Laura writes:<\/p>\n
My husband and I are struggling to agree on a name for our first baby – a girl due on March 7th. Our last name is one syllable and rhymes with “toast.” I like feminine, melodic, classic names. I’d like to avoid top-ten names, but top-100 is ok, especially if they are timeless. Caroline, Natalie, Eliza and Madeline have been my top picks. My husband wants a one or two syllable name with a “hard” vowel sound and tends to be drawn to names that were popular for our generation – Amy, Lisa, Caitlin, etc. I think these names are boring and dated. He thinks my names are weird and complicated. To work with our last name, we’ve both agreed that anything that starts with “k”, ends in “y” or has a prominent “s” sound (like Alyssa) is out. But that’s about all we can agree on. Any help would be greatly appreciated!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is tricky: based on what you and your husband each want, my plan would be to make a list of names that would be familiar to him, but that wouldn’t feel to you like they were already used up by our generation. But–that’s exactly what your list is! It seems like it would be perfect: familiar names that were used by people our age, but that still feel fresh enough to use now. So why doesn’t he like them? If he thinks a name like Caroline or Natalie is weird and complicated, I’m at a loss. Nevertheless, perhaps if we continue to throw similar names at him, he will find some he likes? But no -y endings, no prominent S sound, no K initial, not Top 10, two syllables with a long vowel—it’s a tough order. I won’t try to follow all of those, but will instead concentrate on the Y\/S\/K part and hope he will come around a bit on the syllables and vowels.<\/p>\n
Anna
Bridget
Claire
Clara
Elizabeth
Eva
Jane
Jillian
June
Meredith
Miriam
Piper
Sabrina
Violet<\/p>\n(I had some -ia names on there—Claudia, Lia\/Leah, Victoria—but I’m not sure the -ia sound works with the Y of your surname.)<\/p>\n
I think I’d start by pointing out to him how similar some names are to ones he says he likes. There is very little difference between a name like Lisa and a name like Eliza. Same with Caitlin and Caroline: quite similar sounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Laura writes: My husband and I are struggling to agree on a name for our first baby – a girl due on March 7th. Our last name is one syllable and rhymes with “toast.” I like feminine, melodic, classic names. I’d like to avoid top-ten names, but top-100 is ok, especially if they are timeless. […]<\/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-6463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Gf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6463","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=6463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}