{"id":7198,"date":"2008-08-26T16:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T20:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2008\/08\/26\/baby-girl-parrott\/"},"modified":"2008-08-26T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T20:17:00","slug":"baby-girl-parrott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2008\/08\/26\/baby-girl-parrott\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Parrott"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicki writes:<\/p>\n

Our baby is due in 2 weeks and we have yet to agree on a name…I would truly appreciate your help, even though we’ve kept all of our possible choices secret, even from family! While we had just one name all set and ready to go for a boy, we are indeed having a girl. Our last name is Parrott, so that rules out a few names (Polly especially comes to mind). My husband is not opposed to alliteration, but the more I think about it, I’m not sure…I mean, Baby Name Wizard mentions that it can sound like a cartoon character (the “Jenny Jumps” example), and a co-worker of mine whose preteen daughter’s initials are P.P. did admit that kids at school call her that, and she of course hates it. And what is the absolute favorite name of my husband’s, that would be mine if I wasn’t so worried about these things? Paige.<\/p>\n

Loren is the middle name of my husband, his late grandfather (who was special to me as well), and first name of his great-great grandfather, so we plan to use it eventually–either middle name of our next child if it’s a boy, or now as a first name, with Evelyn as the middle name (my late grandmother). Having the middle name be after someone in the family, whether a grandparent or parent, is very important to me, and hubby agrees.<\/p>\n

So, our top picks for first name so far:
Loren
Paige (hubby’s favorite)
Natalie (my favorite)
Parker
Makenna
Makayla
Ella
Mallory
Bridget
Claire<\/p>\n

I like the idea of a name that can be shortened to a nickname, and both of us would prefer to stay away from the “Top 10” names. Some names we like that are already used by cousins are Madeline, Morgan, Carly, Lily, Julia. Speaking of cousins, one just had a baby earlier this summer with a similar name, Laurel Edith, to our plan of Loren Evelyn…would that be too weird? And am I obsessing too much about the P.P. thing? Because Paige Parrott does sound fun and playful, I just want to make sure she’s still taken seriously when she’s older, when she’s in the “real world”.<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for such a fun blog! Looking forward to hearing from you!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the most useful things I read in The Baby Name Wizard<\/a> was this question: “If you were starting life today, knowing everything you know about the world, is this the name you would want to represent you?”<\/p>\n

The problem is that different people want different things. I don’t want a distinctive name myself, but I notice Faith Popcorn and Parker Posy and Picabo Street haven’t had theirs changed—and many people dislike their own plain names and even get them legally changed to something more distinctive. Still, the “would you want this name?” test is a good Thinking Exercise when considering names for a baby.<\/p>\n

If I were you, I’d come down on the side of not using Paige\/P.P.—but you might come down on the other side of it, as might your daughter someday. Perhaps a good “have it both ways” decision would be to use Paige as the middle name: she can use it as a nickname if she likes it, and so can you. You’ve said it’s important to you to use the middle name slot for a family name, and I’m in that camp, too—but what if you used a family name for the first name instead? Loren Paige Parrott has family significance, and also has the name Paige but without the P.P. problem.<\/p>\n

I’m going to pretend, though, that I can see you shaking your head no: you want to use the middle name slot for family names only. From your list, then, my favorites are:<\/p>\n

Loren Evelyn Parrott (LEP)
Natalie Evelyn Parrott (NEP)
Mallory Evelyn Parrott (MEP)<\/p>\n

(I think it’s fine that a cousin has a baby named Laurel Edith. Even if you see each other all the time, the names are different enough that at worst they’ll cause minor, occasional confusion.)<\/p>\n

Okay, everybody, let’s vote! Pick a name for Baby Girl Parrott! Poll to the right as usual!<\/strike> [Poll closed; see below.]<\/p>\n

[Poll results (266 votes total):
Loren: 87 votes, roughly 33%
Paige: 17 votes, roughly 6%
Natalie: 74 votes, roughly 28%
Parker: 2 votes, roughly 1%
Makenna: 4 votes, roughly 2%
Makayla: 2 votes, roughly 1%
Ella: 11 votes, roughly 4%
Mallory: 44 votes, roughly 17%
Bridget: 7 votes, roughly 3%
Claire: 18 votes, roughly 7%]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicki writes: Our baby is due in 2 weeks and we have yet to agree on a name…I would truly appreciate your help, even though we’ve kept all of our possible choices secret, even from family! While we had just one name all set and ready to go for a boy, we are indeed having […]<\/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-7198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1S6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7198","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=7198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}