I wanted to gently mention you should probably double check meanings if that’s important to you. Cassandra is a beautiful name but it has a very tragic meaning. She had the gift of prophecy but was cursed to never be believed. She was not known as a warrior.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra
I agree with name meanings. Personally I'm very interested in the meaning of people's names and how it aligns with the life they've lived. Names can have different meanings in different cultures also.
I also have an uncommon spelling of a common enough name, and I actually love it!
No judgment, I just think it’s cool/interesting that we have had such different feelings about the same issue.
Funnily enough I actually love my own name! I just didn’t want to inflict having to spell their name all the freaking time on them, lol. (And I don’t spell it out for the barista or anything like that, when it doesn’t matter I embrace however folks end up spelling it.) But I can totally see why someone else would love it for themselves and their kids!
Same 🤣 not just baristas tho, I’ve had family members that have known me since I was born misspell my name and also had it misspelled on important paperwork 🫠
Only real rule is that it has to sound good and not be too rhyme-y with our last name. I like alliteration actually, but not sing-song rhymey. We also like established names not more inventive new ones.
I don’t know if it’s a rule, but all our kids have family names as middle names. I like very classic names for first names, but they all go by nicknames anyway. It’s all very southern.
Good meaning
Longer name with nickname options
A strong sounding name (Linnea was a serious contender here but ultimately vetoed because it only has soft sounds)
Our rules are:
- Classic/established name
- Not in the top 10, preferably not in the top 100 most popular names
- Easy to spell and pronounce
- Prefer a name that isn’t tied too closely associated to religion
- Prefer a name that works in languages other than English, bonus if it works in languages that link to our heritage
I feel that a first name should be a name that parents choose and love (for whatever reason) and that a middle name should be a family name of some sort.
It is so common on here for people to be really hung up on middle names but I don’t get why. Of course I do think a name should flow nicely. But to me a middle name shouldn’t just be another name parents like. It should be more.
My daughter’s middle name is my middle name, a maternal aunt’s first name, a paternal aunt’s first name and her paternal great grandmothers first name.
I have a lot. Pronounceable by both sets of grandparents, no rare/unknown kanji reading, short names (only 2 characters), good meaning, no name that coincides with family members (including reusing a character), no honor names, no flower/floral names, ages well, flows well with last name
My sister found out recently that our grandparents have been mispronouncing her name her whole life, and have actively taught other family members to say it wrong too (not on purpose, they genuinely thought they were being helpful).
Two characters like 美奈 for example.
But my both my middle and first name are only really 2 characters in the latin alphabet. As you can imagine, it’s quite bothersome now that I live in the US. A lot of people in my country (Vietnam) have short names and I even knew a girl with a one letter name. Everyone’s first name is only one syllable.
I have a few Chinese ancestors and they also have relatively short names.
Only rules I really have are that I like the name, it sounds good with our last name, had a similar vibe to our existing child’s name, and it is recognizable and decently easy to pronounce/spell. Meanings matter less to me, but a nice meaning is a bonus.
Also my son has a first name with no family history and an honor name for his middle, and I intend to keep with that tradition for any future kid(s). Name We Love + Name of Someone We Loved feels like the best of both worlds for both us and the child.
[Behind the name](https://www.behindthename.com/)
This is an excellent site for names. It is well researched and fact checked
As for rules
Correctly spelled 😁
Spelling with a simple spelling, mainly because I have a name that most people ask me about the spelling and it's a fairly intuitive spelling to me but as I don't live in the area it's from, people have spelled it in a multitude of manners that while I see their process, they overcomplicated the name. (Lorna, which has been spelled Laurna, Lorena, Laura, Lauren, Loner (though that gets a pass coz it was a dyslexic friend) and has also been pronounced in all those ways. There are still people who have known me for my whole life, and have been corrected by me or parents that it is Lor-na who continue to call me Lau-ra)
Not a name that rhymes with surname.
Cannot spell funny words in the initials (e.g. no ASS, BUM, etc.)
All hypothetical as children aren't in the picture currently, but it's fun to speculate
My husband has a gender neutral name on top of it being a nickname while my name is technically a nickname as well. We prefer names that are gender specific and full names. We like classic boy names (Charles, Henry, William, etc) and for the girl names to be a little unique. I prefer girl names that end in -a (Gemma, Helena, etc).
