{"id":16120,"date":"2023-01-01T15:25:50","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T19:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16120"},"modified":"2023-01-01T15:32:06","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T19:32:06","slug":"baby-boy-rah-tick-ah-brother-to-beckett-lucia-and-charleston-a-question-of-alliteration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2023\/01\/01\/baby-boy-rah-tick-ah-brother-to-beckett-lucia-and-charleston-a-question-of-alliteration\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Rah-tick-ah, Brother to Beckett, Lucia, and Charleston; A Question of Alliteration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle,<\/p>\n

I wrote to you about a month ago in regards to this same baby – but circumstances have changed and I have a different question I was wondering if you could help me on.<\/p>\n

Alliteration – yay or nay?<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting our 4th child, and third son, in the new year (likely our last). Our older children are Beckett James, Lucia (Lucy) Kate, and Charleston (Charlie) Luke. Our last name sounds like Rah-tick-ah. If this baby had been a girl her name would have been Shiloh Annemarie.<\/p>\n

Amazingly shortly after I wrote you earlier – when we couldn\u2019t agree on any names at all, my husband and I came up with a short list of names we are both ok with.<\/p>\n

The challenge – the top two names we agree on both begin with R and we just aren\u2019t sure about the alliteration with our last name. Is it too much?<\/p>\n

Those names are Rhys or Rhodes.<\/p>\n

Rhys has been on our list the last 2 go-rounds, but we\u2019ve decided against it because of the alliteration\u2026but we just can\u2019t seem to let it go.<\/p>\n

The middle name would likely be Matthew in either case.<\/p>\n

Other names on our short list:<\/p>\n

Griffin (my personal favorite)
\nJonas (my husband\u2019s favorite)
\nSoren
\nSawyer<\/p>\n

Looking forward to your input!<\/p>\n

Julianne and Brandon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alliteration is striking! memorable! attention-getting! It’s one of the Statement options available in baby-naming, and it can range from Mild to Extreme depending on the particular names and the particular sounds. An example of mild would be something like Sophia Smith: the alliteration is lessened by the blend Sm- with the non-blend S-, and by the familiarity of both the first name and the surname. An example of Extreme would be something like Drusilla Dressendor: the matching Dr- blend is even more noticeable; the additional internal -s- alliteration is even more ear-catching; and both names are already uncommon enough to get some attention on their own.<\/p>\n

To my ear, Rhodes Rahtickah and Rhys Rahtickah are somewhere in between, though nudged a bit more toward the Extreme end by the uncommonness of the names involved, especially Rhodes, which is not currently in the Top 1000 of boy names in the United States and has not been at any point since the online records start in 1900. The name Rhys entered the Top 1000 for the first time in 2004 at #941, and as of 2021 was #413; that same year, the variation Reece was #579 and Reese was #701 (Reese was #147 for girls).<\/p>\n

All I’m saying here is that it would be A Choice—but you know that, and it’s why you’re writing. My own opinion at this point is that if you both love it, and you both think the alliteration is kind of neat, then you could just do it. Paul and I had a name on our baby name list that we didn’t use for Extreme Alliteration reasons (the first name was familiar, but it had initial alliteration and STRONG-middle-consonant alliteration with the surname, and the surname is already a constant issue on its own), and looking back on it now I think it would have been perfectly fine—and possibly even perfectly splendid. It would have been A Choice! But I also kind of LIKE Choice names when I encounter them in the wild.<\/p>\n

Not too long ago I encountered someone with one of those names like Thomas Thompson, which is another from the Statement Options category, and my reaction was positive. It’s just kind of…fun, I guess. I don’t know if it’s as fun for Thomas Thompson, who probably gets a fair amount of repetitive attention\/commentary about his name, and perhaps that’s another angle to consider: ask yourselves if YOU would want this name. Would you want to be Rhodes Rahtickah or Rhys Rahtickah? How much talking about your own name do you think you’d want to do\/hear?<\/p>\n

If you feel like you’re a little on the fence (i.e., on one hand it’s kind of fun and catchy, on the other hand you find you don’t personally yearn to spend even more time discussing your name), one option is to Dial It Back (look for R- names that are less uncommon, for example, or use Rhys\/Rhodes as the middle name), and another option is to Add More Options (give a middle name from your runner-up first-name options; find a nickname option that doesn’t start with R).<\/p>\n

Or if the name brings you joy, you can just GO FOR IT. I notice your first child’s name has some pretty snappy internal alliteration with those repeating K and T sounds; and if your second child’s name is pronounced loo-CHEE-ah or loo-SEE-uh, that’s got some real bounce with the rhythm of the surname. And the name Charleston is even less common in the United States than Rhodes. In this sibling set, I think Rhys Rahtickah or Rhodes Rahtickah could be a pretty nice fit. (My own choice would be for Rhys, as the more Dialed Back option: not only is Rhys a more common name, but it avoids the strong association of the Rhodes scholarship.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Swistle, I wrote to you about a month ago in regards to this same baby – but circumstances have changed and I have a different question I was wondering if you could help me on. Alliteration – yay or nay? My husband and I are expecting our 4th child, and third son, in the […]<\/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-16120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4c0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120","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=16120"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16124,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120\/revisions\/16124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}