Erica writes:<\/p>\n
We are pregnant with our 2nd baby on February 13, 2012 – a GIRL, and we are so excited! We live in Portland, Oregon, and we have a 22 month old boy, Parker Griffin Heintz, and this will complete our little family. Now, when I tell you that coming up with Parker’s name was difficult, that will be an understatement. It took MONTHS. I had lots and lots of names that I loved. Logan, Henry, Oliver, Harrison, Jackson, Quentin, the list goes on. <\/p>\n
The problem is that my husband (Jordan Gabriel) is a 5th grade teacher. And as a teacher, he has had hundreds of students pass through his classroom, and now associates certain names with certain traits (both positive and negative) that take that name off of the list. He is also extremely sensitive to tease-able names and nicknames. I was given two family names (Erica Joycelyn) after my dad (Eric John), and we’re determined to stay away from family names due to having two sets of divorced\/remarried parents and just too many toes to step on there.<\/p>\n
We also both agree that we like names that have a positive meaning, and even more so if they are related to nature and\/or an actual concrete “thing” that we can put on stationary, stuff like that. So, you see, when I hit on Parker (protector of parks) Griffin (awesome mythical creature), it was perfect. Match that with the fact that miraculously, he had not yet had a Parker in his class… and we have the coolest boy name ever. Whew.<\/p>\n
Now we are trying to name our little girl. And so far, things are a little bumpy. We have two names that are close, but something about both of them just isn’t quite right for me (husband really likes both of them, but is open to new suggestions). I have exhausted “Beyond Jennifer, Jason, Madison and Montana”, the Baby Name Finder on babycenter, and just about every other source. We want something a little unusual (also, this helps when trying to avoid the “classroom conundrum” as I call it). The two names we’re looking at:<\/p>\n
Claire Finley Heintz
Hadley Grace Heintz<\/p>\nThings I LIKE about them: Finley means sunbeam, and I really love that. I also really like the sound of the “ley” at the end of a name. Hadley starts with an “H” which is something I love love love with our last name (one of my favorite potential names for a boy was Henry Heintz. How CUTE is that??). Grace is just beautiful and I think it is a nice traditional balance with the less common Hadley. I also like that it starts with a “G” like Gabriel (husband’s middle name) and Griffin (Parker’s middle name). Claire is such a pretty name, and I’ve always really liked it. <\/p>\n
Things that are holding me back on choosing either of them: Claire seems so serious to me. I don’t know why, it just does. Maybe its the single syllable. I think I’m wanting something a little more sing-songy and I don’t know how else to put it, but friendly. Hadley I really like, but its almost not feminine enough. But its close. So close. And maybe in the end that is what we’ll go with, but there is just something niggling at me that its just not HER name.<\/p>\n
So, maybe it will help to know what the other names on our list have been:
Caroline (husband thinks its too formal)
Ellie (husband thinks its too silly)
Lily (name of the daughter of one of his coworkers)
Daphne (no specific objections, he just doesn’t love it)
Piper (this one is his, and I just can’t get on board with it. I think of bagpipers)
Hillary (we both really like this, but feel like its a little too political)
Hailey (this one is close to being a contender)
Elena (husband thinks it sounds too Eastern European, and since we’re not, he thinks it sounds phony)
Maya (see issue with Elena. Same kind of thing)<\/p>\nI just want to find that name that just “clicks” the way that Parker Griffin did. I just have this feeling that we’re so close, but there is something we’re not thinking of. I know you get tons and tons of emails, and I will just cross my fingers that maybe you have some great ideas for us!<\/p>\n
Thank you so much!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Name update!<\/b> Erica writes:<\/p>\n
I know this is WAY late, but I wanted to send in my baby name update!\u00a0 Our sweet girl was born February 18, and we chose to name her Piper Grace.\u00a0 She is almost 5 months old now, and she is so much fun. We settled on Piper late in the game, after determining that her in-utero energy just wasn’t fitting with Claire or Hadley.\u00a0 She is such a Piper – the name fits her just perfectly – she is full of smiles and energy and she never ever stops moving. <\/p>\n
Thank you so much for your help! <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erica writes: We are pregnant with our 2nd baby on February 13, 2012 – a GIRL, and we are so excited! We live in Portland, Oregon, and we have a 22 month old boy, Parker Griffin Heintz, and this will complete our little family. Now, when I tell you that coming up with Parker’s name […]<\/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-5894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1x4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5894","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=5894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}