Molly writes:<\/p>\n
My name is Molly and my husband’s name is Bryan with the last name Bowing, rhymes with mowing. Let me preface this by saying that we were told we would not be able to have children so we started the adoption process and in 2011 we brought home the most beautiful baby girl that we named Truely Mae Bowing. Fast forward three years later and we are expecting a baby boy of our own! We could not be more thrilled\/surprised but have already run into issues with a name. I love Truely’s name as it is unique and flows well with her middle name which was the name of both our paternal grandmothers. The only issue is that, since I did not think we would be having any more children, I didn’t plan to have her name work well with a future sibling. Other names that I liked for a girl are:<\/p>\n
Georgia
\nEtta
\nAracely
\nZirrah-prounounced Zy-Ruh<\/p>\nAll the boy names that my husband and I like are traditional and I feel that they don’t work well with our daughter’s name. As an added issue, we live on the border between the US\/Mexico and the pronunication of the name will be a huge factor for our child once he starts school. For example, we love the names Levi but here it is pronouned Leh-VEE or Sebastian which is pronounced Sebas-TEE-AHN instead of the sh sound I would use. Middle name for our little man will be most likely be Maxwell as it is his mom’s maiden name. Names we have considered:<\/p>\n
Levi-see above
\nSebastian-see above
\nCalvin
\nRoman-prounounced Row-MAHN here which could be a problem
\nGrady-don’t like the matching “y” endings this creates<\/p>\nThat about rounds it out. The crux of the problem is that I don’t want our son to feel any less special because our daughter’s name is Truely and our son’s is ….Ed, or something like that. We would love your feedback and any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I do see what you mean. I’ve been mulling this in the week since you sent it, and here is the question I’ve been specifically mulling: What makes a name special?<\/p>\n
Because your daughter’s name is unusual, you might be feeling like a name needs to be unusual to be special. You’re also encountering the difficulty of pairing a word-name with a sibling name, which is its own challenge.<\/p>\n
My own answer to the question about what makes a name special is that there can be a LOT of different answers—often within the same sibling group. One child’s name might be special because it was the name the parents agreed on when they were first dating. Another child’s name might be special because it’s an honor name. Another child’s name might be special because of its meaning. Another child’s name might be special because the parents loved it so much. The spin to use with all the children is that you chose the name you liked best. If each child has a roughly equivalent naming story (rather than a long involved full-of-meaning story for one and a shrugged “We just liked it, I guess” for the other), I don’t think anyone is going to feel more\/less special.<\/p>\n
Your daughter’s name is special for a selection of reasons. If your son is also given a name that is special for a selection of reasons, they don’t need to be the same reasons. I generally prefer sibling names to coordinate, but there are situations where that’s difficult or impossible, and in those situations I shrug and dismiss that particular preference. The explanation that you didn’t realize you’d be naming more than one child is a charming one. Furthermore, it’s common for parents to have a different style in girl names than in boy names, and for a firstborn’s name to be a different style than the sibling names.<\/p>\n
If you prefer traditional boy names, I think you should choose a traditional boy name rather than going outside your preferred style just to make his name coordinate with his sister’s. The only name on your list without issues is Calvin, which happens to be my favorite on the list anyway. I think Truely and Calvin go perfectly well together, and True and Cal is a cute nickname combination. With a name you love as his first name and a family surname as his middle name, he’ll have a name that is special to you for its own reasons.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> Molly writes:<\/p>\n
I was able to steal away and send out an update on Baby Boy Bowing. I wrote to you about three months ago and asked for help choosing a name to go with our daughter’s, Truely Mae. We are happy to announce that our son made his appearance on May 8th weighing in at 9 lbs. 5 oz. and 21 in. long (Basically the size of our 3 year old lol).<\/p>\n
We went to the hospital with two names; Calvin Maxwell and Maxwell Archer. Side note, my husband and I met at a summer camp where we were running the archery station so a big thank you to whoever suggested Archer!! Since we loved both sets of names and would be happy with either we decided to let Truely decide when she met him. After asking her which name she liked best she said “Matswell” because she can’t say her K sounds and we both melted into a puddle and knew our little guy was Maxwell Archer. We love that his middle name has history for us as a couple and is unique enough that we don’t worry about him feeling any less special, name wise, than Truely. Even though I’ve never been a huge nickname person I found that since big sister has a hard time with Maxwell at the moment we have been calling him Wells and I think I might love it even more than his full name. Thank you and your readers so much for all the advice and suggestions!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Molly writes: My name is Molly and my husband’s name is Bryan with the last name Bowing, rhymes with mowing. Let me preface this by saying that we were told we would not be able to have children so we started the adoption process and in 2011 we brought home the most beautiful baby girl […]<\/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-8718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2gC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8718","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=8718"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9019,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8718\/revisions\/9019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}