{"id":16549,"date":"2024-03-23T12:13:56","date_gmt":"2024-03-23T16:13:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16549"},"modified":"2024-06-06T20:17:17","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T00:17:17","slug":"baby-girl-mc_____ery-using-the-names-of-miscarried-siblings-as-honor-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2024\/03\/23\/baby-girl-mc_____ery-using-the-names-of-miscarried-siblings-as-honor-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Mc_____ery; Using the Names of Miscarried Siblings as Honor Names"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, dear Swistle!<\/p>\n

I mentioned to you on Twitter this past fall that I was bereft to not have a baby boy to name Alfred, because I\u2019d just met a three year old named Alfred and was completely charmed. My ovaries said, \u201cWhat\u2019s that? You\u2019d like another baby? We can arrange for that!\u201d My husband Kevin and I were QUITE surprised to find out we\u2019re expecting again\u2014we definitely thought we were done\u2014but we are also delighted. And now to choose a name for this little one before she arrives in June! Normally I love thinking about and discussing baby names, but I\u2019ve had a lot of other stressors going on this pregnancy and haven\u2019t spent a lot of time on it since I was really early in my pregnancy. I\u2019m hoping your and your readers\u2019 thoughts might help me get excited about the naming process.<\/p>\n

Surname is four syllables. It starts with Mc- and ends with -ery. It\u2019s a similar rhythm to McAllister, but that -ee ending makes a lot of names sound sing-song-y.<\/p>\n

We are having a girl, so Alfred is out. Here are the sibling names (there are a lot of them):<\/p>\n

\u2014Emeline Anne (Last syllable with a long I sound, rhymes with Caroline as opposed to Pauline. Goes by Emmy.)
\n\u2014Samuel Albert (Sam or Sammy)
\n\u2014Lucy Eleanor (miscarried girl)
\n\u2014Theodore Peter (Theo)
\n\u2014Quinn Enoch (miscarried, sex unknown)
\n\u2014Grace Elizabeth (miscarried girl)
\n\u2014Poppy James (miscarried, sex unknown)
\n\u2014Benjamin Charles (Ben or Benji)<\/p>\n

So the living siblings are Emmy, Sam, Theo, and Benji on a day-to-day basis. I feel quite married to a long name with a nickname, because there are FOUR other kids in the family with this precedent.<\/p>\n

All eight of my other children have honor names for their middle names.
\nWe definitely sacrificed the flow of some of the names (or chose less than ideal initials) for the chance to honor loved ones. For this baby, we are leaning towards honoring my husband\u2019s grandmother. Her name is Evenelle (spelled a little differently, but changed for the sake of not being so Google-able). Her parents, who immigrated to the US, apparently made up this name to sound like an American name. She generally goes by Evie (Eh-vee, as opposed to Eve-ee). Depending on the flow with the first name I\u2019m open to either Evenelle or Evie. However, my son Theo has his heart set on naming the baby Joy, so we\u2019re also considering that for a middle name. (Side question: would it be weird to give this baby two middle names if none of the siblings have two middle names?)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought about naming this baby Elizabeth Eleanor both in honor of her two miscarried sisters and in honor of the family members for whom I originally chose the names, but I\u2019m not sure how that would feel for my newest daughter as she grows up. When I think about if I would like to be named after two miscarried siblings, now as an adult I could appreciate it, but I don\u2019t know that I\u2019d have understood as a child. I do LOVE both of these names and my husband is on board with this idea, but I\u2019m leaning towards scrapping it. I\u2019d be interested in your thoughts and your readers\u2019 thoughts, though. If we DID do this I love the wealth of nickname options with Elizabeth. I\u2019m leaning towards Lizzy or Izzy.<\/p>\n

Okay, beyond Elizabeth Eleanor, here is my list so far:
\n\u2014Margaret (Maisie or Meg)
\n\u2014Anneliese (Annie)
\n\u2014Louisa (Lulu\u2026almost certainly too close to Lucy, whom we talk about by name with some regularity)
\n\u2014Alice (I suppose we could call her Allie for short, but I love Alice as is, so potential issue of no nickname)
\n\u2014Katherine (Kate)
\n\u2014Amelia (Millie\u2026is Amelia too close to Emeline?)
\n\u2014Rose (I love Rosalie but it is very singsong-y with our last name. Maybe scrap a long version and just go with Rose? I\u2019m sure that whatever her formal name is we\u2019d call her Rosie.)
\n\u2014Birdie (I\u2019m swooning over this as a nickname, but am not sure what long name to use to get to it. Bridget? Kevin hates it so it\u2019s probably out, though I have time to work on him.)<\/p>\n

Part of me feels meh about this whole list (except for Birdie) and wants to venture into a very different style\u2026Imogen! Lark! Juniper! Pearl! But I don\u2019t think I truly want to do that.<\/p>\n

My favorite on my \u201creal\u201d list is probably Margaret (I love the alliteration with our surname). Kevin likes Katherine best. Katherine has been on our list for every pregnancy and feels extremely boring to me this time around\u2026probably because I\u2019ve considered it 8 other times. And as if choosing a name with one\u2019s spouse isn\u2019t hard enough, Emmy is 12 and very invested in the name. Emmy likes Anneliese best (from my list\u2026of her own choosing she likes Veronica and Victoria, in case you\u2019re interested in a data point on what names 12-year-olds like). I love Felicity but it doesn\u2019t go well with our surname.<\/p>\n

Okay! I am open to suggestions! I would love your thoughts!<\/p>\n

Love, Ellen<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I got to the part about using the names of miscarried siblings as honor names for this baby, my hand flew to cover my mouth. I vote no, and I vote it while making earnest, sustained eye contact.<\/p>\n

