Allison writes:<\/p>\n
I love your blog and was reading it even before being pregnant. I am hoping you will be able to help with our baby naming dilemma.<\/p>\n
We have baby boy # 2 arriving in 25 days. My husband and I cannot agree on a name and are starting to panic. My husband has now resorted to throwing out random names that we have never even considered just hoping something sticks.<\/p>\n
My name is Allison and my husband’s name is Vincent. Our last name is Donner with a C. We already have a 5 year old son named Brayden. His middle name is a family name and is shared by his father and grandfather. Baby # 2 is a boy and will be our last child.<\/p>\n
Before you read any further I will throw out the hardest part of our baby naming conundrum. My husband, myself, and our first son all have seven letters in our first names and I really want this baby to have a seven letter name also. Since we are not having any more children, I think we should be able to accomplish this.<\/p>\n
My husband loves the name Patrick. We found out we were pregnant St. Patrick’s weekend and his family has Irish roots so he thinks the name is perfect. Patrick was also on the list when we had our first son. I feel like I rejected the name for our first child so why would I choose it for this child? Also, when we first got pregnant with this child I told several people I “hated” the name Patrick and now feel like I backed myself into a corner. To be honest, I do not “hate” the name Patrick but I do not like the obvious nicknames of Pat and Rick and would be very upset if people called my son by either of those nicknames. I also feel like my husband and his family are really pulling for Patrick and feel a bit pushed into the name.<\/p>\n
The middle name won’t be as difficult. Since our first son’s middle name came from my husband’s side of the family this son’s middle name will come from my side of the family. We have several contenders we like and are waiting to choose a first name to see what fits.<\/p>\n
Names we have on our list for this baby are:<\/p>\n
Patrick (husband’s favorite)
\nBennett (my favorite for a long time but husband doesn’t care for it and I am starting to fall out of love with it because I’m afraid people won’t think of it as a first name)
\nGriffin (husband doesn’t like)
\nBeckett (husband doesn’t like and I’m Just throwing this one in there so you can see my style)
\nEverett (husband doesn’t like)
\nGrayson (used to love but seems like it’s going to the girls)
\nJackson (getting a bit too popular for me and we know people who have already used this name though we hardly ever see this family)
\nGarrett (my husband likes but I prefer Griffin; I don’t understand why he likes Garrett but not Griffin)
\nHenry (totally different than my style but one of my all time favorite names; this is a family name and is on the list of middle name contenders)<\/p>\nMy husband likes fairly traditional names such as Andrew, Zachary, and Ian but these aren’t really my style. However, I could commit to a more traditional name if it had seven letters. It’s really hard for me to describe my baby naming style but I like names that are a little trendy without being strange. When we chose Brayden we did not know any Brayden’s but it was still a name that people recognized and wasn’t weird. The name has now gotten much more popular and my son’s had multiple Brayden’s in his pre-k class and now at kindergarten. I really felt like Bennett fit into my style but my husband has never heard the name used as a first name so he thinks it’s not really a name.<\/p>\n
If this baby had been a girl our top contender was Emma Claire. Yes, I know it’s extremely popular but we loved the first\/middle name combination and might have chosen it despite its popularity and despite the fact that it didn’t have seven letters.<\/p>\n
I read your blog every day and we also purchased a copy of the baby name wizard and are still no closer to choosing a name.<\/p>\n
If you have any names we should be considering that we have not thought of we would love yours and your readers suggestions.<\/p>\n
Thank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
It sounds to me as if the name Patrick is out. It also sounds to me as if this needs to be made completely clear to your husband, and then perhaps he could make it clear to his family (without blaming you): he could use a friendly, casual tone and say something like, “Oh—no, Patrick was a name we considered but it isn’t one of our finalists. We’re still looking for the right name.”<\/p>\n
If your husband and his family like the St. Patrick’s Day \/ Irish connection, then I’d start by looking at other Irish names:<\/p>\n
Finnian
\nGarrett (on your list already)
\nGriffin (on your list already)
\nMalcolm
\nTiernan<\/p>\nFinnian is close to Griffin, but perhaps your husband will like it.<\/p>\n
Because Brayden is a more modern name, I think I’d look for similar options: Andrew and Patrick don’t feel like good fits to me, but Grayson and Beckett do.<\/p>\n
Bennett certainly seems like a first name to me (it was #202 in 2012, used for 1891 new baby boys that year), even though it’s a surname name. Because your surname is a common boys’ first name, I do think you’re likely to get less confusion if you choose a first name that doesn’t sound surnamey. On the other hand, a certain amount of confusion is likely to happen no matter what. In this case, my hope is that your husband’s only objection to it is that he’s never happened to meet a child with the name, and that looking at the numbers will cure him of that. It seems to me like Bennett fits all of your preferences and also is good with Brayden.<\/p>\n
Chopping down the list to remove the names you don’t like and the names your husband doesn’t like, we’re left with:<\/p>\n
Grayson
\nJackson
\nGarrett<\/p>\nGarrett seems the least surnamey of those to me, but that would be so subjective: if I knew a family with the surname Garrett instead of a family with the surname Grayson and another with the surname Jackson, I might be choosing completely differently.<\/p>\n
Grayson does not seem to me to be going to the girls, especially with that spelling. Here are the 2012 numbers for the spellings used for more than 25 babies that year:<\/p>\n
Gracen: 73 F, 64 M
\nGraceyn: 26 F
\nGracin: 34 M
\nGracyn: 209 F
\nGraeson: 48 M
\nGraycen: 47 F, 28 M
\nGraysen: 45 F, 205 M
\nGrayson: 177 F, 4671 M
\nGreysen: 116 M
\nGreyson: 40 F, 2216 M<\/p>\nAdding those up, that’s 617 girls and 7382 boys. It’s a somewhat unisex name used much more often for boys.<\/p>\n
A bigger issue for me is that Grayson and Brayden sound quite similar. Maybe not too similar to use, but similar enough to make me hesitate to throw support behind Grayson.<\/p>\n
Because you like Beckett, Bennett, Garrett, and Everett, I wonder if you would like Elliott or Barrett or Merritt. I wish Emmett had 7 letters: it’s similar to your favorite girl name, plus it has the double-T.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> Allison writes:<\/p>\n
Thank you for choosing our baby naming dilemma for your site. We loved hearing your reader’s opinions. When our son was born we did not choose a name until day 3. We even went to your site and read the post, your comments, and your reader’s comments again. My husband finally came around to the name Bennett but after much discussion we agreed to name our son Patrick. Our families love the name and we are enjoying our handsome little guy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allison writes: I love your blog and was reading it even before being pregnant. I am hoping you will be able to help with our baby naming dilemma. We have baby boy # 2 arriving in 25 days. My husband and I cannot agree on a name and are starting to panic. My husband has […]<\/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-8315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2a7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8315","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=8315"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8403,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8315\/revisions\/8403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}