Help! My baby boy is 1 month old and we still have no name. We didn’t fully settle on a name before he was born, and now that he is here it feels even harder! Today is his one month birthday, and all we call him is baby boy. The problem is now that he is here, we need to find a name that fits him. He has 2 older sisters Eloise who is 3 and Annetta, whom we call Annie 1.5 years. His middle name will be Dennis (after his late grandfather) and Cao (my mom’s maiden name, pronounced Cow) and his last name will be Flegel. So “name” Dennis Cao Flegel. Conditions for his name.<\/p>\n
Have more then one syllable that we can hopefully give him a nickname for when he is young. Eloise was called Lulu when she was a baby.<\/p>\n
Either have his nickname or name be simple enough that my parents can pronounce, they are Chinese, and English is their second language.<\/p>\n
Be not very popular.<\/p>\n
Be an actual name.<\/p>\n
His personality, he’s pretty mellow, never cries, sleeps well and tolerates the “love” his sisters bestows on him.<\/p>\n
Help? Is that anything out there?<\/p>\n
We originally liked Clarke, but it was too short, and now he doesn’t suit a Clarke. We considered Gabriel, but I think it might be too feminine. We also considered Charleston. And now we are considering Theodore-but just not certain on it yet.<\/p>\n
Help, help, help! I’ll attach a photo of the baby boy and see what you can hopefully come up with. Thank you so much for your time and help.<\/p>\n
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I don’t know how we’re supposed to focus on this problem with that cute baby making those cute faces at us.<\/p>\n
I think one reason names are commonly chosen before birth is that it is IN GENERAL easier to choose a name before all the issues of the actual person arrive on the scene. It is hard enough to figure out issues such as “What names do we agree on?” and “What issues are important to us in a name?” without also having to think “Which names are right for This Particular Person Right Here?” and “What does his current personality mean for his name?” In theory, it should work better to name the actual person on the scene; in practice, it can make it hard to concentrate.<\/p>\n
For one thing, right now he is a baby. Babies do have temperaments, and there are many aspects of personality my babies showed when they were tiny that have persevered—but the dominant temperament\/personality of a baby is “baby.” If I were to name a baby a name that worked on a baby, I would choose something like Mr. Froggypants, or Pookie, or Cutie McTummersons, or Sir Crankybritches. All of my babies’ actual names felt very awkward on them at first, and only came to fit them later on as I got used to both the name and the baby; instead we called all of them “the baby,” or names such as Sir Crankybritches. Was it the same with your daughters’ names, or did their names instantly click into place and feel right?<\/p>\n
In fact, did you have this same trouble naming your daughters? If you did, how did you overcome the difficulty? If you didn’t have the same trouble, is it because this time it’s a boy name and you have an easier time with girl names? Is he your last baby? Is it that you have backed yourself into a corner with requirements that can’t all be simultaneously met? It sounds to me as if we need to diagnose what the problem is before we can effectively work on fixing it.<\/p>\n
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Let’s look at your other requirements:<\/p>\n
1. “Have more then one syllable that we can hopefully give him a nickname for when he is young.” Do you have a reason that the name must have more than one syllable? If not, this requirement may be eliminating some great potential names. Baby Boy could be his nickname, if that’s what you’ve been calling him since birth. And many one-syllable names also have nicknames: George to Georgie or Geordie; John to Jack or Johnny; James to Jim or Jimmy or Jamie. Or nicknames can come from his initials: J.D., for example.<\/p>\n
2. “Either have his nickname or name be simple enough that my parents can pronounce, they are Chinese, and English is their second language.” This I won’t be able to help with, but perhaps some of the readers are familiar with what is easier\/harder to pronounce in Chinese.<\/p>\n
3. “Be not very popular.” This is something we can sort for, although I encourage you not to eliminate names on the basis of popularity alone. Boy names were tricky for me, but went much more smoothly when I realized my taste in boy names was Top 50. And one benefit of choosing a common name is that it’s more likely to fit a variety of types of people: the associations of the name will be diluted.<\/p>\n
4. “Be an actual name.” Easy enough.<\/p>\n
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Can you alter or loosen or eliminate any of your requirements to make this easier on yourselves? If the entire pregnancy went by with no decision, it could be a reasonable strategy to say, “Well, let’s wait until he’s born.” But now another month has gone by, and you say it’s in fact getting harder rather than easier. This says to me that continued searching for The Right Name is not working, and may be distracting you from some of the enjoyment of his baby days.<\/p>\n
Do you have any family names you could use as the first name? Or would you want to use what you’ve got so far (Dennis Cao Flegel) and call him Dennis\/Denny\/Densy for now? If later you were to think of a better first name, you could add it onto the front of his name.<\/p>\n
What would Eloise like to name him?<\/p>\n
Gabriel doesn’t seem feminine to me. Gabriel\/Gabrielle is like Michael\/Michaela or Paul\/Paula: I don’t confuse the masculine and feminine versions of the name. It has the great nickname Gabe, and I think it works well with the sister names: Eloise, Annie, and Gabe. My one hesitation is that Gabriel Flegel seems like a lot of L.<\/p>\n
The name Theodore seems perfect. It has multiple syllables and a great nickname for childhood and beyond. It’s an actual name, and not too common. Theodore Flegel; Eloise, Annie, and Theo.<\/p>\n
I could suggest other names, but it seems like after this much time you’ve probably considered all of them. Still, I will suggest some, including ones that don’t meet your requirements:<\/p>\n
Anderson
\nArcher
\nBennett
\nBenjamin
\nBrendan
\nCasey
\nCharles
\nDerek
\nDarian
\nEverett
\nGarrett
\nGeorge
\nGideon
\nGriffin
\nHarrison
\nHenry
\nJames
\nJasper
\nJeremy
\nJohn
\nJonathan
\nNathan
\nNicholas
\nSimon
\nWarren
\nWesley
\nWilson<\/p>\n
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Name update!<\/strong> N. writes:<\/p>\n Thank you so much for your help Swistle and to everyone else who chimed in.\u00a0 This might be your quickest update!\u00a0 We have officially named our baby boy Theodore Dennis Cao Flegel.\u00a0 I think I just needed the reassurance.\u00a0 Since we waited so long to name him, I felt that I needed to exhaust all avenues.\u00a0 Theo fits our baby boy just right!\u00a0 Thanks!<\/p>\n I have attached a photo of Theo and his big sisters, Annie (1.5) and Eloise (3).<\/p>\n (photo by Michelle Regner)<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" N. writes: Help! My baby boy is 1 month old and we still have no name. We didn’t fully settle on a name before he was born, and now that he is here it feels even harder! Today is his one month birthday, and all we call him is baby boy. The problem is now […]<\/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-8852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2iM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852","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=8852"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8874,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions\/8874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"(photo](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/imgF.jpg\")