Ashley writes:<\/p>\n
My husband and I just started trying to conceive our first baby, and I of course am obsessed with names. Our boy name \u2013 Wyatt Christopher \u2013 is set in stone and has been since before we married. Girl names however, are a totally different story.<\/p>\n
My name is Ashley. Yes I am one of the thousands born in the late eighties. My entire life, I have never felt any sort of connection to my first name. But when you throw in my middle name, I finally feel apart from the sea of Ashley\u2019s. My middle name is Brett, which is my father\u2019s first name. Though I hated having a boy\u2019s name as a child, as an adult I couldn\u2019t be prouder to be named after my dad. Here\u2019s where the issue begins; I want nothing more than to name my daughter after my dad and would even use Brett as her first name, but my husband can\u2019t seem to get on board with that. He thinks the pattern my parents began should mean that our daughter is named after her father, not mine. His name is Jeff. No offense to my husband, but that so does not work as a sweet little girl\u2019s name! His middle name (which he hates by the way) is Scott so he has taken it upon himself to suggest that as the middle name for every girl name I suggest. On some names it does work, but why would we give our child a name my husband doesn\u2019t care for?<\/p>\n
Ready for problem number two? I would also love to name my daughter after my great-grandmother but her name, Lois, is overused in my family and lets face it, is not very pretty. For the past four generations, Lois has been bequeathed to at least one woman born on my mom\u2019s side of the family. I\u2019d like to tweak the name so it\u2019s pretty and works in combination with Brett.<\/p>\n
Here are a few names I have come up with so far. I am hoping that you and your readers can help direct us to a few more! Oh, our last name is McCaslin, which fortunately flows beautifully with almost any name. I\u2019ve had no luck coming up with a flowing, feminine middle name that would support Brett as first name. Hopefully you and your readers can!<\/p>\n
*Eloisa Brett \u2013 hubs doesn\u2019t like Eloisa, but loves my idea of Ello as a nickname
\n*Louisa Brett \u2013 I think I am falling in love with Lousia; it has great nicknames (Lou, Lola) and also honors my great-grandmother on my father\u2019s side, whose middle name was Louise. The only caveat is my cousin chose this as her daughter\u2019s middle name. But we only see that side of the family once every 5 years or so.
\n*Magnolia Brett \u2013 this one may be a stretch. My great-grandmother wore lotion that smelled like magnolia blossoms. However, I can\u2019t seem to escape thinking Magnolia High-5 whenever I hear the name.
\n* I\u2019ve also suggested Bretta and Brettly as variations on Brett, but neither my husband nor I really care for them. Plus Bretta sounds too much like berretta and barrette.
\n*Willa Brett \u2013 the hubs would name her Willa Scott in a heartbeat, but Willa Bee is probably the cutest nickname that has ever existed! It\u2019s my current favorite.
\n*Viola Brett \u2013 I like Violet better, but the repetitive \u201ct\u2019s\u201d are a little much
\n*Emma Brett \u2013 Emma is an absolute no way for my husband and is used by family and friends. I still like it though. Bummer.
\n*Mila Brett \u2013 like it, don\u2019t love it
\n*Sofia or Zofia Brett \u2013 the only problem is my grandmother\u2019s dog was named Sophie and my stepfather-in-law\u2019s granddaughter is named this as well. Is Zofia (nickname Zo) a little too out there?
\n*Ara (AR-uh) Brett \u2013 Barbara is my mother-in-law\u2019s name, so this one kind of pays tribute to her as well. But it doesn\u2019t sound like it belongs in our little family.