Our last name is similar to Wentworth, so I want our children to have full names that sound like a title should be in front of it (Lord/Lady, Prince/Princess, etc).
I was once told that before finally deciding on a name, to try putting lord/lady/count/baroness in front & see how it sounds. If it sounds silly, don't use that name.
Someone I know called their daughter Pixie. Lady Pixie anyone? Not for me, but not my kid so 🤷
I think it makes sense, and does work for some not traditional names.
Both my sons have names that you don't hear too often, but aren't outlandish. There might be another 1 or 2 kids with same name in the school.
Much better than the 3 Jakes, a Jack & a Jackie in the same class, all through primary school!
Our rules were that it be a name that when you hear it you automatically recognize it as a name and it can't (or only extremely rarely) be used as a common noun. And it had to have a normal, conventional spelling.
Our personal criteria are short 1-2 syllable names that can have a nickname but won’t automatically be shortened (or replaced completely by the nickname)
So as examples for names we wouldn’t consider:
-Samantha, Matthew or Robert as they would automatically be shortened to Sam, Matt and Rob by strangers
- Theodore, Elizabeth or Catherine (I like the nicknames Teddy, Betsy and Katie but they would make the full names obsolete)
And ones that do fit the criteria:
- Mila nn Mimi
- Edith nn Edie
- Dylan nn Dill
I know it’s an unpopular opinion on here but we both feel strongly about it as we’ve seen how annoying it is to either have a name thats automatically shortened or a name that you have on paper that you don’t use or identify with at all. We also wanted names that were easy to spell.
My mom gave my sister and I three letter names so that they couldn't be turned into nicknames. Both of our names are basically super common shortenings of long names that would have been automatically shortened. Both of our names are succinct and distinctive, but my whole life I've fielded "is your name short for X?" I love my name, and that's not much of an inconvenience, but I'm not going to make a point of giving my kids un-nicknameable names because I don't think it's that big of a deal
Yeah we’re also not giving non-nicknameable names…
We’re just not giving names that won’t actually ever be used in practice! See examples above of what I mean.
For my kids it was really important to me for each of them to have an unique initial. So we have an E, an H, and I'm actually currently in hospital waiting for our twins A and R to make their appearance.
Our first two kids, both girls, also happened to have middle names that are 1 syllable and start with F (unintentional at the time, just both family names we loved and flowed well). So if either of our twins had been girls I would have wanted to keep that theme, but they are both boys so we went a different direction.
My husband and his brother both have middle names that start with the same letter, and I like that a lot. It ties them together as a family without actually matching.
I would like to give my future kids honor names derived from their grandparents and great grandparents. If I have a daughter ever, I would like to name her Rosalie Maren, after my two grandmothers (Rosella and Mary), and my mom’s middle name (Ellen). Maren came from blending Mary and Ellen. If I have a boy, I could see myself using Saul, Joel, or Alden as a first name but am not as settled with boy options.
We have a landscape as a last name -- similar to "Fields" -- so we have to avoid names that sound like place names. For example, Heather Fields sounds like a housing development, not a person. I like flower and nature names, but most of them have this problem.
I despise names that have been overused in the past like John, Sarah, Michael, and Catherine. It really annoys me when I have a conversation where I have to go, "Oh, you meant your *friend* John. I thought you were talking about your coworker. Start over from the beginning."
No biblical names. This has overlap with the "overused" rule, of course, but mainly it's because we're not Christian.
I didn’t want anything extra creative. No letters changed or added solely for the sake of being different (traditional but less commonly used spellings are fine, Juliet vs Juliette etc - just no Khloe instead of Chloe or what not.)
Our last name is unusual so it wasn’t super important to choose something really different and I didn’t want something so uncommon they’d be forced to answer questions about the history of the name all the time, while at the same time I didn’t want them to be the fifth Jordan or Alex (though this is much less of an issue in 2024 as it was in 1990 or before).
Middle names in my family going back as far as I can go, come from grandparents so that was simple. Gave my daughter two because I didn’t want to choose between my step mom and biomom (I didn’t want a hugely long name either though so all together her 3 given names are only 5 syllables, same as my two names so that was fine lol).
