{"id":15965,"date":"2022-08-10T09:39:20","date_gmt":"2022-08-10T13:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=15965"},"modified":"2023-04-30T21:59:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-01T01:59:24","slug":"baby-girl-woodruff-sister-to-mila","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2022\/08\/10\/baby-girl-woodruff-sister-to-mila\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Woodruff, Sister to Mila"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle!<\/p>\n

I have been a long-time reader and absolutely love your blog! My husband and I are expecting our second (and final) child, a girl, this fall. Our last name is a different spelling of Woodruff.<\/p>\n

We have an almost 2-year-old named Mila whose name we absolutely love. She is named for my grandmother Mildred, in the Jewish tradition of honoring a family member who has passed with a variation of the name\/same first letter. Her middle name is P@rkes, which is a family name (my husband\u2019s mother\u2019s maiden name\/middle name). Mila happens to work perfectly with both my Jewish\/Eastern European heritage and my husband\u2019s Hispanic heritage. This is an awesome added benefit, however hard to find and certainly not required for this baby\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

We have a few names in mind, but despite lots of searching and discussing (and reading through so many entries of your blog!) have not yet found the one! I am feeling stuck.<\/p>\n

We ideally want to honor family members and some potential ways to do this would be names starting with H, J, or L (or maybe E but I don\u2019t love the initials EW), however we are not limiting ourselves to these as it\u2019s more important to us that we give her a name we love.<\/p>\n

Names we both like:
\nLucy – this was a front runner from our last pregnancy. We both really like it but aren\u2019t sure it\u2019s the one.
\nHallie – another front runner, we both really like this and it would honor my grandfather Harold who went by Hal. I am worried that she would constantly be having to explain that it\u2019s Hallie and not Haley.
\nHarper – newer addition to the list and we both like it but not sure it\u2019s the one, it\u2019s been growing on me more quickly than my husband though I do worry it\u2019s too popular being top 10, also someone in my friend group has a daughter with this name, my preference is not to know people personally with a name so it feels more unique but realize this is silly especially since they live out of state and we rarely see them :)
\nEmma – we both really like it, though it feels to me too common (#2 name!!) and maybe too plain. It feels so close but not sure it\u2019s the one. I think I prefer Emmi\/Emmy\/Emmie though my husband does not. I like the idea of Emme but not how hard it is to pronounce, I wouldn\u2019t have known how to say it without reading your blog :)
\nZoe\/Zoey – we both do like the name, even though we can\u2019t agree on the spelling :)<\/p>\n

We like the middle name James, if the first name is clearly feminine like Lucy or Hallie or Emma, and it would honor several family members and a close family friend. But with a more unisex sounding name like Harper or Hadley, we would want a more feminine middle name. We are open to other middle names, maybe beginning with J in memory of the people mentioned above as well as my cousin Jill, however not required.<\/p>\n

Some other names I like but my husband doesn\u2019t are Addison (Addie), Ainsley, Chloe, Eloise, Sloane.<\/p>\n

Names my husband likes are:
\nMolly – prob his favorite, and I do like it. It\u2019s a cute name we considered for Mila but it feels too similar to me. I don\u2019t want another M name as it is important to me for each girl to have her own initials, also my husband\u2019s name starts with an M so I would be the only one without an M name other than our dog :). (Mine starts with H and another reason I like the H names for this baby is the symmetry of 2 M\u2019s and 2 H\u2019s. Again not required.)
\nAshley (I like the name but don\u2019t want to name our baby this as it feels 80s to me, also we know a lot of Ashleys)
\nHannah (don\u2019t love, wouldn\u2019t say I necessarily dislike it but some associations I can\u2019t get over and def not the one)<\/p>\n

Some other names we both like but either don\u2019t think we like enough or don\u2019t want to use (friends with the name, associations, etc.) are Adeline, Berkeley, Brooklyn, Callie, Grace, Hadley. It is possible we could be convinced so open to thoughts if any of these stand out to you.<\/p>\n

We are stuck and would love your suggestions! It would be great to get your thoughts on the above names if something is standing out to you, or other names we should be considering. Also on what names go well with sibling Mila? Thanks!!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

The one that stands out to me is Hallie. I think you’d periodically have to correct someone who thought it was the more common Haley, but that it wouldn’t be at deal-breaking levels—and once people DID know it was Hallie, they wouldn’t KEEP getting it wrong, so you’d mostly be dealing with in it non-important situations where there’s no need to correct it if you don’t feel like it (e.g., you’re waiting for a prescription and the clerk calls out “For Haley?” to let you know it’s ready).<\/p>\n

Hallie has a lot going for it. It starts with one of the initials you were hoping for; but also your grandpa went by Hal, which makes an even better story, and also a good first-three-letters parallel for Mildred\/Mila. It gives you the unnecessary-but-fun two M’s and two H’s in your family. It feels like a good fit with Mila in sound and in femininity and in confusion\/difficulty levels.<\/p>\n

I feel a little weary of the trend of giving baby girls the middle name James (we don’t have a corresponding trend of giving baby boys the middle name Jane), but it’s good with Hallie and for you it would honor several family members, and it coordinates nicely with your first child’s middle name.<\/p>\n

Would others like to champion their own picks from the list, or suggest additional options?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hi Swistle –<\/p>\n

Thank you so much to you and your readers for your input! We are excited to share that we welcomed our daughter Lucy J@mes Woodruff. <\/p>\n

We loved the name Hallie on paper (for all of the reasons you and your readers did), but kept trying it out by saying it out loud to each other and had mixed feelings on the sound; it didn\u2019t feel like the one. I also knew the pronunciation issues would bother me (confirmed by my annoyance when I tried using it for my Starbucks order and received a cup that said \u201cHaley\u201d). <\/p>\n

Lucy\u2019s name fits her perfectly and we have gotten lots of compliments on it! Also – added bonus – the way her big sister says \u201cOoh-sie\u201d is pretty adorable<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle! I have been a long-time reader and absolutely love your blog! My husband and I are expecting our second (and final) child, a girl, this fall. Our last name is a different spelling of Woodruff. We have an almost 2-year-old named Mila whose name we absolutely love. She is named for my grandmother […]<\/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-15965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-49v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15965","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=15965"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16294,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15965\/revisions\/16294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}