\n*Seraphina Brett \u2013 Seraphina is a really old family name (she lived over 100 years ago) and I carried her wedding gloves in my bouquet when I got married. But my husband has a half sister named Sarah, and I think they may be too similar.<\/p>\nIf it helps, I do envision our little girl being called by both her first and middle names. My father\u2019s side of the family has always called me Ashley Brett and most likely would do the same for my and my father\u2019s namesake. If Brett turns out to be her first name, I would call her by her first and middle name so that Brett sounds more feminine.<\/p>\n
Isabella and Caitlin (or any of their variations) are names used by close family members and are therefore unusable. Likewise close friends used Kayla, Elizabeth, Cambree, Eyesly, Abigail, Audrey and Penelope so those are out of the picture too.<\/p>\n
One last issue, then I swear I will let you and your lovely readers go! All honor names I suggest pay tribute to only my side of the family. Christopher, for example, is my brother\u2019s name. But my husband doesn\u2019t have strong relationships with his family. And quite frankly, it\u2019d be a cold day in hell before I\u2019d name my child after a few of his family members. My mother-in-law is already suggesting names (she doesn\u2019t know we are TTC) and I can picture her being upset that her grandchild\u2019s name has nothing to do with her side of the family. Have you or any of your readers dealt with a similar situation?<\/p>\n
We plan on having at least two children. If we had a second son, his name would be Henry O\u2019Connell (O\u2019Connell is my mother\u2019s maiden name). The plan is that if we had two boys, we\u2019d try for a girl. If a third little boy came along, I would be awfully tempted to name him after my dad.<\/p>\n
In summation, can you help me name my potential daughter for her grandfather? And for her great-great-grandmother? A tough task, I know. If I had to choose one honor name, I would choose Brett. While I\u2019d like to use both, I can\u2019t imagine a little daughter of mine not being named for my father. Thank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I will start by making a declaration, which is that your husband’s argument about your parents setting a pattern of naming girls after their fathers is invalid. There is no pattern here: there is only one single name, and that is not enough to be a pattern.<\/p>\n
So then what we have is this: you would like to name your daughter after your father, and your husband says that he would like to name your daughter after himself. If you love your father’s name and your husband hates his own name, this doesn’t seem like much of a contest to me. Is it possible that your husband doesn’t want to name his daughter after your father, and so he’s proposing his own middle name as a way to illustrate to you how much he dislikes the idea? Or is it possible that although he dislikes his own name for himself or for a son, it suddenly sounds good to him as a girl’s name?<\/p>\n
It is one of the
problems<\/del>pains<\/del>exasperations<\/del> challenges of naming a child with another parent that sometimes our great ideas don’t work out because the other parent doesn’t want to do it. I know you say you can’t imagine not naming your daughter after your father, but this is a joint decision. I’d be saying the same to your husband if he were pressuring you to name a daughter after someone from his side of the family, or to use any other name he felt strongly about but you disliked. I do hope he capitulates on this, because I think it’s a sweet idea and the name Brett feels feminine enough to use on a girl—but if he continues to be against it, you will have to let go of the idea, or else modify the idea (i.e., using your husband’s middle name instead to parallel your name instead of duplicating it, or using another boyish name unconnected to either side of the family) until he likes it too.<\/p>\nI decline to agree that the name Lois isn’t pretty. I think it’s an older name, and so it’s easy to hear it as Old Lady as opposed to hearing its actual sounds. If it’s been used in the Lois form for four generations, I’d be very reluctant to change it: the names that sound good now will just turn into the “not pretty” Old Lady names of the future, and meanwhile you’ll have lost some of the tradition. In fact, I’d expect Lois to come back into style sometime in the next generation, so you could end up changing it just in time to have it sound wonderful to you again, just like Louisa is sounding wonderful again.<\/p>\n
I do think, though, that it doesn’t seem balanced to give a child two names from your side of the family (especially when your husband is already not on board with at least one of them), and I think it would put intense pressure on you to use names from your husband’s side next time. Since you’re hoping to have more than one child, and since you’d rather not use names from your husband’s side of the family, I suggest seeing if the two of you can agree that each child could have a middle name from your side of the family to balance having their father’s family surname (that is the way I’d suggest spinning it to your mother-in-law, too), and then choose a non-family first name together. I like how if you have two girls, each girl would have a middle name with a great naming story, instead of one girl having both. (Or if you use Lois O____ McCaslin for a future girl, your husband could use the nickname L.O.\/Ello.)<\/p>\n
Since you say the Brett idea is more important to you than the Lois idea, I’d start by focusing on that. See if you can figure out what the issue is with your husband: does he not like the whole idea? does he not want to name a child after your father? does he like his own middle name as soon as he pictures it on a girl? would he be open to another boyish middle name instead? It seems like we need to know more of his thoughts on the issue to know what direction to go with this. You might have some luck giving him more sway with the first name in exchange for getting to use Brett as the middle name. Or perhaps all that’s needed is dropping the Lois idea for now, so that he doesn’t feel as if the entire name is your choice and your family names. Or perhaps the compromise could be that you use Brett for the first daughter’s middle name and Scott for the second daughter’s middle name. (Are there other family members who would qualify to keep the name Lois going?)<\/p>\n
You’ve asked us to think of middle names that work with Brett as a first name, but I think that’s likely to be a dead end. The main issue is that your husband hasn’t even agreed to use Brett as a middle name, so it seems like a long shot as the first name. The secondary issue is that you say the name Wyatt is set in stone if you have a boy; I think using Brett for a girl could back you into a corner on this, either by ruling out Wyatt for a future boy or by making you feel as if all your children’s names need to have a double-T.<\/p>\n