Table of Contents
Name-inspired news and notes for your Sunday reading.
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There are competing schools of thought when it comes to middle names:
- Figure out the first name first. Middles can wait to see what flows best with your favorite first-last.
- Meaningful middles, like honor names, can come first, and you can weigh your favorite firsts with the middles in mind.
I’d say most people take the first approach, but I hear a lot of the latter. “His middle name will be Michael.” Or an inflexible shortlist with just a little bit of choice: “we’re choosing between Elizabeth, Barrett, or maybe Browning, depending on which sounds best.”
My observation? Both approaches can leave you feeling stuck.
I’d suggest you talk about priorities in naming first. As you shift into choosing names, recognize that the act of mixing and matching firsts and middles can help something click – whether they’re honor names or not. There’s no good reason that saying “Ava” doesn’t feel like your daughter’s name … but suddenly “Ava Barrett” does.
I’ll be writing more about how middle names impact name choices on the AM Patreon in the coming weeks. Sign up here! (And if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.)
ELSEWHERE ONLINE
I have a theory that movie TITLES boost names in a way that mere characters rarely do. And so I’m watching Honey Don’t to see if it lends the name Honey a turbo boost. The term of endearment has been used as a given name in the UK for years, but only recently debuted in the US Top 1000. I think an edgy, rock-and-roll tinted boost from a successful indie(ish) flick might make Honey the next Stella. (And yes, I’ve added Honey to my list of Beatles baby names.)
Bramwell, Wallis, Clementina … Check out the rare names recorded in the UK in 2024. Nancy has them at the bottom of her report on the new data.
The name Maryweld has never been recorded in US birth data, but I’m intrigued. (And I did find it when digging through obituaries, so possibly it’s out there pre-1880 and/or in such tiny numbers it’s never registered in the Social Security data and/or it’s often recorded as Mary Weld.) What can I say? I love an unexpected Mary-plus name.
UPDATING & THINKING ABOUT
Fletcher is more accessible than Ferris, less common than Hunter. It’s a great compromise.
If we’d had a second daughter, I was all about Romy. Do you have a name that got away? Maybe I’m not the only one either, because Romy won this summer’s New Names Showdown.
Kind of obsessed with Sally right now. I blame Role Model, but it turns out that Margaret Qualley plays a character named Sally in Happy Gilmore 2. So we started with a Margaret Qualley character name with a strong song tie-in, and we’re ending with another one, too.
That’s all for this week. As always, thank you for reading – and have a great week!
