I love your blog and I need your thoughtful advice! We are due in just 5 weeks at the end of June. After struggling with infertility, we are thrilled to be welcoming a little boy into our lives.<\/p>\n
But…we are having a really hard time with the name! I had hoped this would be a fun process and we would choose a name we really loved together. But, it turns out we have very different styles. I don’t find it fun to talk names anymore. My suggestions are deemed “boring.”<\/p>\n
I am a writer, and language and meaning and flow have always been really important to me. And unfortunately, I do not like the sound of any of the names my husband likes.<\/p>\n
He is really, really into Germanic and Scandinavian names. (Made worse by a trip we took to Norway and Sweden this past summer.) Efforts to get him to come up with other names have failed–he’s just really focused on a small set of names.<\/p>\n
People have asked if he’s Swedish, and he does have German\/Dutch blood in his background, but that’s it. So it feels a bit weird to pick a powerhouse Scandi name.<\/p>\n
I feel really terrible that I don’t like any of his choices! At this point, he says he just wants to pick something. And since this will likely be our only baby, I really wanted this to be a joint decision. Help!<\/p>\n
We do agree it needs to be at least a two-syllable name. And we do have a middle name: Malcolm. It’s my father and brother’s middle name. The baby will have my husband’s last name: Pibb-with-a-G.<\/p>\n
Husband’s choices:
\nLars
\nMagnus
\nGustav (which has become the baby’s in utero name)
\nJohan (Husband’s only name choice when we met 7 years ago…I am ok-ish with this one, we could use the nickname Hans)
\nAnders
\nEugene (!)
\nColin
\n(For girls, he loves the names June and Freya, which I could have gotten onboard with, and Penelope which I don’t like)<\/p>\n
(Please note–I am from Massachusetts and I don’t want to call my poor baby “Lahs” and all these long “a”s get challenging for me, esp with Hans and Anders)<\/p>\n
I would prefer a name with a B, G, or a short I in it as I think they sound better with the last name but it’s not a hard and fast rule!<\/p>\n
Names I like in no particular order:<\/p>\n
Asa
\nHugh
\nLewis (husband hates)
\nIan (I love, husband hates)
\nAlden
\nOwen (too popular?)
\nGraeme (sounds a bit funny with the last name)
\nBenjamin (I really like this one, husband is ho hum)
\nThomas (“boring!”)
\nPeter
\nSamuel
\nJulian
\nChristopher (nickname “Kit”)
\nHenry
\nAlfred
\nFergus
\nHarald
\nFrederick (can’t use)<\/p>\n
(For girls, I like Beatrix, Hazel, Helen, Susanna, Pheobe, Ingrid, Frieda, and Elisabeth)<\/p>\n
Names we both like well enough but seem completely different in style:<\/p>\n
Abraham (I love the nickname Bram, but this name too big? too biblical? Will he be called Ham? We do both like this one)
\nOskar
\nAngus (husband loves Gus, but is this name too beefy?)<\/p>\n
What should we do? Have I missed some awesome Scandi names that I could love? Should I just present my husband with an acceptable list and let him choose? Are there names that sound better with Pibb-with-a-G that we have not considered?<\/p>\n
Is Abraham a huge and burdensome name for a kid?<\/p>\n
Neither my husband’s name or my own lends itself to a nickname, which is fine, but it would be fun if the baby could have a nicknameable name.<\/p>\n
Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated!!!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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Name update!<\/strong><\/p>\n Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n First of all–thank you to everyone who commented on the post! My husband and I had some really good conversations after we read through them all. (We were especially amused by the suggestions to use Ivan, which is my brother’s name! It’s a great name, in case anyone is considering it, ahem.) We took Oskar off the table, eventually, but still couldn’t make a decision.<\/p>\n My water broke early at 37 weeks. The night before, my husband had said perhaps we should use Ian. I was surprised–since I love Ian but he had maintained he hated it–until he confessed that night that since Ian Desmond of the Washington Nationals was doing so well, it didn’t seem so bad. (He’s a huge baseball fan.)<\/p>\n Next thing we know, it’s 5 am and we are running around in a panic trying to throw clothes and supplies in a bag. We ended up hanging out in Labor and Delivery for many many hours and flipping through the baby name book with increasing panic! My husband looked up from perusing baseball on his phone and said, “How about Desmond?” To which I said, “Like, Ian Desmond? Hey, I like that.” (I’ve lived in England and Ireland so it was a familiar first name to me.)<\/p>\n So, by the time I ended up with a c-section hours and hours later, we had 5 names on the wipeboard: Abraham, Ian, Henry, Desmond, and something I no longer recall. The nurses were very amused and offered various opinions. They were voting for Ian.<\/p>\n But when they finally handed us our baby, we looked at him and thought, this kid seems like a Desmond. And one year later, it still suits his sweet personality. We call him Des and Desi, and we are very happy with it.<\/p>\n (And my dad was thrilled to have his name as the honor name in the middle, and my brother was pleased as well!)<\/p>\n Thank you again!<\/p>\n Hilary writes: I love your blog and I need your thoughtful advice! We are due in just 5 weeks at the end of June. After struggling with infertility, we are thrilled to be welcoming a little boy into our lives. But…we are having a really hard time with the name! I had hoped this 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-8990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2l0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990","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=8990"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11425,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8990\/revisions\/11425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Desmond\"](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Desmond.jpg\")
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"