Angie writes:<\/p>\n
Our second child, sex unknown, will be joining our family at the end of the month. Big sister is Nora Grace and she just turned two. We are pretty settled on a boy’s name, either Henry Isaac or Charles (Charlie) Isaac, but are having some serious trouble coming up with a middle name for a daughter.<\/p>\n
We had originally picked out Penelope Jane if this child is a girl, however due to a brand new addition to the family, I am thinking that Penelope (possible nn Nell) is too close to our new niece Elle and have decided to move on. My husband thinks I am crazy, he may be right, but he’s humoring me. We have really liked the name Ruth (Ruthie) through this whole pregnancy so we were more than comfortable returning to it. The problem I’m having is with the middle name. We originally decided on Ruth Allison. Then I convinced my husband to agree to Ruth Emilia. I think I am leaning towards a more contemporary name to balance out Ruth. The latest one I like (as of this morning) is Ruth Harper. Selling Harper to the hubs will be a long shot.<\/p>\n
Do you think you and your readers could please, please help us come up with a perfect middle name for a baby girl named Ruth? Also, our last name starts with a D (it kind of sounds like “drizzle”) so any names starting with I or O are out.<\/p>\n
Out of curiosity, am I really crazy for thinking Penelope is too “close” to Elle Marie? Of those I have asked, the consensus is split.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Oh, fun. Let’s definitely have a poll about the Penelope\/Elle question. In my opinion, it’s not too close, even if you were 100% sure you would use the nickname Nell. I suppose I wouldn’t name two sisters<\/span> Elle and Penelope, but cousins should be okay. …Though if they get along, they’ll probably like it and go around calling themselves “Elle and Nell! Elle and Nell! Elle and Nell! Elle and Nell!…” until you wish you’d gone with Ruth.<\/p>\n
So let’s discuss Ruth. Any middle name starting with a vowel is going to give you word-initials: RAD, RED, RID, ROD, or RUD. Okay, fine, RUD is not a word, but the other four are.<\/p>\n
Different people have different preferences when it comes to the rhythm of a name. For a 1-syllable first name and a 2-syllable surname, I like a 4-syllable middle name with the emphasis on the second syllable (picky much?): Ruth Penelope Drizzle (RPD). Ruth Felicity Drizzle (RFD). Ruth Elizabeth Drizzle (RED). Ruth Amelia Drizzle (RAD) or Ruth Emelia Drizzle (RED). Ruth Cordelia Drizzle (RCD). Ruth Victoria Drizzle (RVD). Ruth Cecelia Drizzle (RCD). Like that.<\/p>\n
I also like the sound of 2-syllable middle names with the emphasis on the second syllable: Ruth Nicole Drizzle (RND). Ruth Louise Drizzle (RLD). Ruth Noelle Drizzle (RND). Ruth Simone Drizzle (RSD). Ruth Marie Drizzle (RMD). Like that.<\/p>\n
And I also like the sound of 3-syllable middle names with the emphasis on the second syllable: Ruth Clarissa Drizzle (RCD). Ruth Delaney Drizzle (RDD). Ruth Geneva Drizzle (RGD). Ruth Jacinta Drizzle (RJD). Ruth Matilda Drizzle (RMD). Ruth Mckenna Drizzle (RMD).<\/p>\n
This is too many options for a reasonable poll, so I’ll put the “Is Penelope too close to Elle?” poll over to the right [poll closed; see below], and we can put middle name suggestions\/votes for Ruth in the comments section.<\/p>\n
Poll results<\/span> (271 votes total) for “Is Penelope too close to Elle for cousins?”:
Yes: 44 votes, roughly 16%
No: 227 votes, roughly 84%<\/p>\nName update<\/span> 01-31-2009! Angie writes:<\/p>\n
I just wanted to thank you and your readers for all of your great suggestions and helping us with our baby girl names! I did decide to put Penelope back in the hat thanks to your poll and comments, and we decided to wait to see the baby to make up our minds. After all of that, on January 23 at 1:37pm I delivered a 8lb 11 oz baby BOY and we named him Henry Isaac. He is the sweetest thing ever and we and so blessed to welcome him to our family.<\/p>\n
Thanks again!
Angie<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angie writes: Our second child, sex unknown, will be joining our family at the end of the month. Big sister is Nora Grace and she just turned two. We are pretty settled on a boy’s name, either Henry Isaac or Charles (Charlie) Isaac, but are having some serious trouble coming up with a middle name […]<\/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-7114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1QK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7114","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=7114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}