{"id":6138,"date":"2012-07-18T14:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T18:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2012\/07\/18\/baby-boy-oldman-should-they-use-an-outlier-name-for-a-firstborn\/"},"modified":"2014-06-18T12:04:24","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T16:04:24","slug":"baby-boy-oldman-should-they-use-an-outlier-name-for-a-firstborn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2012\/07\/18\/baby-boy-oldman-should-they-use-an-outlier-name-for-a-firstborn\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Boy Oldman: Should They Use an Outlier Name for a Firstborn?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A. writes:<\/p>\n

I debated whether to write to you because I REALLY wanted my husband and I to figure this out ourselves, and we mostly have, but it has gotten to the point where I need an unbiased second (or fiftieth?) opinion. After having the PERFECT girl’s name picked out (Rose) and lovely visions of ruffles and sparkles and unicorns, we found out we are having a BOY. Surprise! He is due early November, right around my birthday, and we are ecstatic- and really want a full name to start calling him!<\/p>\n

My question to you today is about whether we should take into consideration any future sibsets in naming this baby, when the rest of the names we would be inclined to choose are so drastically different than the one we have currently chosen.<\/p>\n

My first name is super-common (#3 in the year I was born- ’84) while my husband’s name is the unpopular Justin-with-a-D. We both have family middle names that we like much better than our firsts, and my husband actually calls me by my middle name instead. That’s not really helpful information to this question, but I felt I should mention it anyway. :)<\/p>\n

We narrowed down our list about five million times and finally got it down to our top two: Gavin and Magnus. My husband’s last name (which will be the baby’s surname as well) is Swedish and sounds like Oldman, but without the D in the middle. We have found that we both typically prefer Scandinavian and Germanic names for boys, which is why Gavin as our frontrunner surprised us! We’ve mostly decided to go with Gavin as his first name, and give him two middle names, one of which will be Scott, in honour of my father. Here is where we need help, though.<\/p>\n

We were thinking about using Magnus as a middle for him, because it really is one of our favourites. Gavin Magnus Scott Ol(d)man. HOWEVER…we do hope to have more children, and would like for siblings’ names to not clash. If we go with Gavin now, will that be narrowing our choices too much for future boys? Our other favourites are Magnus, Haf\u00feor, Asbj\u00f6rn, Axel, Ulrik, and Gunnar. (My husband also likes Atlas, on which I’m not sold.) Should we go with Magnus Gavin Scott instead? Magnus fits with the rest of the bunch. But a Gavin and a Haf\u00feor are just way too different! We just don’t care as much for other styles of names, the closest in coordination with Gavin that we like is Lincoln, and maybe Westley, but those were more middle name choices than firsts. We kind of feel like Gavin and Magnus and Gunnar are the more usable and the closest coordinating of our bunch, and while I’d love to save Magnus for a future son, there’s no telling if we’ll have another boy and I’d rather use our current favourites on this baby instead of regretting not using them in the future.<\/p>\n

Also, as I stated earlier, our girl’s choice is Rose, with a middle or first of either Caroline or Delilah (we would call her Rose whether it were her first or middle). That fits with Gavin, and while it doesn’t go with Magnus or the others, it doesn’t seem as important for the girl and boy names to match for some reason. But if we have a Gavin now, and a Rose next, would a future Asbj\u00f6rn just feel left out?? Augh, so much to think about! Am I over-thinking it all? I probably am.<\/p>\n

SO, to try to wrap this up (feel free to edit this email around to make sense): Should we stick with Gavin and just hope for the best for a future son’s name coordinating enough to not stick out? Or should we maybe use Magnus in the first name spot so that a future son will have a name similar to his brother? Does that make sense? I hope so. :) Thank you for your help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It WARMS MY HEART to see someone considering the Sibling Name Problem ahead of time! It’s one of my more fervent suggestions in Advice for First-Time Parents<\/a>, because if coordinated sibling names is something you’d prefer to have, it can help so much to think things out ahead of time.<\/p>\n

