of a “v”, and my husband’s last name sounds similar to Marriott. We plan on giving the baby the last name “Stove Marriott” with no hyphen. We have also considered making Stove a second middle name, but I worry it will get lost in the shuffle. We are leaning towards Eileen as a middle name (an honor name from my side of the family), but it could be changed.<\/p>\n

Our top two:
\nRose Eileen
\nCatherine Eileen<\/p>\n

Our short list (for a sense of our naming style and potential future siblings):
\nEleanor (nn Nora)
\nBrigid
\nAda
\nGrace (don’t like the run-in “s” sound with Stove)
\nMary
\nMargaret (nn Maggie)
\nFiona
\nMaeve<\/p>\n

For a boy, we were considering John or Patrick.<\/p>\n

We have 2 major questions.<\/p>\n

1. Does “Rose Stove Marriott” create an issue with the s\/z sound in Rose running into Stove? As this name has floated around my head, it has sounded like less of an problem, but unfortunately the opposite has happened as my husband mulls it over!<\/p>\n

2. Nicknames- I worry that Catherine will be given a nickname, and I prefer the long version of the name. We could envision using Kitty as a nickname at home, but I wouldn’t want that or another nickname to become her main name. I know she might choose a nickname herself as she gets older. Should this concern make us not use the name? On the other hand, some names on our short list (Eleanor, Margaret) dropped out of the top two because I envision calling her exclusively by the nickname, and not using the full name very often. This may not be a huge dealbreaker though! Do you have any advice on how to consider nicknames when choosing a name?<\/p>\n

Thank you so much!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I was first testing out the name Rose with the surname, I accidentally used the substitute surname instead of the real one. I tried it a few times, increasingly thinking “I WANT to be able to say it’s okay, and that PLENTY of names have a non-ideal sound and it’s FINE—but the Rose\/Stove part hits my ear and mouth completely wrong: like a rhyme plus a tongue-twister (not just the -z\/St- but also the matching single-syllable and matching long-O), and the almost-rhyme is somehow worse than if it were an actual rhyme.” Then I realized my mistake and tried it with the actual surname, and it seems much, much better to me. I still agree it has a bit of an unusual sound, and requires a little careful enunciation—but I just attended a graduation and heard thousands of names read aloud, and there are a lot of names out there that have an unusual sound and require a little careful enunciation, and everyone just goes with it and it’s no big deal.<\/p>\n

Still, I felt some relief when I turned my mind to the Catherine option, which doesn’t have an unusual sound. I know a fair number of Catherines\/Katherines\/Kathryns of various ages, and here is what I have noticed about nicknames among the ones I know: The ones my mom’s age all go by Kathy\/Cathy, exclusively. The ones my age all go by Kate or Katie, except for one whose parents gave her the by-then-already-dated nickname Kathy, and now as an adult she goes by Katherine. The ones in my kids’ generation go by Catherine or by Kat\/Cat, and I can only think of one who goes by Katie. I have not encountered anyone going by Kit, but I would love to see that be the next standard nickname.<\/p>\n

My advice about nicknames starts with saying that I feel a little uncertain about them, too. For our second child, who turned out to be a boy, our frontrunner girl name was Elizabeth. By the time we actually had a girl, I had decided I disliked all of the nicknames for Elizabeth and ONLY liked the full name, and so that ruled it out as a first name for me: I didn’t think I’d have much trouble getting her called Elizabeth as a child, but thought she could very well choose a nickname when she was older. On the other hand: it is fairly common for parents to think they don’t want a nickname, and then a nickname happens and the parents find they love it, and they see the nickname in a new light now that it’s attached to their actual child, and they feel the nickname suits the child far better than the full name. On the third hand, I had a coworker whose parents named her Elizabeth, and they hated the nickname Liz so they called her Beth right from the start in order to avoid it—and by the time she was in high school she was calling herself Liz and not Beth, and ten years later when I was working with her, she said they still hated the name Liz. So I have wondered if my decision not to use Elizabeth was a good one, or a misguided one. Well, but I love the name we DID choose so much more, it’s hard to even consider that at this point.<\/p>\n

Keeping all that in mind, my GENERAL feeling is that if either parent ACTIVELY DISLIKES (as opposed to just preferring to avoid) any of the familiar nicknames for a particular name, it would be better to find a different name—and perhaps use the not-to-be-nicknamed name as a middle name, where it can be enjoyed without nearly as much concern about nicknames.<\/p>\n

As for the issue of not really wanting to use Eleanor or Margaret because you think you’d almost exclusively use Nora\/Maggie, that isn’t something that bothers me at all, and in fact I come down on the side of liking the whole idea of a formal full name and an everyday nickname—but I do know there are people who prefer to avoid it. I think I’d make the decision in the same way: Is it that you ACTIVELY DISLIKE the idea of the child being called by the full name, and you’re ONLY choosing the name in order to get the nickname? Or is it that you’re fine with them growing up and deciding they’d rather be called Eleanor\/Margaret, and it’s just you’d PREFER to stick with the nickname?<\/p>\n

I was looking over the rest of the short list to see if there were any I wanted to push you to consider using this time, and I notice that Fiona has the same repeating -on- sound of the first segment of the surname, which could be a plus or a minus. Margaret has the same starting letters (Mar-) and similar ending letters of Marriott (-et\/-ott)—but perhaps that actual segment of the surname is different enough that it’s not an issue. Similarly: Mary repeats the first two syllables of the second half of the surname—unless it actually doesn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle, I’ve been a long-time reader of your blog, and I finally have the opportunity to ask advice from you and your readers! My husband and I are expecting a baby girl (our first) in the beginning of August. Our style tends towards classic, feminine names, with a preference for names that are “vintage […]<\/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-15853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-47H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15853","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=15853"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15859,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15853\/revisions\/15859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}