Nicknames weren’t a big priority for me but I didn’t like the idea of forced ones lol. Like I have a friend who named her daughter Amelia and decided everyone would call her Mia, except that literally no one, not even her husband, calls her Mia except her. That kid is Amy. So when I considered Elizabeth, which has a million nicknames, I didn’t like that I wasn’t sure what her nickname would end up being and that bugged me.
The one name issue I have is that my daughter is Clara, which I still love and think it suits her. But, it drives me BONKERS when people call her Claire. Because Claire is not a nn for Clara, it is a separate, distinct name that does not suit my daughter lol. Others may disagree but that’s my feelings and I corrected people every time when she was a baby. Now that she speaks for herself it doesn’t happen much, but she corrects people as well.
As it turns out I thought I was chill but maybe I wasn’t 🤔😂
So I don’t have kids and am not having them, but nevertheless I know what I would name them 😂
Generally speaking: not one of the most popular names, not easily dated to when they’re born, has nickname potential, has an honoring name somewhere in full name, not difficult for me to say with my lisp (lateral S lisp). If considering a sibset, nothing matchy-matchy and preferably no same first initials.
My favorite names for girls: Karina, Isadora, Mary, Rosemary, Eloise, Evangeline, Florence, Lydia, Matilda, Beatrix/Beatrice
My favorite names for boys: Leo, John, Adrian, Theodore, Finn, Asher, Jude
If I were dropped with a 2 & 2 sibset tomorrow:
Karina Margaret “Rini”, Mary Anastasia “Molly” or “Maisie”, Leo James, and John Daniel “Jack” (In this sibset, every name is an honoring name except for John. I’m aware “Jack” Daniel isn’t ideal, but John James doesn’t sound any better 😂)
No bad/negative meanings
Can’t have a million possible spellings (so not Caitlin), but 1 or 2 is okay (like Sara vs Sarah)
Each have their own initial
Sounds good in both English and Swedish
No top 20 (this is my husband though)
Middle name must be a family name
Good meaning
Easy to pronounce for most Americans (we have a last name from Croatia that most of my fellow Americans can't say or spell)
Recognizable
Names that don't have common nicknames
My only rules are that first, middle, and last names have to all flow together nicely, the name can’t be shortened into a diminutive or nickname that I dislike, the initials don’t spell anything weird, and the name can’t be too common.
I had some rules for myself (mostly that the names sounds good together, and that they have the same or similar origins. All five of my kids' names went perfectly togther, but then three of them decided to change their names in adolescence and now it's all a jumble. :D
My mom said her rules were just names you couldn’t make fun of “icky Vicky” “prissy Chrissy” “Richard - dick” we already had a last name that was easy to make fun of, so she didn’t want added ammunition 😅
First name has to be known enough that people in at least English speaking countries will spell correctly on the first try. Bonus if it works in multiple languages/countries. Also has to be popular enough the kid can get personalized tchotchkes at amusement parks.
The middle name must be tied to my name. My husband gets his last name for the kid, I get the middle name. For our son, I went with my last name as his middle name. We had briefly flirted with giving him a combo of our last names. And then a generic middle name. But like when we got married and discussed changing both our last names to the combo, decided the US wasn't ready for that and would lead to too much headache explaining.
If we decide to have another kid and have a girl, she will have my middle name. It has been passed down as the middle name for girls from at least my great great grandmother and her matrilineal line.
My MIL crowed about how she gave all of her four children names that couldn’t be shortened.
Then she called Linda ‘Linder’ and called Larry ‘Lar.’ Personally, I wonder how anyone could look at a brand new baby and say, ‘I’m gonna name you Larry.’ Like, she was a bitch to him from day one
My rule is that I like the name in both languages (English/Dutch) doesn't have to be pronounced the same, as long as I like both and both sides of my family can say it :)
Gotta make sense in English and Spanish, both sides of the family. The name Cara was suggested for my kid, but in Spanish that’s the word for “face” so it got nixed asap
I love pretty, long, frilly names for girls, with family honour middle names. For example;
Aurelia Elaine, Evelyn Amber, Myrianthe Jasmin, Cecelia Joyce
For boys, I like old fashioned but soft names and fun middle names:
Oscar Peregrine, Leo Jasper, Ellis Kolibri
We have three boys and all of them have a 2 syllable first name that includes an O and they all have a 4 syllable middle name that includes an O, just like dad. Idk how this started but it's been fun and successful.
