Caroline Divine letter<\/a>, but what about names that have a repeating series of sounds or letters? Not strictly a last-part-of-the-name-kind-of-rhymes stretch, but an all-out repeat between first and last name?<\/p>\n(It made me sad to see something as lovely as Caroline Divine come up as a question because I knew it meant you probably wouldn’t be able to answer my letter, and unfortunately that response doesn’t help with my own dilemma.)<\/p>\n
Our last name sounds like Bestest, without the B, and we’re expecting a baby boy around the end of May.<\/p>\n
The name my husband and I both love is West.<\/p>\n
My husband thinks that West Bestest is just fine, that the rhyme and repeated letters shouldn’t be an issue. Aside from the fact that it sounds like it could be a place in Texas (not where we live), I’m just not convinced. I fear the double -est is just too much. I love the name West, but I don’t know that I can bring myself to pair it with our surname. I also don’t know if I can resist it either, because I love the name so much.<\/p>\n
I grew up with a sort-of rhyming name and it didn’t bother me at all, but then, it wasn’t the same series of letters repeated in the same order from my first name to my last. It was a near-rhyme that hardly called any attention to itself, not the showstopper that it seems to me that West Bestest would be.<\/p>\n
My husband thinks that because our surname has an extra syllable over West, it’s similar to something like Jack Acker, which doesn’t bother me much at all and sounds just fine. But it just doesn’t seem the same to me.<\/p>\n
My husband also thinks that since people usually mispronounce our last name as Besties instead of Bestest, it will lessen any impact of the repeated sounds. He thinks it will be most commonly pronounced as “West Besties” instead of “West Bestest,” even though it’s incorrect.<\/p>\n
We kind of like Weston with the nickname West, but far, far less than we love West on its own. Our feeling for Weston is lukewarm, at best. And it’s popularity is a deterrent; we prefer something outside of the top 1000 (though we would be okay with something around the 500s or lower) but Weston is firmly in the top 200 and continuing to gain in popularity.<\/p>\n
Our style preference is for something short and masculine that isn’t prone to obvious nicknames or has a common nickname we can accept. We think of our style as “cowboy names.”<\/p>\n
Because we love West so much, we haven’t had much luck coming up with other choices:
\n* Huck – like it, but don’t know if we can deal with the “bad word” rhyme
\n* Rock, nn Rocky – just okay
\n* Lucky – too much like a dog’s name<\/p>\n
I know most people don’t like rhyming names and a poll would certainly tell me not to use it. But what I really need is a voice of reason. Is West Bestest just too out there? Can you help?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Adding a B- and a -t helps to effectively disguise the surname for privacy purposes, but it also adds strong consonant sounds that make it more difficult to assess the situation. When I was saying this over and over to myself, West Bestest, West Bestest, West Bestest, I was thinking, “Well, I would not do it. But it will not be the end of the world if they use it. Think of all the kids who are named John Johnson or whatever, and that’s completely on purpose.” But then I took the B- and -t off, and I got Wes\/West Testes, which is a word I’d prefer not to create if your name is frequently mispronounced to rhyme with besties. If I pronounce the surname correctly, I get Wes Tess Tess.<\/p>\n
It isn’t a doubled sound, it’s a tripled sound. If the name were West Jamieston, West Preston, even West Lester, we would not have the situation we have here, which is ES ES-ES. The equivalent is not Jack Acker, but Jax Acksack, or Herb Erber, or Grant Antan, or Mark Arkar. There are two echoes, not one—and the surname is made entirely of echoing sounds, with no other sounds to break up the repeat.<\/p>\n
As with the Caroline Divine post, I think the fact that most people would assume the names wouldn’t rhyme will increase the pronunciation problems. People will say to themselves, “Well, it just can’t be Wes Tess Tess. I’ll try West Test Tees to be safe.”<\/p>\n
Because you say you already know a poll would be against it, I’m not sure what you’re asking. Are you asking if you can go ahead and do it anyway, knowing most people will think it’s a tongue-tangling showstopper? Yes, you can go ahead and do it anyway. I’m advising against it, and you’re already guessing a poll would be against it (my guess is the same), but you two are the ones who get to decide what’s best for your child’s name.<\/p>\n
But if I were you, I would add this name to the list of names every parent has: names we love that we can’t use because of our surname, or because the other parent hates the name, or because it’s also the name of someone famously awful, or because it’s also a curse word in the country half our family comes from, or because it’s the name of someone at the office the other parent has always suspected us of having a crush on, or because it’s the name of our sister’s father-in-law, husband, and son.<\/p>\n
From here I’d advise you not to look for a name you like as much as West, since such a name might not exist; instead, look for the name you like best of all the remaining names.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> A. writes:<\/p>\nBoy, were my pregnancy hormones out of control when I wrote you back in January!\u00a0 Rereading my letter now, I wonder what in the world I was thinking!\u00a0\u00a0 Not only did I have the answer my own question before I ever pressed send, but I had also convinced myself that we were having a boy.\u00a0 I loved the lists of “cowboy names” that everyone came up with, but when we found out we were actually having a girl, we had to rethink everything.\u00a0 Late last week, we welcomed a sweet little girl, whom we named Indie V!olet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A. writes: I need your help! I know you recently addressed “rhyming names” in the Caroline Divine letter, but what about names that have a repeating series of sounds or letters? Not strictly a last-part-of-the-name-kind-of-rhymes stretch, but an all-out repeat between first and last name? (It made me sad to see something as lovely as […]<\/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-8493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2cZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8493","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=8493"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9542,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8493\/revisions\/9542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}