Your Help Wanted
This site is famed for its big family name games. Can you help an actual big family name an eighth child?
For the full details, read on. To jump ahead (tl:dr), skip down to “Can You [name_f]Solve[/name_f] the Puzzle?”.
Our [name_u]Story[/name_u]
We’ve got seven daughters. If we have an eighth in the near future (probable) we have no names for her. [name_m]Zero[/name_m], zilch, nothing. We’re plumb out of girl names.
This is totally new territory for me. I’m a name buff and like to be prepared. My wife will tell you that she would not let me discuss baby names until we were engaged. Within fifteen minutes of being engaged, we’d settled on as many boy and girl names as we thought we’d need. (We both knew we wanted to have a big family: my wife used to tell people she wanted ten sons. Note, we have no sons. Note also, we love having girls.)
Our Naming Pattern
I’ll try to keep this as simple as I can. Each of our daughters has two family names and one virtue name. Each of our daughters also has a shortened nickname. Both first and nickname get use.
So far:
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Our virtue names are fairly obvious.
For the family names, we’ve divided our family heritage into four sides: my mum’s side, her mum’s side, her dad’s side, my dad’s side. We always pick a name from two different sides (e.g. one from her mum + one from my dad’s side). We also try not to go too far back in history - we want the people to actually be meaningful to us, so we can share their stories with our girls.
For our nicknames, neither of us like adding a “y” or “ie” to a nickname. We like the more adult sound of a firm consonant, or the more Spanish sound of an open a. That’s why we chose [name_f]Eve[/name_f] instead of [name_f]Evie[/name_f]. BUT BUT BUT - there is an exception to this rule. Namely, where the ‘ie’ is traditional and essential to the nickname (e.g. [name_u]Connie[/name_u]).
For an example of the process in all its glory, you can read the details of our latest daughter’s name in her Nameberry birth announcement:
The Dilemma
We’re hitting a brick wall, unable to find any more combinations we love. For some of the names, only one of us likes the name (e.g. [name_f]Myrtle[/name_f]). Some of the names sound excellent to us in the native language, but not in English (e.g. [name_f]Lucrecia[/name_f]). Some of the names don’t feel appropriate on a baby (e.g. [name_f]Irma[/name_f]). And some of the names don’t form easy nicknames (e.g. [name_f]Irma[/name_f]).
But it’s entirely possible that we’re just not thinking about a combination the right way. That’s where your help is so appreciated!
Can You [name_f]Solve[/name_f] the Puzzle?
Can you help us build names that fit our rules?
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The full name you suggest could very well be a name we use for our daughter.
The Puzzle Pieces
Now you need the puzzle pieces: four lists of family names.
You’ll see, I’m including some key male names amongst the female. So far we’ve only transformed one male name into a female name ([name_f]Dorothea[/name_f]), but we’d be open to doing it again. Warning though - my wife doesn’t like thin male-to-female conversions, where you just stick an ‘a’ on a male name (e.g. [name_f]Roberta[/name_f]). She also doesn’t like most female versions of [name_m]John[/name_m]. But (BONUS CHALLENGE) I’d love your help to find one she does like!
List A
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List B
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List C
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List D
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Thank you - 1,000,000x over for any suggestions.