Avery writes:<\/p>\n
Hi Swistle!
\nI’ve been a blog follower for over a year now, and I thought after reading all of your great suggestions to others, that when it came time for my husband and I to start talking about what we would name our baby, we’d magically agree and the name would just “work.” No such luck.<\/p>\nOur baby girl is due in early fall and our last name sounds like Jasper with a “K.”
\nMy husband is from a family with very traditional Catholic names. His name is Paul Joseph and all of his siblings have what I would consider to be older-style names. My husband goes by his initials, and we have both agreed that what we name our child is what we want her to be called–I strongly dislike nicknames. I’m a bit younger than my husband and my name is Avery. My name was considered “unique” when I was growing up and I always got compliments on how much people liked it. Of course now the name Avery is very popular, which is fine with me. I commend my parents on their great taste in naming.<\/p>\nOur naming problem, I feel, stems from our own names. My husband, with his traditional, older-style name, can’t get on board with my more modern name choices.<\/p>\n
The two names my husband is stuck on are Charlotte and Penelope. Both names that I would never, ever choose. I enjoy names that my husband considers to be “boy” names.<\/p>\n
Names that I love:
\nLandry
\nBerkley
\nRowan
\nHarper (This is at the bottom of my list of likes because I don’t know if I like the double “-er” sound, and because it seems to be quite popular.)<\/p>\nNames that we removed from the list:
\nCaroline (We dislike the nickname Carrie. Again, I want our child to be called by her name, not a nickname.)
\nBrynn (It sounds too much like his Mom’s name.)
\nBrynlee (We think this would be cute for an infant, but a hard name to pull off as a 30-something professional.)
\nMaryAnn (I love this name because it pays homage to my grandmother; however, he has about 10 Marys on his side of the family, and that’s just too much name recycling for me.)<\/p>\nWe also do not care for the “Mc” first names or names that you have to look at for a while before you can figure out how to pronounce it. We want the name to be spelled exactly how it sounds.<\/p>\n
Since my husband’s middle name happens to be the male form of Josephine, and he mentioned that he kind of liked that name for a girl. I agree it’s a good name–but it seems more fit for a middle name for me. As you can see, we have drastically different naming styles, and we can’t get anywhere on names. My husband said he could agree to pairing a traditional middle name with a more modern first name, but neither Charlotte or Penelope work for middle names.<\/p>\n
Please help us so we don’t end up having a baby named “Baby.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s unfortunate that you don’t like nicknames, because I think one of the best compromises in such situations is to use either a traditional name with a modern nickname (Caroline\/Rory), or a modern name with a traditional nickname (Ellery\/Ellie). If you have different naming styles AND you don’t want nicknames, two other methods come to mind:<\/p>\n
1. One of you gets the first name and the other gets the middle name
\n2. Finding a third style, one that’s second-choice for both of you<\/p>\nOne thing you have going for you is that you both like names that are currently in fashion. He’s not advocating for Ashley and Jessica, or for plain traditionals such as Elizabeth and Sarah: he likes recent\/current favorites Charlotte and Penelope. You’re both fond of modern names, it’s just two different modern styles: vintage\/revival for him, unisex\/surname for you.<\/p>\n
Your husband says he could picture using a modern name for the first name and a traditional name for the middle. This is a huge compromise move, and one I think it would be wise to grab while it’s still available. The corresponding compromise move from your side would be to give him more sway on both names: for example, give him his choice of middle name among all the ones you think would be fine (I don’t see any reason Charlotte or Penelope couldn’t work as middle names, depending on the first name), and work to find a group of modern names he finds appealing. Perhaps give him a copy of The Baby Name Wizard<\/a> open to the Last Names First section or to the Androgynous section, and have him make a list of all the ones he likes.<\/p>\n
If Brynn and Brynlee were names he was willing to consider, that gives us a jumping-off place:<\/p>\n
Ainsley
\nBritt
\nEmlyn
\nEmryn
\nFinley
\nHadley
\nLarkin
\nLinden
\nLinley
\nLinnea
\nPerrin
\nQuincy
\nQuinn
\nTierney
\nWinifred
\nWinslow
\nWren
\nWynn<\/p>\nAnd if he considers your choices “boy names,” then I suggest digging through names of your preferred style looking for the more feminine choices. Ellery, for example, is modern and surnamey, but the Elle sound is very feminine. Or Delaney, which is used almost exclusively for girls, and which may sound decidedly girlish to him because of actresses Dana Delany and Kim Delaney. Or Waverly, maybe? Or Linley in the list above is similar to your choice of Landry, but the “Lynn” sound further feminizes it. Or Harlow, which is similar to your choice of Harper, but without the -er issue and with Jean Harlow.<\/p>\n
Or you could have him turn to the Exotic Traditionals section and see if that’s the third style, the one you could agree on: unusual choices, but mostly feminine, and nothing so modern it’s never been used before. Bronwyn, perhaps, or Imogen or Cleo. Sometimes it helps to be able to refer to a name’s long and solid history—just in case anyone from the more traditional side of the family might be tempted to use an adjective like “made-up.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Avery writes: Hi Swistle! I’ve been a blog follower for over a year now, and I thought after reading all of your great suggestions to others, that when it came time for my husband and I to start talking about what we would name our baby, we’d magically agree and the name would just “work.” […]<\/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-7645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Zj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645","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=7645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7646,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions\/7646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}