Cindy writes:<\/p>\n
I ran across your website a few months ago, while doing yet another internet search for baby naming philosophies, and have become a little bit addicted, I must admit! I wasn’t planning on writing in myself, because I thought that my husband and I had pretty much settled on a name for our first child, a son due at the end of October. But as the date gets closer, I am starting to panic a little bit that the name we picked may not “fit” once the baby is born, and that we might need a backup. I thought maybe the Swistle team might be able to help!<\/p>\n
Our last name is Walker. We both love<\/strong><\/u> the name Finn (despite it’s rising popularity) and have two choices for middle names – Michael or Ryan, my father’s first & last name. Right now, the name we are semi-settled on is Finn Michael Walker. Which I really do love. However, on Finn, I get caught up in two areas:<\/p>\n
1) I rather like the idea of names that are longer but can be shortened into a nickname. I think it gives the child options as they get older, plus I just think that plain “Finn” is a little too curt. In this instance, the only long version of Finn I really like is Finnian. My husband is not so sure if having the longer name is necessary. Thoughts?<\/p>\n
2) The meaning of “Finn” is “fair” (as in light skinned or fair haired). While both my husband and I are pale skinned, and he is very fair – reddish blonde hair w\/blue eyes & lots of freckles, my family is a bit darker in the genetic background – my mom is French & Porteguese and my whole immediate family has red\/brown hair (me) to dark brown hair. So there is a chance this kid is going to show up and not be fair haired at all.<\/p>\n
This is where the backup plan comes in. Here are some of the “rules” we’ve kept in mind picking out a name, and I would love your help in coming up with another option in case he arrives and is just not a Finn.<\/p>\n
1) Our last name (Walker) is extremely common, so we are trying to pick a name that is not completely bizarre, but also not too common (James, Michael, Peter, etc.) so that he doesn’t have to share his name with a bunch of other folks out there.<\/p>\n
2) We are partial to names of Irish descent, and while the meanings aren’t dealbreakers, I try to stay away from ones that mean something dark or ominous (for instance, I liked Cillian until I found out it meant “war.”)<\/p>\n
3) The “er” at the end of our name sort of precludes us from using any first names that end in “er”<\/p>\n
4) Must work with middle name of either “Michael” or “Ryan.”<\/p>\n
Thanks in advance for your help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think it’s normal to panic a little about the chosen name as the due date approaches—or at least, I always do. If you both love the name Finn, I think you should use it.<\/p>\n
One of my children has a one-syllable name, and what I’ve found is that we naturally lengthen it in other ways: for example, if we’d had a baby named Finn, we would have called him Baby Finn, Finny-Finny-Finn-Mo-Finn, Finneroo, Sweetie-Finn, Finn-a-linn, Finn Michael, Finley, Finnsums, etc. And now that we’re used to it, we also use it on its own and it no longer seems “too short” to me as I’d feared it would. (People do occasionally assume it’s short for something, but not often.)<\/p>\n
I think it’s okay that the meaning is “fair” and the baby might not in fact be blond. I don’t know what the name’s original meaning had in mind, but the word “fair” can also mean good-looking (“Monday’s child is fair of face”), or light-skinned (without being light-haired), or smooth-skinned. Or, of course, and this is REALLY stretching it, it can refer to justice, or to moderation. Or, um, to a carnival.<\/p>\n
So in short, I think you should stick with what you’ve got. Finn Michael Walker is a terrific name and you both love it—what could be better?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cindy writes: I ran across your website a few months ago, while doing yet another internet search for baby naming philosophies, and have become a little bit addicted, I must admit! I wasn’t planning on writing in myself, because I thought that my husband and I had pretty much settled on a name for our […]<\/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-7160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Ru","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7160","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=7160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}