Dear Swistle,

Longtime reader, first-time caller. I’m due in exactly one month with a baby girl who is still nameless. Her older sister is Anna. Anna got my favorite name, my forever-favorite name, the one I doodled as a pre-teen, the perfect name, the name that when I find it or derivatives (Anneliese, Annabel) on lists I still get an involuntary “ooooh I like THAT one” feeling before remembering “Yes, that’s why you used it already.” Anna’s last name (which is also my husband’s name and will be this baby’s last name) is Stussman without the T.

Anna: is my great-grandmother’s name, is familiar, is spell-able, has a lovely meaning, has personal significance relating to that meaning, derives from Hebrew (we’re Jewish, but with a fair amount of W. European background, too) but is not full-on Hebrew/biblical, does not sound silly with a Jewish last name, is classic, is (subjectively) pretty, lends itself to nicknames, lends itself to a natural Hebrew name, rhymes with Banana…etc. I will not find another name I like as much or that ticks as many of my preferred boxes, and I am working on accepting this.

Anna’s middle name is a location that starts with “Beth-“, because I had a normal middle name and always wanted a weird one. It has literary significance to my husband and me, and delightfully lets us call her Annabeth, which we do, and Betty, which I did not expect to use as a nickname (at ALL) but frequently do.

So now we’ve got number two on the way, and again we are considering Cora, Delia, and Elizabeth (runners-up with Anna).

Elizabeth feels like it ticks the most of all my many preference boxes (classic, subjectively pretty, derived from Hebrew, familiar, spell-able, nicknames), but I am having a tough time committing to a name with “-beth” given Anna’s middle name (which we use). It feels like we used it already (and in my head, when we used Beth- for Anna’s middle name, I was committing to giving up Elizabeth for a hypothetical future daughter). Alas, I have none of the feelings for Eliza that I do for Elizabeth.

Delia has been my favorite, I think, but my husband has it in his second tier. I really like Cora, but just not quite as much. That said, I think it’s our presumptive front-runner.

Other contenders:

Maya–popularity curve is a little trendy for my taste

Zoe–same

Alice–concerned it runs into Stussman; too many sibilant sounds? Also has the word “lice” in it.

Margaret/Marguerite–we both love this (so many good nicknames!) and the meaning (“pearl”) is a family surname on my side, but he loves Margaret and I love Marguerite and we may be at an impasse. We’ve tabled it for now. I also don’t feel like it’s as “pretty” as Anna or Elizabeth.

Emma–sonically confusing with an Anna; literally the number one name last year in the US.

Talia–TOO Hebrew? He really likes this one.

Elizabeth Delia, nn Edie–my husband has a ton of Ediths in his family tree so this would sort of be an honor name. Otherwise, my preferred nicknames for Elizabeth are in the “Lizzie” family.

Names I love and/or would seriously consider that he has vetoed or just doesn’t like as much:

Lydia

Madeline

Valeria

Catherine/Katherine

Winifred (Winnie!)

Shirley (I have told everyone I know that this one is going to come back, but no one believes me)

Laurel

Middle name for this baby will likely be Mayberry (family surname to honor a specific deceased loved one), or perhaps Poppy (nickname for my husband’s beloved grandfather, now deceased) but oh, the other wonderful odd-duck middle names I have on my list:

Valley

Lenity (virtue name with personal significance)

Amarintha (family name, and I love Marin, pronounced NOT like the county)

Marigold

Roses (this occurred to me late one night and I LOVE it)

Aurise (family name)

Roisin

Galilea

Auden (literary significance)

Names I love but are too close to us (friends/family have or use these names):

Lucia

Abigail

Josephine

My husband is very reactive on this front and not super-articulate, but does have preferences that have led us to the shortlist of Cora, Delia, Elizabeth, Maya, Zoe, Alice, Margaret/Marguerite, and Talia.

Had this been a boy, she likely would’ve been Isaiah King or, possibly, Gideon Leander. Other boy names I love and might pull for in a future hypothetical pregnancy include Bennett, Elias, John, and Malachi. The people we’d like to honor had names like Ovid, Paul, and King. (Luckily, we have very few female relatives who have passed away that we’d want to honor.)

So…what should we name the baby? Am I missing something wonderful I can present on a silver platter (i.e. text message) to my husband?

Sarah