Katie writes:<\/p>\n
I LOVE your blog and we need some major baby-naming help! My husband and I are 2 weeks away from having our first child, a boy \u2013 due June 5th – and are completely stuck on names! I have been thinking about names for a while now and did not think I\u2019d be in this situation. We just can\u2019t make a decision!<\/p>\n
My name is Katie and my husband is Daniel, but goes almost exclusively by Danny (and has since he was very young). Our last name sounds like \u201cLawson\u201d. Our original criteria for names was\u2026<\/p>\n
1. Not super popular (Our last name is relatively common and I don\u2019t want my child to have a common first and last name.)
\n2. Not girly at all (I would prefer not to have a name that could crossover and \u2018go girl\u2019. I know this is hard to predict, but would like to avoid if possible.)<\/p>\nOur current front-runner is Milo. We both really like it, but are worried now since all the buzz about the rising girl\u2019s name Mila. Will the popularity of Mila make Milo seem more girly and\/or more like an afterthought? Do you think Milo is too soft? We like that it is uncommon, but not \u2018made-up\u2019 or new, but can\u2019t decide if it is just right for our baby.<\/p>\n
Other names in consideration are\u2026
\n– Henry (I love, but husband does not\u2026 thinks it sounds too \u2018rich\u2019 or \u2018fancy\u2019, also it may be too common)
\n– Silas (I\u2019m not sold on this one)
\n– Lucas\/Luke (too common?)
\n– Walter\/Walt (I love, but husband thinks it is too much of a potential tease-magnet..)
\n– Everett (will it cross-over to the girls?)
\n– Hayes<\/p>\nNames that we like but can\u2019t use due to friends\/family\/etc: Evan, Owen, Cole, Elias, Arlo, Jack (due to the Titanic association with our last name), Leo (slight Titanic association\u2026), Chase<\/p>\n
For the middle name, we are hoping to use a family name. Options are Michael, Charles, Robert, David, Walter, or Matthew (We would consider these for first names, as we\u2019d love to have even more family connections in the name, but most of them are too common for us.)<\/p>\n
Oh and we do hope to have more kids. For a girl, our top pick is Blythe which is pretty rare, so I am not sure how some of these names would match up with that\u2026<\/p>\n
So, as you can tell, we are kind of all over the place\u2026 Any advice?!? What do you think of Milo??<\/p>\n
Thank you for reading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Milo is one of my own favorite boy names, and was on the Final Three list for my youngest, so it is safe to say I am greatly in favor.<\/p>\n
Some of the warning signs for a name “going girl” include: a gentle sound to the name (Noah, for example); having an easy feminine nickname (Ellie for Elliot, for example); the boys being done with it for now (Sydney, for example). Milo has the first but not the second or third.<\/p>\n
I think sometimes having a feminine version of a name can encourage people to use the boyish version for girls—but other times it protects the boyish version. To use dated examples, having Paul and Paula seems to make people less<\/i> likely to use Paul for a girl, not more. Same with Carl\/Carla, and Robert\/Roberta, and Eric\/Erica: it makes it additionally confusing to use the masculine version for a girl, since a feminine version already exists. Instead of the masculine version seeming androgynous, it seems fully boy. [An anonymous commenter brings up a great current example: Oliver and Olivia.]<\/p>\n
But does this apply with more modern versions? There’s Kyle and Kylie\/Kylee\/Kyleigh—and Kylie is rising as Kyle falls. As Kylie is used more and Kyle is used less, what happens to Kyle for girls?<\/p>\n
2000: 53 female Kyles; 11,964 male Kyles
\n2001: 56 female Kyles; 10,566 male Kyles
\n2002: 45 female Kyles; 10,059 male Kyles
\n2003: 61 female Kyles; 8,646 male Kyles
\n2004: 74 female Kyles; 7,818 male Kyles
\n2005: 38 female Kyles; 6,680 male Kyles
\n2006: 47 female Kyles; 6,147 male Kyles
\n2007: 41 female Kyles; 5,346 male Kyles
\n2008: 30 female Kyles; 4,694 male Kyles
\n2009: 34 female Kyles; 4,162 male Kyles
\n2010: 33 female Kyles; 3,560 male Kyles
\n2011: 57 female Kyles; 3,233 male Kyles<\/p>\nIt’s kind of hard to see a big obvious pattern, isn’t it? The name Kyle is going steadily and obviously down for boys, but it’s hopping all over the place for girls.<\/p>\n
So how does all this apply for Milo\/Mila? Well…that’s why I’m just sort of talking around it, without seeming to make any clear points: I can’t tell. Maybe the increasing popularity of Mila for girls will increase in a parallel way with Milo as the sounds come into style together. Maybe the increasing popularity of Mila will make some parents think of Milo for girls. Maybe the increasing popularity of Mila will make Milo even more solidly a boy name.<\/p>\n
If you want my personal guess, it’s that some people will always use “boy names” for girls—but that Milo is not likely to become “a girl name.” There were fewer female babies named Milo in 2011 than there were female babies named Jonathan (12 vs. 20).<\/p>\n
And we’ve already had a test period for this as the name Miley\/Mylee\/Myleigh came into style without causing Milo to become popular for girls.<\/p>\n
But the rising popularity of a similar name for girls may make some parents wary of the name, making it less common for boys. Every time a name comes up, someone will mention that they know a baby girl (or three) with that name. There might be hardly any female babies with the name compared to the number of male babies with the name, but the impression sticks: people say “Watch out!”—and parents do. And other parents think, “It’s going girl? I didn’t like it for a boy, but I do like it for a girl!” [Thanks, Nedra, for pointing out a major data fail: something was amiss with my files, and the number of female names in the example I originally used here was significantly different than I wrote. I’ve fixed the error here by taking out the specific example, and I’m looking into finding out what went wrong.]<\/p>\n
So far there’s no indication that Everett is going to turn into a girl name, either. The Social Security database shows 14 female babies named Everett in 2011, and another 6 named Everette. That’s nothing, relatively speaking: even Henry was given to 7 girls, and 22 were named Matthew. The similar name Evan was given to 99 baby girls. (Hayes was given to 286 boys and 16 girls.)<\/p>\n
If it were me, I’d consider Milo and Everett both safe choices, and I think both go well with Blythe. If you want to play it extra safe, your traditional middle name options are great for that: if the unexpected occurs and the first name becomes popular for girls, there’s a good completely masculine middle name to go by instead. (Or maybe not: 9 baby girls were named Charles in 2011! And another 9 baby girls named Robert! And 18 named David, and 36 named Michael!)<\/p>\n
Other names that sprang to mind while writing the post: Simon, Isaac, Oliver, Warren, Emmett, Felix, Malcolm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katie writes: I LOVE your blog and we need some major baby-naming help! My husband and I are 2 weeks away from having our first child, a boy \u2013 due June 5th – and are completely stuck on names! I have been thinking about names for a while now and did not think I\u2019d be […]<\/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-6179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1BF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179","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=6179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9500,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6179\/revisions\/9500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}