My husband and I are expecting our first baby\u2014a boy!\u2014around Christmas this year. We are having a difficult time agreeing on names. For some reason, it seems like boy names are a whole lot harder than girl names. If this baby had been a girl, we would have named her Tessa Noelle (middle name ties into the holidays). Our last name is Italian, has 3 syllables, and sounds like vin-dig-nee. I love the name Gavin, but that\u2019s out because of the \u201cvin\u201d-sound in our last name.<\/p>\n
Some names that I like and have suggested, but my husband is lukewarm about:<\/p>\n
-Ezra
\n-Nicholas
\n-Elliott
\n-Weston
\n-Zachary
\n-Lucas
\n-Joshua
\n-Caleb
\n-Garrett
\n-Nolan<\/p>\n
He really likes the name Simon, but one of my cousins is named Simon. I think it would be weird because I have a dozen of cousins with whom I\u2019m close, and Simon wouldn\u2019t necessarily be an honor name. I feel funny using the name Simon when I could honor my brother or other cousins first–does that make sense? We\u2019ve tossed around the name Simon Elliott, but I can\u2019t get over the fact that it\u2019s my cousin\u2019s name. Aside from that, I don’t necessarily LOVE the name. My husband has given me the following list, many of which are \u201cpresidential\u201d sounding:<\/p>\n
-Harrison (but we don\u2019t like Harry as a nickname)
\n-Truman
\n-Lincoln
\n-Benjamin
\n-Jefferson
\n-Austin
\n-Brandon
\n-Oliver (the “v” sound again makes makes it hard to say)
\n-Samuel
\n-William
\n-Jackson (too popular)
\n-Carter
\n-Campbell<\/p>\n
I suppose none of these are terrible, but I just don’t love them and don’t know if I want such a weighty name, if that makes sense. Help! Do you have any suggestions?<\/p>\n
Thank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I don’t think it would be weird to use Simon, if you grew to love it. It isn’t as if you thought, “We really want to honor a man from one of our families. Our dads? No. Grandfathers? No. Brothers? No. How about one of our many, many cousins? PERFECT, let’s list their names and choose one!” Instead, you first liked the name Simon, but coincidentally you have a cousin by that name. The way to present this coincidence is to tell everyone your husband thought of the name and you both loved it—and as a bonus, you had a positive association with the name because it’s also your cousin’s name. This makes it clear to everyone that you didn’t skip over other honorees; it will be even clearer if you have more children and give them non-honoring first names, or if everyone including Simon gets a family middle name.<\/p>\n
Silas is similar to Simon from your husband’s list and Lucas from yours.<\/p>\n
I’m especially drawn to Nicholas for the Christmas tie-in. I would probably be hoping that would work out as the middle name if it didn’t work as the first name. Christian or Christopher are two more possibilities.<\/p>\n
Your lists have so many similar names and sounds, it feels as if there should be a great name you’ll both like. You have Weston; he has Austin. You have Caleb; he has Campbell. You both have a lot of longer names on your list, and it looks like you’re both comfortable in the same approximate popularity range. I’d look at each name on your list and see if you can find names on his list that are similar to it in any way. If what makes them similar is what you both like about those names, then see if there are other names with that same similarity.<\/p>\n
For example, you’ve got Nicholas and Lucas and Zachary; he’s got Jackson and Lincoln—very similar sounds, lots of hard-C. Do you both like that hard-C sound? I’ll bet so, since there’s also Caleb, Carter, Campbell. Are there more candidates to consider? Isaac, Jacoby, Ezekiel, Clark, Connor, Micah, Declan, Marcus, Beckett, Malcolm, Alec, Callum? You might also like the sound of X: Alexander, Maxwell, Felix.<\/p>\n
You also both have a lot of names featuring L-sounds. This might lead me to suggest Liam, Leo, Milo, Eli, Gabriel, Daniel, Nathaniel, Callum again, Malcolm again, Ezekiel again, Declan again, etc.<\/p>\n
Elliott and Oliver feel very close to me in sound and style. Together they make me think of Theodore, Felix, Louis, Edmund, Milo, Miles, Hugo, Henry, Leo, Charles, Sebastian, Owen, Jasper, Emmett, Everett which might be out because of the V, and Graham. Simon fits here beautifully.<\/p>\n
Or you’ve got Garrett, but maybe Grant would have the presidential sound he likes while still not being too weighty for you.<\/p>\n
This exercise might make things harder rather than easier, but sometimes it helps clarify things to start clustering names into possible sibling groups. Maybe your husband loves the name Lincoln but doesn’t love any names that would make good brother names for it; maybe you love the name Lucas but feel like it’s too much S if you have a Tessa later on. Do you see yourself more as the mother of an Ezra and a Nolan, or more as the mother of a Nicholas and a Joshua? Does your husband see himself more as the father of a Carter and an Austin, or more as the father of a Truman and a Jefferson? That sort of thing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> K. writes:<\/p>\n Thank you so much to you and your readers for weighing in on my question and providing great suggestions and advice.\u00a0 Our son, Simon Elliott, was born on December 16, and we are so in love with him.\u00a0 My husband and I didn’t decide on a name until about a day after he was born.\u00a0 We even re-read your post and all the comments in the hospital!\u00a0 After a lot of back and forth, we went with Simon Elliott.\u00a0 My husband reminded me that we had gotten engaged on St. Simons Island in Georgia, so that convinced me that the name was right.\u00a0 I love that there is meaning behind our little boy’s name.\u00a0 Thank you again, everyone!<\/p>\n (I’ve attached here a photo!)<\/p>\n K. writes: My husband and I are expecting our first baby\u2014a boy!\u2014around Christmas this year. We are having a difficult time agreeing on names. For some reason, it seems like boy names are a whole lot harder than girl names. If this baby had been a girl, we would have named her Tessa Noelle (middle […]<\/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-8280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-29y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8280","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=8280"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8511,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8280\/revisions\/8511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Simon](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Simon-Day-2.jpg\")
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"