{"id":6160,"date":"2012-06-18T07:39:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T11:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2012\/06\/18\/baby-girl-whittaker\/"},"modified":"2014-06-18T13:51:05","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T17:51:05","slug":"baby-girl-whittaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2012\/06\/18\/baby-girl-whittaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Whittaker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catherine writes:<\/p>\n

\n
Hello!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I recently found your blog, and love the idea of impartial naming help!\u00a0 My husband (Jeff) and I (Catherine) are expecting our first \u2013 a baby girl on July 14.\u00a0 We started discussing baby names before we were even pregnant.\u00a0 The only issue?\u00a0 We had no baby girl names\u2026 Baby boy name?\u00a0 Definitely checked off the list \u2013 Zeke Myers Whittaker (after my husband\u2019s grandfather), which we still plan to use if we have a little boy at some point.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We went through a list of 4,000 girl names from the US Census \u2013 and in the end decided on the same two names we liked\u00a0before <\/i>going through all those names!\u00a0 Our long list included Clare, Maris, Meryl, Adele, Lucy, and Penelope.\u00a0 My husband really liked Kate (I thought it was too close to my name) and Caroline (I thought it was too popular).\u00a0 I really liked Evelyn (Evie for short) and Hazel, but he vetoed both.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In the end, we really just keep going back-and-forth between these two\u2026<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Alice Marion Whittaker<\/div>\n
Louise Marion Whittaker<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Marion is our frontrunner for the middle name, as it was my great grandmother\u2019s name and I love the family significance.\u00a0 But what do you think about the first names?\u00a0 We like them because they\u2019re different and a little quirky without being too unusual.\u00a0 Growing up as a \u2018Catherine,\u2019 it\u2019s important to me to give our daughter a name where she won\u2019t end up being one of 10 in her class.\u00a0 I also like that both names still feel classic.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Alice means \u2018noble one\u2019 and Louise means \u2018famous warrior\u2019 (a meaning that I\u00a0love<\/i>).\u00a0 I have liked the name Alice for years (and it is my family\u2019s favorite between the two), but recently my husband suggested Louise.\u00a0 I love that we could call her Lou or Lulu (maybe even Louie?) \u2013 all adorable nicknames.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
My main concerns:\u00a0 I\u2019m just not sure if Alice is overplayed?\u00a0 I feel like there has been a lot of buzz around Alice recently, and I don\u2019t know if it has become too popular.\u00a0 For Louise, I\u2019m not sure if it is\u00a0too quirky<\/i>?\u00a0 Maybe a little old-lady-ish? (which I originally really liked about it, but have gotten a lukewarm to negative reaction from family about).\u00a0 One of my sisters even told me that Louise sounds like an ugly old lady.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We briefly considered Louisa and Eloise as similar sounding but more \u2018modern\u2019 versions of Louise \u2013 but we both decided that we couldn\u2019t picture ourselves with a daughter named either one of those (maybe they\u2019re just a little too modern\/trendy for us?)<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Lastly, I’m starting to worry that the answer isn’t either name? I keep waiting to be totally sure and have that a-ha moment, but I just feel so indecisive about naming her!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Any help would be so appreciated!\u00a0 I\u2019d love to get your thoughts. Thanks so much for your help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

\n
Sorry for another email, but we are almost 4 weeks away from our due date \u2013 and still without a name!\u00a0 We were pretty settled on Alice, but now know someone who recently (in May) named their baby Alice.\u00a0 It\u2019s definitely not off the table, but it did cause us to reconsider.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We have recently revisited Lucy, Penelope (it\u2019s my great grandmother\u2019s name \u2013 but we\u2019d call her Penny) and Jane.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We\u2019ve also been seriously thinking of Hazel Grace.\u00a0 My maiden name is Hazle****t, so I thought it might be a fun nod to that?\u00a0 Or is that too far removed, since it\u2019s just a part of my maiden name?\u00a0 We\u2019ve been \u2018testing out\u2019 Hazel, but I\u2019m just not 100% on it yet.\u00a0 Plus some family members have made it known that they really don\u2019t like the name (although this is not a deal breaker for us, because I think they\u2019ll get over it once she\u2019s born).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
We\u2019ve also considered naming her Myers \u2013 a family name that was our middle name choice, if we were having a boy.\u00a0 My husband feels okay about that one, but he worries that it\u2019s a little too different.\u00a0 We also have a large neighborhood in our city (and the school that she\u2019ll most likely go to) with the name Myers in it.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Lastly, we\u2019re no longer sold on a middle name \u2013 and considered using the previous middle name contender, Marion, as her first name?\u00a0 We\u2019ve also been thinking of Grace or Elizabeth as possible middle names.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I\u2019m starting to get worried about not having a name at all by her arrival \u2013 and even more worried about ending up with baby name regret because we couldn\u2019t find one that we loved!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Any advice would be so appreciated!!<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

From your first letter, it sounds as if you had it narrowed down to Alice and Louise, and no amount of research was adding any further serious candidates. Then Alice was taken out of the running for you. So it sounds to me as if this brings you to Louise, but that last-minute jitters are setting in.<\/p>\n

I think Louise Marion Whittaker is a wonderful name. It has long roots, it’s fun to say, it’s great with your chosen boy name, you love the meaning, you love the nicknames, and you’ve liked it consistently throughout this process. Your sister’s reaction tells me only that it’s time to stop asking for family input; it sounds like family input so far has made things more difficult for you, and I think you’re right they’ll come around to what you choose.<\/p>\n

Hazel would also work well; it would give you a repeating Z if you had a Zeke later on, which can be a plus or a minus depending on your style. But it sounds like Hazel falls into the category of names you like but that don’t make it to the finalist list.<\/p>\n

Marion seems like another good choice, if it feels like a finalist to you. But again, I’m getting the impression that this is more like anxious last-minute reshuffling\/reconsidering, rather than a candidate.<\/p>\n

Myers seems like an outlier name for you: a name you like that is not your usual style. Choosing it would make future name choices significantly more difficult (the other girl names on your lists wouldn’t work very well as sister names for a Myers), and may also later make you wish you hadn’t ruled out your perfect boy name.<\/p>\n

If you weren’t particularly close to your great-grandmother (i.e., if you’re choosing her name from the family tree but not because you specifically want to honor her), I might like Hazle****t for the middle name instead, or Hazel. Or you could use any of the other considered names: Alice, Penelope, Caroline, etc.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Name update!<\/b> Catharine writes:<\/p>\n

Many belated thanks to you and your readers!\u00a0 Hazel Marion was born on 7\/14, weighing 7 lbs and 14 oz.<\/p>\n

Your input was incredibly helpful \u2013 although, she did end up being almost 12 hours old before she had an official name!\u00a0 We absolutely adore our sweet Hazel and her name \u2013 it just took some encouragement for us to tune out others!\u00a0 And, much as you said, our family has come around to loving her name also.<\/p>\n

We definitely plan to use Zeke and Louise for future siblings.\u00a0 Thank you again \u2013 and hope this Christmas picture makes up for the overdue update!
\n\"Hazel\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catherine writes: Hello! I recently found your blog, and love the idea of impartial naming help!\u00a0 My husband (Jeff) and I (Catherine) are expecting our first \u2013 a baby girl on July 14.\u00a0 We started discussing baby names before we were even pregnant.\u00a0 The only issue?\u00a0 We had no baby girl names\u2026 Baby boy name?\u00a0 […]<\/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-6160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Bm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160","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=6160"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9480,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6160\/revisions\/9480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}