I am a week over due with a surprise gender baby and still don’t feel settled on our boy name. If baby is a girl her name will be [name_f]Zella[/name_f] [name_f]Kay[/name_f] or [name_f]Zella[/name_f] Kay-Irene depending on which day she arrives (my late grandma Irene’s birthday is coming up). For a boy, we have had [name_m]Zane[/name_m] [name_m]Dominic[/name_m] as our top choice for the last few months and I just am having doubts still to this day!
I have two boys already, [name_m]Enzi[/name_m] and [name_m]Jemmy[/name_m] (James) and we like that their names are both unique (essentially unheard of) but not too weird. They are both easy to pronounce and spell. [name_f]My[/name_f] husband is African and I am American and we currently live in the US. [name_f]My[/name_f] husband is also big on name meaning, so he will veto anything with a negative meaning. We want to name to be pronouncable to both our families.
I feel like I have scoured and read every name list that I can possibly find and have come up empty. We are open to more common names with a unique twist/nickname like [name_m]James[/name_m] nn [name_m]Jemmy[/name_m]. But we do not like unique or alternate spellings. I am a teacher and don’t want to set my kids up to have their names constantly mispronounced and/or misspelled at school!
I’m curious to know what’s bothering you about [name_m]Zane[/name_m] and also how attached you are to a Z first initial. The first idea I had was [name_f]Zan[/name_f], short for [name_m]Alexander[/name_m], which seems to qualify on all scores.
I am not tied to a Z name at all. It was just a coincidence that both of the names we have as top contenders were Z names! I am not fully sure what is bothering me about it, I just don’t feel as solid about it as I do my other boys and our girls name. We knew the gender with both of our first two kids and had names picked out from the beginning and called them by their name throughout the pregnancy. A few hesitations I have about [name_m]Zane[/name_m] are that it is more popular than my boys’ names and more trendy as well and I also wonder if it is too similar to Enzi’s names. It obviously doesn’t sound similar, but it has alomst all of the same letters just in a different order. I think it is probably what we will go with if it is a boy, I just don’t know why I don’t feel 100% yet!
I do really like Reuben/Ruben as well, but am concerned about the different spelling options (Zane/Zayn has that too). [name_f]Zola[/name_f] and [name_f]Zuri[/name_f] were top contenders of ours for girls before we settled on [name_f]Zella[/name_f].
[name_m]Ari[/name_m] (could be short for other names like [name_m]Aaron[/name_m], [name_m]Arthur[/name_m], [name_m]Alexander[/name_m], etc.)
[name_m]Asa[/name_m]
[name_m]Arlo[/name_m]
[name_m]Adlai[/name_m]
[name_m]Beck[/name_m]
[name_m]Cove[/name_m]
[name_m]Hayes[/name_m]
[name_m]Ira[/name_m]
[name_m]Ivo[/name_m]
[name_m]Linden[/name_m]
[name_m]Mack[/name_m] (could be short for [name_m]Malcolm[/name_m], [name_m]Maxwell[/name_m], [name_m]Magnus[/name_m], etc.)
[name_m]Ren[/name_m] (maybe short for [name_m]Ruben[/name_m], [name_m]Rowan[/name_m], [name_m]Rainier[/name_m], Ronan)
[name_m]Ronan[/name_m]
[name_m]Rex[/name_m]
[name_m]Roscoe[/name_m]
[name_m]Sal[/name_m] (Sullivan, Samwell?)
[name_m]Sol[/name_m] (Solomon?)