My husband and I have always struggled with naming girls. We have never found out the sex ahead of time, so we’ve had to figure it out each time, and in the end we both have harbored some bad feelings about how naming one of our children went down. He never liked the name of our first, but I had always loved it, and he felt like I left him out entirely. I felt our second was meant to have another name than what he wanted, but finally gave in to what he wanted because I didn’t want him to resent me (she was a week old before we finally settled on the name).
So this time we have been trying really hard to work together. We have very different naming styles. I like older names that are a mix of classic and unusual, and I really avoid nicknames. He really likes names that were popular in the 80s-90s, and loves names that seem “too nicknamey” for me.
We have finally narrowed ourselves down to two names that is think of as “older nicknames names”. Him compromising on older, me compromising on" nicknamey". I’ve also had to give up on caring too much about the flow of first/middle because I don’t love either with the middle, but it is honoring someone important to my husband.
Our older two are [name_f]Cecily[/name_f] [name_f]Brynn[/name_f], and Marliese [name_f]Rosemary[/name_f].
And if this one is a girl we are looking at:
[name_f]Eliza[/name_f] [name_f]Donna[/name_f]
or
[name_f]Lena[/name_f] [name_f]Donna[/name_f]
Last name rhymes with [name_f]Cinnamon[/name_f]. What do you think?
P.S. We have never struggled at all with big names… lol
I think [name_f]Eliza[/name_f] goes beautifully with the sister names. Like them, it has some pretty distinctive consonant and vowel sounds. [name_f]Lena[/name_f] is lovely, but I’m not sure it stands up to the sister names. I also prefer [name_f]Eliza[/name_f] with the chosen middle. Good luck!
I think [name_f]Eliza[/name_f] is fantastic too! For all the same reasons–stronger name, better flow, more similar to sisters–and also because I just love that name.
I too love [name_f]Eliza[/name_f]. Such a nice name! I never worry about middles, because you use them when you’re trying to get your child’s attention, it used to go on a wedding invitation (not so much anymore) and I use my middle initial as part of my professional name. But really, they’re nice as honor names and most of the time you don’t even think about them. I’m always surprised when I think of my oldest’s middle as I can’t even remember how we came up with it, and we’ve used it so infrequently that it sounds strange to my ear.
[name_f]Eliza[/name_f] is one of my favourite names.
I would like [name_f]Lena[/name_f] better if it was a nickname for something like [name_f]Evelina[/name_f], [name_f]Adelina[/name_f], emmalina, [name_f]Evangelina[/name_f] etc… That would be so much more fun and match the sibset better
I actually do like [name_f]Evelina[/name_f], but she would always be called [name_f]Lena[/name_f], and we’d rather just name the baby what we would call her.
Also my paternal grandmother was [name_f]Elizabeth[/name_f], so there is an argument for going with that and calling her [name_f]Eliza[/name_f], but again we just want the name to be the name.
Thank you so much for all the input. This naming experience has been exhausting but the goal has been to not resent each other in the end, so fingers crossed.
