Oooops...

When choosing a name for a new child there are various things that you are advised to take into consideration:

trendy names that date.
the combination of initials.
names that when combined with the surname, sound bad.
names that are too difficult to spell or say.
And so on.

Nowhere did either I or Ken read "Names that when combined spell something else."

Isla M Thompson. People liked it. We liked it. The intials look fine and don't stand for anything that we know of and it sounded good.

Because of the way Isla is spoken, no-one picked up the combination of Isla and M.

Not until we had a letter from the Child Trust Fund addressed to Islam Thompson.

Ooops.

Anyone any ideas? We already have her passport. It may not be a problem but who knows what the world will be like in 20 years' time. Would she get a visa to Israel if we wanted to visit my friend who lives there? Would it lead to misunderstandings about her beliefs? We don't know but I am not sure that it is worth taking the risk.

I think the easiest way is to insert a name between the Isla and the M. Changing names becomes more complicated (and expensive!) and it is also easier to do it before her name becomes "attached" to too many things. We would have to choose a hard consonant to ensure that the words are really broken up.

We had thought of adding "Patricia" after Ken's mum but then she becomes
Isla PMT. Not good.

Equally we can't have Grace, another name we liked, as a friend pointed out that she then becomes "I slag." Also not good.

Suggestions? At the moment we are probably going with Kathryn. We know that there is a children's character called Katie Morag but I don't think this would be a problem and Ken is running out of patience having to think about names again!

P.S For bureaucratic reasons we have to do this before Tuesday as after then the cost doubles!