I’m due with my second child, a boy, in just under three months and I’m starting to feel a little frantic about finding the right name for him. I would absolutely love your help. My name is Erica, my husband is Craig, and our last name is $tubblefield. Our three year old daughter’s name is Emrie Kent. We decided on Emrie because we both really liked Emery but felt like that middle syllable made it a little choppy and her middle name, Kent, was my dad’s name. We decided on her name early on in my pregnancy and never looked back. Boys names are so much more difficult for us! As far as style, we’re kind of all over the place and we don’t really love any of the names on our list. If this baby were a girl, her name would most likely have been Holland which is my husband’s great-grandmother’s surname. Other girl names I love are Ivy, Story, Jules and Elodie. We’d like for this baby’s middle name to be James after my husband’s grandfather. We are looking for something somewhat uncommon but not trendy. For example, I really like Asher, Archer, Milo, Bennet etc. but they are much too trendy and I’d really prefer to go with something more classic yet unique. Also, my husband doesn’t like any of those names :). We also really like surname names. We would like to avoid using another E because we’d like to have at least one more child and don’t want to get stuck with the all-E thing later on. I would also like to avoid B names as I don’t want his initials to be BS (does that even matter? Am I being weird about this?). And I’d like to avoid C’s as well because my daughter and I are both E’s and if my husband and our son were both C’s, well, that’s just a little too cutesy for me. So, no E, B, or C names.<\/p>\n
Names that we’ve tossed around but haven’t fallen in love with:<\/p>\n
Abel – we both like this name but my husband thinks that the double ‘ble’ sound of Abel $tubble (field) sounds weird & I kinda think he’s right.<\/p>\n
Merrit – we both sort of like but don’t love. And I worry that people would call him Mary.<\/p>\n
Noel – this is a family name that I like but, again, we’re not sold on. Also, Noel James doesn’t really work together.<\/p>\n
And that’s pretty much our list at this point. Pathetic, right?!<\/p>\n
Another problem we have is that a lot of names I like end with the letter S which doesn’t work with our last name. For example, Hayes, Brooks, West, etc. When said together they end up sounding like Hey $tubblefield, Brooke $tubblefield, Wes $tubblefield.<\/p>\n
As you can see, we need your help! I know there’s an amazing name out there for this little guy and I’d love for you and your readers to help us figure out what it is!<\/p>\n
And I promise to send an adorable photo of him with a name update once he’s here :). Thanks so much!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I too prefer to avoid initials such as BS. I don’t think it’s a disaster to use them, but when I put it to the “Would _I_ want this name?” test, it fails: no, I don’t want those initials. So I tend to avoid them when possible, though I can imagine situations where a name would be worth it.<\/p>\n
I agree that the repeating -bel\/-ble sound of Abel $tubblefield is less than ideal. Would you like Abram instead?<\/p>\n
Noel James works for me, so I’d leave that one on the list.<\/p>\n
It takes away the family-name connection, but Nolan is another option. (I also like Joel, but not with James.)<\/p>\n
Are there any family surnames that would work as a first name, in addition to Holland?<\/p>\n
I’m not sure if anyone would use the nickname Mary\/Merry for the name Merritt. I’m hoping someone who knows a Merritt can tell us if it’s happened. It’s not a nickname that would have occurred to me, I don’t think; it seems kind of like using the nickname Callie for a man named Calvin, or Annie for a man named Andrew, or Ellie for a man named Elliot: conceivable, but it seems like most people naturally avoid it.<\/p>\n
It’s difficult to find a name that is both classic and uncommon. It generally means looking for names that are not currently in style—which is another way of saying the names are not currently very well-liked. You could for example use Archibald instead of Archer to avoid trendiness, but that would be a strong stream to swim against.<\/p>\n
Speaking of swimming upstream, another issue here is that it looks to me as if your tastes are very compatible with current fashions. I think it can help to avoid the word “trendy,” since I don’t think anyone would want to think of their naming style that way—and yet the upshot is a nice thing: you like names that are in style, which is lucky for both you and your children. Imagine only liking names that everyone else considered shockingly ugly and unusable.<\/p>\n
Where was I? Oh, yes: so I think the goal here is to find a name that most people don’t even consider, but then when they hear it on someone else’s baby they’re surprised to find they like it. The problem with this goal is that that would make a good definition for a name that is about to become popular.<\/p>\n
I think the surname route is going to be a good one. Surnames can sound classic as first names (even if they’ve only recently been used as first names) because of their long histories as surnames. And Emrie is a surname name, and I like when sibling names coordinate in style. I think I’d be looking for something that has two syllables, though I’d continue to try out names of other lengths. My favorite would be a surname from the family tree, especially from the mother’s side if the family surname is from the father’s side.<\/p>\n
Instead of Milo, I wonder if you’d like Miller. Miller $tubblefield; Emrie and Miller.<\/p>\n
Instead of Archer, I wonder if you’d like Hatcher, Thatcher, or Fletcher.<\/p>\n
Instead of Asher, I wonder if you’d like Escher or Fisher. (I noticed that Escher starts with an E, but sometimes a suggestion that doesn’t quite work can still lead to other ideas.)<\/p>\n
Looking again at Abel, I wanted to find some surname version of it—Abelson, maybe. But that doesn’t eliminate the -bel\/-ble issue. I like the general sound of it, though. Anderson? Aronson? Abbott? There are so many good surnames!<\/p>\n
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Name update!<\/strong> Erica writes:<\/p>\n Our son was born a few weeks ago & I wanted to update you & your wonderful readers on his name! While searching our family tree we came across the surname Abbott (which is also a name you suggested!) & my husband & I both agreed that it was the perfect name for our baby boy. Abbott James is the sweetest little guy and his big sister Emrie couldn’t be more in love. Here they are together, thanks again for all your help!<\/p>\n Erica writes: I’m due with my second child, a boy, in just under three months and I’m starting to feel a little frantic about finding the right name for him. I would absolutely love your help. My name is Erica, my husband is Craig, and our last name is $tubblefield. Our three year old daughter’s […]<\/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-7457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Wh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7457","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=7457"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7895,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7457\/revisions\/7895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/image.jpeg\")
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