It does sound as if Gavin is one of your outlier names, as Emerson was mine: a name that you love, but that doesn’t belong to your preferred naming style. In which case, since Gavin and Magnus are both in your top two but Magnus does belong to your preferred style, I like your solution of naming him Magnus but using Gavin as the middle name so you still get to use it.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, naming style can change a bit once an actual baby is on the scene. And I do think Gavin and Magnus and Gunnar are compatible enough to be brother names, as long as you don’t want to use Haf\u00feor and Asbj\u00f6rn. And I’m looking at your girl name, Rose, which also goes acceptably with Magnus and Gunnar (I agree with you that the boy\/girl sibling name divide can be quite wide) but not so well with Haf\u00feor and Asbj\u00f6rn. I am starting to think that Haf\u00feor and Asbj\u00f6rn may also be outliers, but in another direction.<\/p>\n

So this is where I suggest a gamble: if you prefer to use Gavin as the first name, I suggest NOT using Magnus as the middle name. I know this will be upsetting if you don’t have another son, and it definitely IS a matter of choosing which way you think you’d regret LESS, and you specifically say you think you’d regret it more if you didn’t get to use the name, so all this is to say I understand if you don’t go this way—but what I suggest is taking one of the names you consider less usable as a first name, and using it as a middle name instead. Gavin Asbj\u00f6rn Scott Oldman, for example. A second son could be Magnus Ulrick ___ Oldman. A third son could be Gunnar Haf\u00feor ____ Oldman. (I saved Haf\u00feor for last, because I did the “Would I want this name?” test and decided that for myself I would rather not have the hassle of a letter that isn’t in my language’s alphabet. If you ARE living where it’s in your language’s alphabet, it would be my first or second choice for middle name.)<\/p>\n

But I can also see the wisdom of not saving a name for a future sibling, especially since parents often find that their first batch of name candidates goes out the window when the second child needs a name. I suggest the idea here mainly because we’re dealing with the tricky business of using an outlier name, which calls for extra-careful tactics. If I’d used Emerson for my first child, I would have been up a bit of a creek for future children—so if I’d also loved, say, Paisley, I suspect I’d be glad later to have it still in the wings, rather than having used it as Emerson’s middle name.<\/p>\n

So in that case I go back to thinking Magnus Gavin is the perfect solution: you get to use both of your top two names without gambling on the loss of either, but also without using in the first-name position an outlier that might paint you into a corner for future siblings (Gunnar Lincoln! Axel Westley!).<\/p>\n

Let’s have a poll over to the right to see what everyone else thinks. …Well, wait. That’s a tough poll, because to me the three options are: (1) use Magnus Gavin, (2) use Gavin Magnus, or (3) use Gavin but not with the middle name Magnus. But that will split the Gavin vote, making it look less than it is. No, we’re smart people, we can figure that out. Poll to the right! [Poll closed; see results below.]<\/p>\n

\"Oldman\"
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Name update!<\/strong> A. writes:<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for your help! I am WAY overdue with this, but it seems like, even though it’s been 6 months, I’ve just come up for air! All of your advice was great, and in the end, we decided to save Magnus in case we still love it if we have another son. My husband, a former lineman and now coach, enthusiastically picked the NEW middle name, so we now have G@vin Hal@s Sc0tt as his first and middle(s).<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, while we love the name Gavin, it just doesn’t fit him right now! I’m sure it will be a great fit as he gets older, but I kind of wish we had chosen something that had a cute nickname that he could have grown with (like Magnus- Maggie- Gus, even though that definitely isn’t his name, either!). So for now, he’s mostly Baby, Handsome, Gavi, or Rotten. :)<\/p>\n

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A. writes: I debated whether to write to you because I REALLY wanted my husband and I to figure this out ourselves, and we mostly have, but it has gotten to the point where I need an unbiased second (or fiftieth?) opinion. After having the PERFECT girl’s name picked out (Rose) and lovely visions of […]<\/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-6138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1B0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138","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=6138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9457,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions\/9457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}