Ashton writes:<\/p>\n
We are expecting our second child, and we seem to be having so much trouble with boy names! Our daughter’s name is Nora Kate (both family names) and we call her both names most of the time.<\/p>\n
My grandfather and my husband’s grandfather are both named James, and there are several relatives who have used James as a middle name or unused first name. The children who have James as a first name are referred to by their middle names. McClain is a family surname as well. We love the sound of James McClain, but I have a hard time adding another James to the mix when there are already 4 in my family and 3 in my husband’s family. I love the classic sound of James, but when I say it and try to picture a child with the name, I can’t. I also dislike the associated nicknames, such as Jamie, Jim, or Jimmy.<\/p>\n
I have been entertaining the thought of naming him James McClain and calling him Jack (a combination of the names), but I worry that the correlation is vague. I also know that Jack is traditionally a nickname for John, which might make it look like I assigned an “incorrect” nickname. For some reason, when I picture this sweet addition to the family, I picture “Nora and Jack”, although my husband isn’t keen on using Jack as a stand-alone first name.<\/p>\n
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I suggest the nickname Mac instead, from McClain. It feels fresher to me than Jack, and takes away the feeling that maybe there was a mistake.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, if you’re having a hard time imagining adding another James to the family, and you can’t picture calling a child James, and you dislike all the nicknames for James, it may be that the name James is not the right name for your son.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ashton writes: We are expecting our second child, and we seem to be having so much trouble with boy names! Our daughter’s name is Nora Kate (both family names) and we call her both names most of the time. My grandfather and my husband’s grandfather are both named James, and there are several relatives who […]<\/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-8515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2dl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515","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=8515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8516,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8515\/revisions\/8516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}