Hi! My name is Brooke and my husband is Brian. Our last name is similar to Peterson.<\/p>\n
We are still in the preliminary baby-growing and baby-naming stages (16 weeks) and have not yet found out if our baby-to-be is a girl or boy.<\/p>\n
If it is a girl, my top name choice is Ivy.<\/p>\n
Brian has agreed to this name, but he wants it to be spelled Ivee. He knows someone named Ivee and does not know anyone with the name Ivy.<\/p>\n
I love Ivy, but I pretty much loath Ivee. He feels the opposite. He thinks it would be weird to name a little girl after a plant. I feel like it would be even weirder to give her a made up name…or at least a made up spelling for a name.<\/p>\n
We have a short list of other names that we can agree on – Nora, Sarah, Eden, Eve, etc. – so it is not like Ivy\/Ivee is our only choice.<\/p>\n
But, since it is my favorite and he has actually (amazingly!) agreed to it, I don’t know if I should settle for a spelling I dislike or just give up on my sweet Ivy and go with another name.<\/p>\n
Or…maybe it will be a boy and we can wait to worry about this issue until another pregnancy.<\/p>\n
Should I settle for Ivee? Should we move on and keep looking at other names?<\/p>\n
Thanks so much!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nI’d start by seeing if you can find out if your husband’s mind can be changed on the issue of whether or not it’s weird to use a plant name. Ivy, Rose, Violet, Lily, Willow, Daisy, Heather, Holly, Iris, Jasmine—these are all plant names that people use as-is, without having to alter the spellings. We do the same with many other noun names: Hope, Grace, Autumn, May, River, Ruby, Faith. I would first see if your husband feels the same way about the spelling of these other names, or if it’s just that he’s not used to Ivy as a name. It isn’t that we never change the spellings of noun names (“Brooke” is a convenient example; Lilly and Saige and Skye also come to mind), but Ivy is in the category of names we as a culture don’t consider weird to leave as it is.<\/p>\n
Your husband knows an Ivee, which certainly influences his feelings. The Social Security Administration may be of assistance here: in 2010, there were 1,073 baby girls named Ivy, and 13 named Ivee. Another 61 were named Ivey; another 33 were named Ivie. The spelling Ivy is clearly the main spelling. This is not to say that the main spelling must be honored; it is only another suggested argument against his feeling that Ivee is a more natural spelling of the name.<\/p>\n
Because I so strongly side with you about spelling it Ivy, I’m reluctant to even mention these possible compromise spellings: Ivie, Ivey.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> Brooke writes:<\/p>\n I followed one commenter’s advice and left the name conversation alone until we learned the sex of our little one.<\/p>\n We learned that we were having a boy, so the Ivy\/Ivee conversation has been tabled. I am sure it will come up again if\/when a future pregnancy brings us a girl, but for now, I have just left it alone.<\/p>\n My long list of potential boy names was largely vetoed and we didn’t make a final decision until we met our little man, but we are so happy with our choice. His name is Samuel Birger (BRR-jer). Birger is my dad’s first name and I love that Sam has this connection with his Pops.<\/p>\n Many thanks to you and your readers for all of the comments and consideration. Brooke writes: Hi! My name is Brooke and my husband is Brian. Our last name is similar to Peterson. We are still in the preliminary baby-growing and baby-naming stages (16 weeks) and have not yet found out if our baby-to-be is a girl or boy. If it is a girl, my top name choice is […]<\/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-5930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1xE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5930","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=5930"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9717,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5930\/revisions\/9717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"Samuel\"](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Samuel.jpg\")
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"