I can’t easily explain my strength of feeling on this. One of my daily rituals is checking the obituaries, and so I know it used to be very common for a family to reuse the name of a child who had died. I don’t know what the motivation was, at the time: was it because they still wanted to name a child after dear Uncle Thomas? was it in honor of the child who had died? And I don’t know how the kids who were given the names felt about it. But I do know it used to be common. It’s just: it’s not common now. In the context of Now rather than Then, it gives a feeling I would describe as “my hand flew to cover my mouth.”<\/p>\n

It would feel different to me if you had intended to use those honor names for other babies, but had miscarried and had not used the names after all. Then the names Elizabeth and Eleanor could still be after the original honorees. But the babies were named, and their names are listed in the sibling group; those names have been used by other siblings and are no longer available to be used by the new baby, any more than the names Emeline and Anne are available.<\/p>\n

It would also feel different to me if you had a family tradition of, for example, using Eleanor as the middle name for all of your daughters. Or if some of your other children had been named after their siblings. But neither of those is the case here. I strongly advise you to consider all sibling names Taken and Unavailable.<\/p>\n

I think it would be fine to give this baby two middle names, though it’s not a pattern-break I’d want to do at this point, and I think your firstborn might be peeved if you used her brother’s name preferences and not hers! When I was pregnant with the twins, Rob (age 6 at the time) vigorously wanted to give one of the babies the middle name Plum, and we did consider it, and I did think it would have been a fun\/cute story, but we didn’t end up doing it, and Rob no longer even remembers wanting this. Joy is a much harder name to resist than Plum, but I think my plan would be the same: if there was another middle name I would otherwise have used, I would go ahead and use that, and encourage the child to use the name Joy as their own special name for the baby.<\/p>\n

I find I am very much hoping Evenelle will be the version that goes best with the first name and surname. Evie is nice, but it’s a common current nickname; Evenelle feels special, and I suspect you would enjoy it every single time you filled out paperwork.<\/p>\n

From your list of first-name options, my top favorite with a sister named Emeline is Anneliese. The two names are parallel enough to give me a little thrill, but the sounds are quite different. Anneliese Evenelle is majestic.<\/p>\n

Amelia would be too similar to Emeline for me. I realize that may seem at odds with my feelings about Anneliese.<\/p>\n

My second favorite from your list is Margaret. I like the alliteration too, and all the nickname options.<\/p>\n

I’ve heard Birdie used for Bridget but also for Bernadette, Roberta, Bertha, Alberta, and Bernice. These won’t work with sibling names and\/or your surname, but in case others have landed here looking for more options, it seems like it would also work well for Ember, Emberley, Emberlyn, Liberty, Kimber. But I think it can also come from calling a nice little baby girl your little birdy. I think it could be sweet as a pet name for Margaret, and this could tie in nicely to you telling Theo he can call her Joy: different family members might have different nicknames for her, and that’s delightful.<\/p>\n

I think Imogen would work well and wouldn’t be a big style jump. Nicknames Genna or Midge or Immy (similar to Izzy), or Idgie like in Fried Green Tomatoes; and it sounds a little like Joy. But it seems very close to Benjamin.<\/p>\n

I wonder if you’d like Genevieve; it was high on my own list. I worried she’d be called Genny\/Jenny, but that’s starting to sound good to me again. There’s also Evie or Vivi or or Gigi (probably not with Benji) or Ginny (maybe also not with Benji) or Neevie. Genevieve Evenelle has a lot of repeated sounds; I might be swayed into thinking about suggesting Genevieve Joy? It’s so delightful.<\/p>\n

Or Minerva\/Minnie. A little similar to Veronica.<\/p>\n

And because you like Margaret and Millie, I bring you one of the names most dear to my heart: Millicent. Millicent\/Millie. Just give it time to simmer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Hello, dear Swistle!<\/p>\n

I am writing to update you on my baby\u2019s name, which you were kind enough to post about at the end of March.<\/p>\n

I appreciated reading everyone\u2019s thoughts on using the middle names of the baby\u2019s miscarried sisters. In the time between sending my email and your post I\u2019d had a good chat with a friend about it, and I came to the conclusion that without knowing the baby\u2019s personality it wasn\u2019t a good decision. Maybe she\u2019ll be a happy-go-lucky person who wouldn\u2019t be bothered at all (or maybe she\u2019d have really liked the connection to her sisters!), but maybe she\u2019ll be a very sensitive child who feels things deeply and the names would have felt like a weight. So! Even before I read your thoughts I\u2019d decided to regretfully let Elizabeth Eleanor go and keep looking. (A special thank you to the commenters who offered such kind words of sympathy for our losses and shared their own stories of lost babies and subsequent naming decisions\u2014I appreciated it very much.)<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s positive comments about Evenelle made me feel much more confident in using it as a middle name. And thank you to everyone who was looking out for Emmy and the disparity of considering Theo\u2019s favorite name Joy and not her names. The reason for this is because I\u2019d told her I thought it best for her to save her very favorite names for her own children or pets someday and she was VERY on board with the idea of saving them.<\/p>\n

Okay, with all of that background out of way, introducing our daughter Margaret Evenelle. I\u2019m pretty sure we\u2019ll call her Maisie, but we love the wealth of nickname options and we\u2019ll see how it shakes out in the coming weeks. Thank you again to you and your readers!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello, dear Swistle! I mentioned to you on Twitter this past fall that I was bereft to not have a baby boy to name Alfred, because I\u2019d just met a three year old named Alfred and was completely charmed. My ovaries said, \u201cWhat\u2019s that? You\u2019d like another baby? We can arrange for that!\u201d My husband […]<\/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-16549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4iV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16549","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=16549"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16625,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16549\/revisions\/16625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}