Rachel writes:<\/p>\n
My husband is Nick and I’m Rachel. Our last name is Watson. We’re having a boy on November 7 and have a name that we really love. It’s John. The problem is that our son would share his name with the doctor in the Sherlock Holmes stories. <\/p>\n
Sometimes it seems like a big deal, since there have been quite a few Sherlock Holmes films and TV shows lately and it’s a well known character. Other times I just think that it’s not like it’s the name of an evil character or anything bad and just not important at all really. <\/p>\n
We’re planning to call him John and don’t like Jonathan or Jack. The middle name will be Nicholas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, how interesting! I am moderately familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories (have read some recreationally, and also had to study a couple of them in school), so I’m definitely familiar with Watson, and he would be my first association if someone gave a child the first name Watson. But somehow I had not retained the information that Watson’s first name was John; I think of him as “Watson,” and that’s it. And, as you say, Watson is a GOOD character, not a bad guy or anything.<\/p>\n
It has been a long time since I read\/studied a Sherlock Holmes story, however, and I haven’t seen any of the recent movies or television shows, so my Sherlock Holmes knowledge is hardly what I’d call FRESH. Also, I am extremely biased, because I love the name John and I fervently want you to be able to use it.<\/p>\n
So I think we need a poll, to let cooler heads prevail. As usual for this sort of situation, I want to divide the “it’s a problem”\/”it’s not a problem” opinions into two groups: those who knew already that John was Watson’s first name, and those who didn’t. [Poll closed; see results below.]<\/p>\n
Poll results for “The name John Watson”<\/b> (512 votes total):<\/p>\n
I knew Watson’s first name; it’s a problem – 35 votes (7%)
I knew Watson’s first name; it’s not a problem – 127 votes (25%)
I didn’t know Watson’s first name; it’s a problem – 10 votes (2%)
I didn’t know Watson’s first name; it’s not a problem – 334 votes (65%)
I can’t decide – 6 votes (1%)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rachel writes: My husband is Nick and I’m Rachel. Our last name is Watson. We’re having a boy on November 7 and have a name that we really love. It’s John. The problem is that our son would share his name with the doctor in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Sometimes it seems like a big […]<\/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-6124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1AM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6124","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=6124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}