Thanks so much for such considerate feedback and suggestions!! 
You’re absolutely right, I think, that decision paralysis is at play here! And we can’t use all the gorgeous names we love
Long response alert….
It’s been quite the name saga, something I never experienced with my other kids’ names. It doesn’t help that the other kids (two are teens) have STRONG opinions on the names, good and bad, that they voice very openly 
Alex just isn’t a name I love. It’s a good name, just not my son’s name. I feel the same about most of the Aleksander nicknames, unfortunately. While I do love Aleksander called Sandy, I worry everyone will just try to call him Alex and I’d like to avoid that. Alek isn’t bad either, but I don’t love it. Aleksander was never meant to be his first name, it was meant to be a sweet middle name nod to his big brother, but we got caught in a bureaucratic web/nightmare that made it complicated (too long to explain Czech bureaucracy here 
). Plus, when we named him Aleksander as the first name I had pretty much instant name regret that hit HARD! It threw me into quite a freak-out (was also hormones, I know). While that’s gone now, the lingering bad feeling of how much it bothered me is there. So I’ve struggled with those emotions now tied to Aleksander, which is really a shame! But it may wear off too. It does go so well with Nikolai, Mariel, and Cora, and would wear well globetrotting and at any age!
I do still love Blaise and honestly have trouble letting him go as well when I consider going with Aleksander. I’ve just realised that it’s a name that’s a bit easier written than spoken, mainly because people hear Blaze rather than Blaise. Blaise seems to be a name that goes over well in circles that are either more faith-oriented and know the Saint and/or more well-read/educated and know of Pascal. To be fair, those are definitely our circles, so his name is well-received among our friends. But outside of that, I’ve gotten some funny looks. Plus, I keep reading, in the whirlpool of the internet, that Blaise/Blaze is something stoner parents would name their kid. I just feel like that’s a pretty bad connection and could lead to him/us being judged. I just so don’t want to set him up for being judged by his name. But I don’t know how common that term is since I am so far removed from that lifestyle, I’m just clueless.
I know it also depends where we end up. If in the US, that’s a worry, but of course in Europe, it’s not a worry at all. On the other hand, while Blaise is French, it’s not used much any more because apparently it’s close to a bad slang word, so people there don’t use Blaise much now 
I just learned this recently.
So those are sort of big ones that I’m trying to make sure aren’t so bad. If we don’t live in France or the US, I suppose then it doesn’t much matter at all
And he could definitely go by one of his other names one day, if he chose, but I’d ideally want it to be one I love too and I’d like to try to get ahead of it a little bit. I know I can’t predict it or control it, but I want to make sure I’m setting him up with a good name from the get go. If he opts for something else later, then that’s great. I just don’t want it to because we gave him a burdensome name.
Regarding his legal name, he’s a dual-citizen so there’s built in time/flexibility. Legally, his first name is Aleksander Blaise. Then we’ll give him a middle name on his US birth certificate (we’ll do that next week, so have to decide once and for all). So he’ll be:
Aleksander Blaise _______ LastName
One good thing is that since his first first name is Aleksander, he’ll always get called that first (school, doctor, etc) and then he can say he goes by Blaise. Plus, written out it’s not Blaze, so that bypasses a lot of the concern.
So we thought if we use a double name in his everyday life, like two of our kids have (though they mostly use their first name only), but mostly calling him Blaise, then that would help too. I wanted to do Blaise Aleksander, but the government naming office in our country wouldn’t do it that way (too long of a bureaucratic story to explain here). And it feels like calling him Aleksander Blaise on a day-to-day basis comes right back to him being called Alex (which has already happened several times and it’s just not right for him).
So that’s why we’ve thought about calling him by Blaise ______ (I know it’s his second first name and middle name together, and that’s complicated, but that’s the least of my worries at this point, lol). That would be more just something we call him out loud, and probably not something he’d write on his schoolwork, for example. That way, it sort of takes away the “blaze-ness” of it.
So he’d be Aleksander Blaise officially (doctors offices, etc) but his home nickname and what we’d introduce him as would be Blaise ______, then mostly just calling him Blaise. We do this with our daughter, Cora Rose, who is a teenager, and it works well (though that’s her actual first name).
Louie and Benjamin are both names we really love and have special meanings for us. Edmund is a family name. The others we’ve just liked and think could sound good with Blaise, but we mainly were just trying to see if fresh names would help shake things up and maybe bring some clarity or an “ah-ha!” moment.
I’ve come to two conclusions:
- word-sounding names are hard
- name the baby before he/she is born bc it gets harder when you know them
I’ve also thought about going forward with our original Aleksander Blaise Ernest Hugo or Aleksander Blaise Hugo Ernest and then calling him Louie (he looks like a Louie ) bc all the letters are there and Louie is nicknamey enough. But that’s a lot of names !
Blaise Hugo sounds great, but in Czech, Hugo is pronounced more like “Who Go” and not like “Hyew Go” like in English. And I just can’t bring myself to love that pronunciation. Sandy Blaise could be cute, but it’s just too wordy for me….reminds me of a hot day at the beach
We’ve made this about as complicated as possible, I think!
