I just discovered your blog a couple of days ago and have been reading it non-stop since (back into the ‘archives’!)<\/p>\n
I should start by saying that I come from a family of unique names-my name is Cailen (pronounced Ky-len), and my three brothers are Tison, Anders, and Eamonn. I loved growing up with a different name and my husband (whose name is Ben) is also into the idea of selecting a unique name for our baby.<\/p>\n
Our son is due at the end of June. We really like the sound of scottish\/Irish\/Gaelic names given that our last name is Irish-but haven’t fallen in love with anything yet. My family heritage is scottish and my maiden name (Campbell) is really the only name that we have selected that has stuck with us throughout the pregnancy. We love that it has meaning and that it is somewhat unique. My husband is pretty much set on it, but I have a couple if reservations. It seems like everyone named Campbell is a girl, and I don’t want people to see our son’s name in writing (Campbell McCormick) and think that he’s a girl. We were thinking about pairing it with a more masculine middle name to counteract this a little bit, but I’m worried that middle names aren’t necessarily used enough to make a difference (middle names so far are James-from my side of the family or Marshall-from his side of the family).<\/p>\n
Just to give you an idea, we had the name Ensly picked out for a girl. . . Other names that we have considered but do not want to use for our baby include: Jamison, Maddox, Calan, Cullen. I like the names Beckett and Bennett, but my husband does not.<\/p>\n
We are really looking for a meaningful name (which could just mean it represents our distant heritages) that is unique but not so odd that it sounds made up.<\/p>\n
We appreciate any help you can provide!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I love it so much when a maiden name works as a first name, and yours is great for that. Let’s start by seeing how the name has being used in the U.S. over the last ten years of Social Security Administration data:<\/p>\n
2002: 197 girls, 143 boys
\n2003: 260 girls, 164 boys
\n2004: 318 girls, 164 boys
\n2005: 389 girls, 186 boys
\n2006: 435 girls, 177 boys
\n2007: 392 girls, 148 boys
\n2008: 387 girls, 165 boys
\n2009: 396 girls, 147 boys
\n2010: 359 girls, 186 boys
\n2011: 237 girls, 147 boys<\/p>\n
It looks like it’s holding relatively steady: more girls than boys, but boys are not giving it up—and girls might be. It’s hard to say what it’s going to do next: is it falling for girls, but staying steady for boys? or is it in a brief dip for girls, but basically staying steady? I’ll look forward to seeing the 2012 data when it comes out in May.<\/p>\n
There are two things that make the name Campbell seem more girl-name to me: the -bell ending, in an age of Isabelle; and the potential nickname Cammie. But on the other hand, Cam is a common nickname for boys, and surname names often come across as more boyish. Still, the way the name has been consistently used more often for girls would concern me if it were my own son: any unisex name will come with the occasional mistake\/confusion—and the more it tips toward one sex, the more mistakes\/confusion for the other sex. I think I would prefer to save it for a possible future daughter (I love the mother\/daughter link), or use it as a middle name.<\/p>\n
If you do use it for a boy, I definitely like your plan of using a clearly boyish middle name. The average person wouldn’t know the middle name, but doctors’ offices and schools are the places it’s most important to me that people keep straight if my child is a boy or a girl. Campbell Marshall seems like a lot of L, but Campbell James is great.<\/p>\n
My primary concern with the name is that Campbell McCormick is such a brand-heavy name: I immediately thought soup\/spices. It sounds like a successful business conglomeration. Neither name on its own gives me that instant association, but together the effect was startling to me when I saw it in the email. Even for a girl, I think I would use Campbell only as a middle name. On the other hand, if you do use it as a first name, “It was my \/ my wife’s \/ my mother’s maiden name” seems like it would cover just about any startled reactions.<\/p>\n
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Name update!<\/strong> Cailen writes:<\/p>\n Our beautiful baby boy was born on June 22nd! We decided to go with Campbell James McCormick. It really fits him perfectly and my husband and I are so happy with the final decision (we debated the middle name for about a day in the hospital and ended up going with our original favorite!) We have had very good feed back from ppl we meet and family members\/friends love his name! Thank you for all of the help!<\/p>\n Cailen writes: I just discovered your blog a couple of days ago and have been reading it non-stop since (back into the ‘archives’!) I should start by saying that I come from a family of unique names-my name is Cailen (pronounced Ky-len), and my three brothers are Tison, Anders, and Eamonn. I loved growing up […]<\/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-7426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1VM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426","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=7426"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7970,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7426\/revisions\/7970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/image1.jpeg\")
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