K. writes:<\/p>\n
My husband and I are expecting our second boy in June. Our first son is Simon Albert (last name is three syllables and starts with an H). We love the name Simon because it’s a “normal” name, but not incredibly popular. His middle name, Albert, is a family name. We are not fond of names that are super trendy or sound made up, and we tend to lean towards classic names.<\/p>\n
Now, the problem…we cannot seem to find the “perfect” name for baby boy #2. We know his middle name will be Scott (family name). My husband loves Sebastian, but I can’t get on board with having sibling names starting with the same letter. Is it too cutesy? I like Jude, but my husband isn’t a fan. We like Isaac, Owen, and James, but all three seem to be pretty high on the popularity lists these days. We also like Oliver, but good friends just used the name for their dog. The names Ian, August, and Ezra have also been some that we have liked but not loved. Theodore is one of our absolute favorites, with the nickname Theo. So here’s the question…if we have a Simon and a Theodore, will everyone automatically think of the chipmunks (you know–Alvin, Simon, and Theodore)? Since we plan on calling the new baby by the nickname Theo, we would probably introduce them as Simon and Theo, which I hope wouldn’t trigger the chipmunks association.<\/p>\n
So I’m torn. I want to use Theodore, but I don’t want to spend my whole life answering the question, “Like the chipmunks?” Should I use it anyway? Or toss it out and go with one of our “like but not love” names? Or start from scratch completely?<\/p>\n
I’d appreciate an outsider’s perspective!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Oh, dear, I’m afraid I did immediately think of the chipmunks—though not, if it helps, with the kind of “No no no” feeling I’d have if you were considering, say, Romeo and Juliet: The Chipmunks just came to my mind in a rather neutral way. The nickname does help considerably: I don’t think “Simon and Theo” contains any chipmunks for me. The Chipmunks is not a negative association, so I think the thing to consider is how many “What, no Alvin? hur hur hur” jokes you can stand to put up with. Maybe just a few people would say it right after the birth announcements, and then after that the incidents would be few and far between. We got “Like\u00a0 ______?” a few times after one of our kids was born, but we said “No” a few times and it hasn’t come up since then. And I don’t know how well-known The Chipmunks will be among your children’s peers; perhaps it will not be a problem there, especially since children often don’t know their classmates’ siblings’ names.<\/p>\n
You say Theodore is one of your absolute favorites, but then you ask if you should give up the name you love for a name you just like. If Theodore is one of several absolute favorites, then I guess my inclination would be to go with one of the other absolute favorites. If Theodore is the only name you both love, and all the rest are names you only like, then I could go either way: I do think the name would come with The Chipmunks association, but whether that’s a problem or not depends on your own personal tolerances: every name is going to come with a downside or two, so the trick is to choose the ones that bother you less. I doubt it would be a daily hassle, and I’d suspect it would be fairly infrequent—especially if you introduce them as Theo and Simon.<\/p>\n
One useful exercise is to pretend that the name Theodore is off the table, or that you’re definitely willing to use it, and then look again at the other name possibilities. A “want but can’t have” name can sometimes make parents feel as if they don’t even WANT to consider other names. It may still turn out that Theodore is the only name you love, but it could also happen that when you take it off the list or decide to go ahead and use it, other names will rise to your attention. I don’t think you should use a name you just like instead of one you love, but I do think you should look for more names you love.<\/p>\n
Are you planning to have more children? One possibility is to gamble on having another boy later. Simon, Sebastian, and Theo completely eliminates chipmunks for me. This option depends on how much you think you will regret not using the name if there isn’t in fact another chance to use it, and that can be hard to predict: sometimes by the time we’re naming the next baby our favorites have changed, and sometimes not.<\/p>\n
If you’re mostly planning to call him Theo, I wonder if you would like Milo or Leo or Hugo or Matteo? Or you could name him Theo: it’s a stand-alone name as well as a nickname for Theodore.<\/p>\n
While three or more siblings with matching initials does seem to fall into the Cute category, just two matched siblings doesn’t for me. The other day I mentioned how I only noticed the name issues of my friends’ children when I actively turned my mind to it—and one of the issues I noticed was a two-child family where both names started with the same letter. It hadn’t even caught my attention before then, let alone seemed overly cute. The main issue, I think, is whether it would make you feel like you had to keep going with the same initial: we’ve had so many letters from parents who have used the same first initial twice and now feel that pressure when naming a third.<\/p>\n
Another tactic I might suggest is to be slower to cross names off the list. Every name will have something non-ideal about it, so if you love a name, I’d reconsider whether it matters to you that some friends used the name for their dog, or that a name has a somewhat higher popularity ranking than another name. Some of these things will indeed be important to you, but others might fall right down as soon as you apply the “Does this ACTUALLY matter to us, or not?” question. Simon and Oliver seem like an ideal match to me, and the dog will only be an issue for a limited number of years. Simon and Isaac also seem great, and although Isaac has been in the Top 100 for nearly 20 years, I’ve only encountered a single one in any of my children’s classes\/activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
K. writes: My husband and I are expecting our second boy in June. Our first son is Simon Albert (last name is three syllables and starts with an H). We love the name Simon because it’s a “normal” name, but not incredibly popular. His middle name, Albert, is a family name. We are not fond […]<\/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-8861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2iV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8861","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=8861"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8866,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8861\/revisions\/8866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}