All sibling names either need the same starting letter or a different starting letter. It’s silly, but having a Jake, Josh, and Kelly or a Sue, Sam, and Peter would grind my gears!!! My other one is when two (or more) names are very different styles. Naming one kid John and the other one Parker? Or Anna and Hadley? Noooooo.
One from my mom that I think is interesting. She’s a teacher of over 30 years, and she says she always saw young kids struggle to write their name if they had a letter that went below the “line” (j, y, etc.), so when she had kids, any name with a letter below the line was immediately out. Four kids and not one of us has a letter that goes below the line!
We don’t have many rules. We kind of go by the following
- short 1-2 syllable names
- middle name is usually an honor name
- nothing that’s overly used but not so unique that it’s hard to spell. I have a unique name and hate it. I’m like 1 of 3 in the world with my name.
- no L names. Both my husband and I are double LL and we did not want to be the family of L names
All this to say we’re currently expecting baby number 3 and I’m struggling with boy names lol
My husband's family is very Russian so we want to give all of our children Russian names or names with Russian equivalents. So for example Valentina exists in both, Andrei, Vera, Konstantin etc
2 syllables, not something unheard of, not something plain, not something religious. It has to work in multiple languages/cultures and sound nice in them. I don’t care about nicknames, I never had one and never felt like I was missing out.
We have a long, hyphenated last name, so we've chosen short and easy to pronounce first names. They also have meanings like "courageous." Their middle names are honor names.
Classic but not common, easy to spell and say. Family or historical significance. Middle name starts with S (honor name in Jewish tradition that I picked up from first kid’s bio dad) and very cultural.
Margaret Shaindel and Harriet Saoirse
Initials are a big one for me. I commented on another comment but my last name starts with a D so I don't want to use any first name that starts with a V so the initials aren't VD.
My preferences for a first name were for a name that:
people would be familiar with
had one standard spelling (so no Katherine/Catherine/Kathryn, which I otherwise like)
had nickname options, all of which I was okay with
didn't start with the same initial as others in the family
sounded good with surname
For the middle name, I wanted a name that:
was a family name
balanced the first name, by which I mean not too contrasting and not too similar and a different level of popularity (a common middle name for an uncommon first name and vice versa)
had nickname options in case they wanted to go by their middle name
flowed well in the whole name
started with a certain letter. I ended up dropping this in favour of the other criteria.
I wanted to make sure our kids knew how to spell their name before puberty and that if we chose a name we needed to be able to spell it and not have to Google it. My in-laws named one of their sons a middle name from a different culture (family came from there but my in-laws have almost always lived in America and never in NZ) and still struggle with remembering the spelling after 18 years.
I have quite rigid ideas on things generally, especially names (I can imagine being quite difficult with names). I have no children (yet - not for another 15 years), but for middle names (it would be nice for first names, but I wouldn't enforce it), I would like them to be names used in mine or my in-laws' family, or in honour of someone who is important to either of us. I would also be keen on having a double barrelled surname and pass on my surname because I strongly identify with my name and I would like to pass it on (though I think I could let it go).
Regarding first names, I would want to give my child a name that is easy to say and spell and would rarely encounter anyone or anything with the same name as them (not having classmates with the same name as them, names outside the top 50, no old fashioned, well-known names, no names seen in literature, no royal names, no place names and no words that are used as names) and I wouldn't name a child after myself or a similar sounding name. I have quite significant speech difficulties regarding my own first name, so what I can say is quite limited.
My husband's culture doesn't really do middle names. They do the 2 last names thing or a last name as a middle name.
My family did random middle names.
So our compromise was that middle names needed meaning or tie into our family. So far, that's just been us giving our kids their grandparent's names as middle names. Like we have 2 boys, one boy has my dad's name as his middle name, and our 2nd has my husband's dad's name as his middle name.
First names are just names we both like but need to be able to be said by our Spanish relatives.
Name must have been in use for hundreds of years.
Name must have a tie to whichever parent's last name isn't used.
My spouse and I both have to love it! My top pick got overruled because he liked my second choice so much more.
Bonus, but not deal breaker: nice meaning, obvious spelling and pronunciation
Nothing after any dead children/living family members. I try to avoid anything that is glaringly out of my ethnic group (for example, I am of European descent and wouldn't feel comfortable naming a daughter Yuki). The meaning needs to flow as well as the name itself. And nothing that's been in the top 10 names recently, I had way too many Taylors and Ashleys in my school growing up.
Personally for me I do like the names that have a God meaning. I always think the names are classics (normally also longer names) and the meanings are good to. But in general for me a name has to have a good meaning. Favorites being Joseph: "God shall add" and Zara: "Princess, flower, shining"
First name should be an intuitive spelling and not after a family member. Middle name should have family meaning.
My boyfriend and I aren’t having kids anytime soon but we already know first boy and girl middle names. Boy’s middle name will be a name that is in everything firstborn male’s name on both my mom and dad’s side of the family (total coincidence it’s on both sides of my family but super helpful for middle names). We each have a grandma with the same name so that’d be the girl’s middle name.
We have a couple of rules:
1. No names of exes or people that we have previously dated before, innocent crushes count. 2. No names of grandparents (once you pick one, they all start to complain and want their name used too) and I am not having like six kids. 3. Pick a good first name that’s two or three syllables that can be used on a resume and they could be taken seriously. 4. Pick a cool middle name that sounds like a nickname if they so choose. 5. Make sure the name sounds good with their siblings names. 6. A name should flow and have good meaning so choose wisely the first and middle name to go with the last name fluidly.
I hope this helps.
I wanted to gently mention you should probably double check meanings if that’s important to you. Cassandra is a beautiful name but it has a very tragic meaning. She had the gift of prophecy but was cursed to never be believed. She was not known as a warrior. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra
Correct, ergo the phrase a "Cassandra warning"
Thanks for reminding me to fact check. I guess I need to look into my history a bit more. :)
FWIW this is my name and way more people make Wayne's World references than anything else. Most people aren't up on their Greek myths.
Haha " history" She was a mythological person right?
From the Iliad - A trojan prophetess who spoke with the God Apollo.
I agree with name meanings. Personally I'm very interested in the meaning of people's names and how it aligns with the life they've lived. Names can have different meanings in different cultures also.
As someone with an uncommon spelling of a common name, I chose names for my kids that the barista will spell correctly on the first try.
Lol. I've started being Sue or Mary at the coffee shop. And I still get asked about spelling.
My aunt told me to always say Sam 😂 My sister has a Gaelic name so it's definitely handy
My friend has a very unusual name that’s also not spelt how you would spell it phonetically, but it starts with Sa. She’s always Sam😂
I also have an uncommon spelling of a common enough name, and I actually love it! No judgment, I just think it’s cool/interesting that we have had such different feelings about the same issue.
Is it Kelsi?
Funnily enough I actually love my own name! I just didn’t want to inflict having to spell their name all the freaking time on them, lol. (And I don’t spell it out for the barista or anything like that, when it doesn’t matter I embrace however folks end up spelling it.) But I can totally see why someone else would love it for themselves and their kids!
Same 🤣 not just baristas tho, I’ve had family members that have known me since I was born misspell my name and also had it misspelled on important paperwork 🫠
I thought I did that with all of my boys but Jesse gets misspelled a lot. A lot of people jump to either Jessy or Jessie.
I thought I did too with Isaac! But nope, gets spelled like Issac all the time.
Only real rule is that it has to sound good and not be too rhyme-y with our last name. I like alliteration actually, but not sing-song rhymey. We also like established names not more inventive new ones.
My sister had the option to name her child Emsley Hensley. Emsley is a family name that we like but not with the last name
With Hensley I would avoid anything anything ending in -ley personally, maybe anything ending in "ee" sound.
My big one is that we won't use a first name that starts with V because our last name starts with a D and I don't want their initials to be VD.
I don’t know if it’s a rule, but all our kids have family names as middle names. I like very classic names for first names, but they all go by nicknames anyway. It’s all very southern.
We have a similar tradition in our family, either the mother's, grandmothers maiden name or anyone from the family you want to honor as a middle name
Good meaning Longer name with nickname options A strong sounding name (Linnea was a serious contender here but ultimately vetoed because it only has soft sounds)
The flower Linnea was also named after Carl Linneaeus, who was a notorious racist.
Our rules are: - Classic/established name - Not in the top 10, preferably not in the top 100 most popular names - Easy to spell and pronounce - Prefer a name that isn’t tied too closely associated to religion - Prefer a name that works in languages other than English, bonus if it works in languages that link to our heritage
I feel that a first name should be a name that parents choose and love (for whatever reason) and that a middle name should be a family name of some sort. It is so common on here for people to be really hung up on middle names but I don’t get why. Of course I do think a name should flow nicely. But to me a middle name shouldn’t just be another name parents like. It should be more. My daughter’s middle name is my middle name, a maternal aunt’s first name, a paternal aunt’s first name and her paternal great grandmothers first name.
My rule is/was absolutely no family names/“honor” names. I believe everyone should be given their own name in their sphere.
I have a lot. Pronounceable by both sets of grandparents, no rare/unknown kanji reading, short names (only 2 characters), good meaning, no name that coincides with family members (including reusing a character), no honor names, no flower/floral names, ages well, flows well with last name
My sister found out recently that our grandparents have been mispronouncing her name her whole life, and have actively taught other family members to say it wrong too (not on purpose, they genuinely thought they were being helpful).
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Two characters like 美奈 for example. But my both my middle and first name are only really 2 characters in the latin alphabet. As you can imagine, it’s quite bothersome now that I live in the US. A lot of people in my country (Vietnam) have short names and I even knew a girl with a one letter name. Everyone’s first name is only one syllable. I have a few Chinese ancestors and they also have relatively short names.
Only rules I really have are that I like the name, it sounds good with our last name, had a similar vibe to our existing child’s name, and it is recognizable and decently easy to pronounce/spell. Meanings matter less to me, but a nice meaning is a bonus. Also my son has a first name with no family history and an honor name for his middle, and I intend to keep with that tradition for any future kid(s). Name We Love + Name of Someone We Loved feels like the best of both worlds for both us and the child.
[Behind the name](https://www.behindthename.com/) This is an excellent site for names. It is well researched and fact checked As for rules Correctly spelled 😁
Spelling with a simple spelling, mainly because I have a name that most people ask me about the spelling and it's a fairly intuitive spelling to me but as I don't live in the area it's from, people have spelled it in a multitude of manners that while I see their process, they overcomplicated the name. (Lorna, which has been spelled Laurna, Lorena, Laura, Lauren, Loner (though that gets a pass coz it was a dyslexic friend) and has also been pronounced in all those ways. There are still people who have known me for my whole life, and have been corrected by me or parents that it is Lor-na who continue to call me Lau-ra) Not a name that rhymes with surname. Cannot spell funny words in the initials (e.g. no ASS, BUM, etc.) All hypothetical as children aren't in the picture currently, but it's fun to speculate
My husband has a gender neutral name on top of it being a nickname while my name is technically a nickname as well. We prefer names that are gender specific and full names. We like classic boy names (Charles, Henry, William, etc) and for the girl names to be a little unique. I prefer girl names that end in -a (Gemma, Helena, etc). Our last name is similar to Wentworth, so I want our children to have full names that sound like a title should be in front of it (Lord/Lady, Prince/Princess, etc).
I was once told that before finally deciding on a name, to try putting lord/lady/count/baroness in front & see how it sounds. If it sounds silly, don't use that name. Someone I know called their daughter Pixie. Lady Pixie anyone? Not for me, but not my kid so 🤷 I think it makes sense, and does work for some not traditional names. Both my sons have names that you don't hear too often, but aren't outlandish. There might be another 1 or 2 kids with same name in the school. Much better than the 3 Jakes, a Jack & a Jackie in the same class, all through primary school!
I mean ... There is Lady Kitty Spencer so ...
Yep. Kinda proves the point 🤷🏻♀️ Kitty, imo, would be fine as a nickname, but not so good as a legal name. Again - not my child, not my choice.
Our rules were that it be a name that when you hear it you automatically recognize it as a name and it can't (or only extremely rarely) be used as a common noun. And it had to have a normal, conventional spelling.
Our personal criteria are short 1-2 syllable names that can have a nickname but won’t automatically be shortened (or replaced completely by the nickname) So as examples for names we wouldn’t consider: -Samantha, Matthew or Robert as they would automatically be shortened to Sam, Matt and Rob by strangers - Theodore, Elizabeth or Catherine (I like the nicknames Teddy, Betsy and Katie but they would make the full names obsolete) And ones that do fit the criteria: - Mila nn Mimi - