Our list has changed several times, but until we are 100% sure of one name, I’ve come to accept that this list is gonna morph and shift until certainty descends. Some of my favorite names have been removed from the list for various reasons (similar sounds to other close family members, doesn’t work with our last name, etc), others have disappeared cuz after being on the list for a long time other names became clearly favorites over them, while others have been added relatively recently and haven’t had quite enough time to settle in, so are floating around as possibilities for the moment.
Comments are always awesome…
I think our styles are probably very different, and I’m not sure I could offer any helpful feedback, but I just have to say I love [name]Amias[/name], [name]Emmett[/name], [name]Conrad[/name], [name]Miles[/name], [name]Asa[/name], and [name]Sylvan[/name]! I would love to see those used, they’re very handsome and striking.
I love [name]Miles[/name] and [name]Asa[/name]. [name]Conrad[/name] and [name]Caius[/name] are cool too. [name]Emmett[/name] and [name]Callum[/name] are good names but everyone likes them so they might get too popular.
Thanks for your responses everyone!
And [name]Mischa[/name], your categorizations there were really helpful. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that the ending sound may make the sibset with Rayhan match up a little strange. And the names from your last list there are amongst the upper echelon of my favorites, so I’m glad to see that you think they may match up well with Rayhan.
From your list the ones I like the best are:
[name]Emmett[/name], [name]Saul[/name], [name]Callum[/name], [name]Ansel[/name], [name]Miles[/name], and Ronen. They seem the most useable from your list. While I like some of the other names you have on your list I think some of them would prove difficult for others to pronounce and your child would constantly be correcting people.
out of curiosity, do you think most of your favorites (i.e [name]Emmerich[/name] or [name]Thaddeus[/name]) are easily pronounceable in [name]China[/name], and by your wife’s family? Always a tough consideration in cross-cultural marriages.
It’s too bad you want to move away from Eastern-influenced names, because I think [name]Zamir[/name], or Mirza, would be perfect. [name]Riad[/name] (much more common form of Riaz, which is a false plural in Arabic) is lovely too, meaning ‘garden,’ but it sounds a bit like the capital of Saudi [name]Arabia[/name].
I think the -an/-en ending names aren’t necessarily a dealbreaker, save Ronen. That’s far too close to Rayhan.
@blade- Some of these names would indeed require some finesse in order to make them work in Chinese (with Chinese characters), and might not come out as exactly the same name ([name]Thaddeus[/name] especially), but in all honesty we’re having a lot of trouble finding any name that will come out pronounced exactly the same in Chinese characters (we got lucky with finding Rayhan, since it’s pronounced exactly the same in Chinese, and we loved the name in multiple languages).
So if we choose a name like [name]Emmerich[/name], his Chinese name would probably end up being pronounced like ‘eh my ri’. But we could probably find characters with these pronunciations that could make a nice name to Chinese ears. So a bit far from the same, but some similar sound qualities.
The easiest one to match up Chinese characters with would be Caian (‘kai yang’ or ‘kai yen’), but even that wouldn’t come out pronounced exactly the same in Chinese, just pretty close.
If necessary, we might end up just choosing two completely separate names, because finding the perfect one that also works great in Chinese is proving to be impossible. All the other names that convert almost perfectly from the ‘English’ (or whatever root language) to Chinese are names I can’t get myself to want (or some of them sound a bit strange in Chinese), some examples we’ve looked into being
[name]Duncan[/name]
[name]Owen[/name]
[name]Logan[/name]
[name]Dillon[/name]
[name]Jonah[/name] (maybe I’ll reconsider this one)
[name]DeShawn[/name]
[name]Shawn[/name]
[name]Kai[/name]
among others that I can’t recall at the moment
Also, regarding [name]Zamir[/name], it’s not necessarily a for sure off the list. I do like it quite a lot, so I’m gonna let it stick around on the list to soak up a bit more reflection.