Josie writes:<\/p>\n
I have a two part question. We are expecting our first child- a boy- in August. We have decided on one of the names- Clayborne, and will call him Clay (family name). My husband thinks this is better as a middle name and I hate the idea of using the middle name as the name he will go by. I think this will lead to a lifetime of confusion and always having to explain that your first name is something else but you actually go by the middle name. So, my first question is, what do you think of going by the middle name?<\/p>\n
And the next question is what to pair it with. Our original plan was to name him Clayborne Walsh (also a family name) but we are having second thoughts about Walsh. Other possibilities are more common family names: Joseph, Andrew, Charles, Robert.<\/p>\n
Our last name is common and goes with anything.<\/p>\n
So, do you think Clayborne works better as the first name or middle name and should we stick with Walsh or change it to one of the other names- either as first or middle. (Clayborne Joseph, Joseph Clayborne, etc.) We are going to call him Clay regardless.<\/p>\n
Thanks so much!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sometimes when parents decide to call a child by the middle name, it’s because they feel obligated to use a family name as the first name, but they don’t actually like the name or want to use it—or perhaps it’s a Jr\/III name that would cause confusion. So they call the child by the middle name, and that makes sense to me.<\/p>\n
Sometimes when parents decide to use the family name as the middle name, it’s because they don’t like the family name and don’t want to use it. So they tuck it into the middle-name slot, and they call the child by the first name but have fulfilled the obligation to use the middle name, and that makes sense to me.<\/p>\n
But in your case, you like<\/span> the family name, and you want<\/span> to call him that, and you’re going<\/span> to call him that no matter what. So it doesn’t make sense to me to put it in the middle-name slot: there’s no reason for it, and that’s what would cause the confusion. I think you should give him Clayborne as his first name.<\/p>\n
Now, about the middle name. I think Walsh is a great middle name, and especially with Clayborne: Clayborne Walsh. Nice! But if you’re feeling ho-hum about it, let’s take a look at the other options:<\/p>\n
Clayborne Joseph
Clayborne Andrew
Clayborne Charles
Clayborne Robert<\/p>\nMy favorite is still Clayborne Walsh.<\/p>\n
But let’s vote!
Poll over to the right.<\/strike> [poll closed; see below]<\/p>\n[Poll results:<\/span>
Clayborne Walsh: 115 votes, roughly 69%
Clayborne Joseph: 19 votes, roughly 11%
Clayborne Andrew: 20 votes, roughly 12%
Clayborne Charles: 4 votes, roughly 2%
Clayborne Robert: 9 votes, roughly 5%]<\/p>\n[Name update!<\/span> Josie writes:<\/p>\n
Hi-
Wanted to let you know that our baby boy was born last week and we ended up naming him Clayborne Joseph. And we literally didn’t decide on the middle name until a few hours after his birth.
thanks for your help.
josie]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Josie writes: I have a two part question. We are expecting our first child- a boy- in August. We have decided on one of the names- Clayborne, and will call him Clay (family name). My husband thinks this is better as a middle name and I hate the idea of using the middle name as […]<\/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-7212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Sk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212","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=7212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}