Ethnic names and sibsets...opinions please. :)

DH is Irish and I’m American and we live in Northern [name]Ireland[/name]. Leaving the politics out of this, we decided on a very traditional and uncommon Irish name for DS, mostly because we liked the sound, the meaning, and it fit with both our surname and the mn we chose (my grandfather’s name). We’re expecting baby number 2 in about 5 weeks (gender unknown) and only one name on our list is Irish. Most of me is thinking that it doesn’t really matter, we’re not out to make a statement about Irish heritage and most of the names (I think) go well enough with DS’s name (ie, not matchy, similar-sounding, or too far out there) that it probably won’t matter. Except one name on our girl’s list. It’s a different style and though not common, it’s not unheard of either. But should it really matter? They still sound ok together and DH does not agree with naming kids as sets (in other words, he doesn’t think one child’s name should have any affect on our decision for another child’s name), so I can’t bring this up with him and expect him to actually think about it lol. OTOH, we hope to have more kids in the future and if we give this baby an Irish name, number 3 (and possibly 4) would have to ‘stick with the theme’, wouldn’t they? Not sure we’re that committed!

Note: since I’ve started thinking about this, I’ve come up with a few examples of siblings with different name origins, like:

Siun and [name]Daniel[/name]
[name]Padraig[/name] and [name]Porter[/name]
[name]Sarah[/name] and [name]Cillian[/name] (twins!)
[name]Conor[/name] and [name]Adam[/name] (also twins)
[name]Charlie[/name], [name]Eoin[/name] and [name]Miriam[/name]
[name]Ethan[/name], [name]Jack[/name], [name]Oisin[/name] and [name]Rory[/name]
[name]Sean[/name], [name]Theresa[/name], [name]Kevin[/name], [name]Rachel[/name], [name]Stephen[/name] and [name]Paul[/name]

And none of them appear/sound overly strange or mismatched, do they?

I don’t think you have to have matching ethnicities to make a cohesive sibset. In your examples, most of those names sound great together. So, I think you can have a “matching” name without it being Irish. On the other hand, 2 Irish names would be great as well. Good [name]Luck[/name]!

Thanks! I just wondered if it would come across as really strange to have one child with a very ethnic name and another with a name that’s clearly in a different style set. I’d originally thought no, but started second guessing! :slight_smile: