i’m brianne and my husband is dan and our last name is ott with a -sc in the beginning. we have a daughter named eliza katherine. we are due in july and will not be finding out if we’re having a boy or girl. our boy name is everett (nn rhett). we would like to have four children. we’re having a lot of trouble agreeing on a girl name. i like all your great grandmother’s contemporaries’ names. whereas my husband sent me a list with names he like and it read like a 1980s kindergarten roster. we had no problem naming eliza, it was the only name we agreed upon. we’ve both always loved rhett but decided everett made more sense with our surname. i have people who address me by my surname, even after recognizing i’m female so i’d like to pick obviously male\/female first names. dan hasn’t had a significant amount of input for other boy names, but some i still love are below.<\/p>\n
other boy names i love: sawyer, calvin, sullivan, theodore<\/p>\n
girl names i like: sabrina, tessa, rosalie, vivienne, tabitha, matilda, norah, alice, susanna, joanna, cordelia, louisa, juliette, sylvia<\/p>\n
my very favorite girls name is louisa (nn lou, lulu, ouisa).<\/p>\n
i love three syllable girl names, usually ending in -a. it just sounds most pleasant to me with our surname.<\/p>\n
i want to pose the question of how i can convince my husband to love a name he’s vetoed, but know that would sound terrible (even though it’s honest!). so, instead, dear swistle, please help me think of a compromise name or convince me that i can love another name as much as louisa…but that would make my husband happy (who’d gladly name our child jessica).<\/p>\n
thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I love the name Louisa, too! I think it is so pleasing to say. I find it very similar to Eliza, though: ee-LY-zah and loo-EE-zah share a strong Z sound, an L sound, two of their three syllables, and the same rhythm, emphasis, and final syllable. Perhaps, though, you are saying them eh-LY-zah and loo-EE-sah, in which case they are much less similar—and after practicing it a few times aloud, I think I do say eh-ly-zah rather than ee-ly-zah. They still seem very close to me.<\/p>\n
One way to convince someone they love a name is to find a tie-in they’d enjoy. For example, Paul is very keen on famous scientists. When I thought of a name I wanted to use for one of our sons, and it happened to be the name of a famous scientist, I presented the name to Paul in that light—rather than saying the truth, which was “There’s someone with this name on the TV show I’m watching.”<\/p>\n
Another idea along these same lines is to find a movie or TV show with a really cool\/cute female character named Louisa, and have your husband watch it. Don’t remark on the name; just let it sink in over a number of episodes. Then bring up the name again while watching the show, ideally when the character is being particularly cool\/cute: “Louisa really is a great name. Are you sure you wouldn’t consider it?”<\/p>\n
If he continues to veto it, the quest begins afresh. I recommend not comparing each new candidate to the name Louisa: if Louisa is your top favorite, the quest for a name you like as much as Louisa could be a frustrating or even impossible one. Instead, take the name Louisa out of the picture and see if you can find your new top favorite from the pool of names that remain.<\/p>\n
To introduce your husband to names that are both more and less contemporary than the ones on his list, it might be helpful to point out similarities in sound. I’m looking at the Social Security Administration’s list of top names for 1985, and I think Kimberly and Stephanie and Ashley could be compared to Rosalie from your list. Melissa and Alyssa and Ashley could be compared to Alice. Christina could be compared to to Sabrina. Melissa and Amanda could be compared to Matilda. And so on. You could refer to a name as “the current equivalent of Jessica,” for example, or you could say things such as, “Like Sarah and Laura, except the current versions are Clara and Nora.”<\/p>\n
Sometimes men who have lists of that sort appreciate a feminine name with a boyish nickname, so you might have luck approaching it from that direction: Alice\/Al, Joanna\/Jo, Louisa\/Lou.<\/p>\n
Or sometimes it works to show someone the Social Security name lists so they can see for themselves how things have changed. Point out that names such as Jessica and Ashley are now the Mom Names; have him picture names from your parents’ generation on people your age to give him a feeling for how names can shift with each generation.<\/p>\n
A name similar to Louisa is Lucia. It can be pronounced loo-SEE-ah, loo-CHEE-ah, or LOO-sha; in this case, I’m thinking of loo-SEE-ah. Eliza and Lucia. You could still use the nicknames Lu and Lulu, and also Lucy.<\/p>\n
Or Lydia; Eliza and Lydia. I like the nickname Liddy\/Lyddie.<\/p>\n
Josephine doesn’t end in -a, but I still like it with the sibling name and with the surname. Eliza and Josephine. Nicknames Josie, Jo, Phina, Fee.<\/p>\n
Or Naomi. Eliza and Naomi.<\/p>\n
Or Claudia. Eliza and Claudia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong><\/p>\n hi swistle!\u00a0 thanks for all the reader’s advice.\u00a0 i just couldn’t give up on louisa…and i’m glad i didn’t.\u00a0 i managed to convince my husband that it’s pretty much a perfect name.\u00a0 we ended up having a baby girl about a month early – louisa anne.\u00a0 she’s beautiful and perfect and we’re over the moon!<\/p>\n thanks again! Brianne writes: i’m brianne and my husband is dan and our last name is ott with a -sc in the beginning. we have a daughter named eliza katherine. we are due in july and will not be finding out if we’re having a boy or girl. our boy name is everett (nn rhett). we would […]<\/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-8608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2eQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608","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=8608"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10144,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608\/revisions\/10144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nbrianne<\/p>\n![\"louisa](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/louisa-anne.jpg\")
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"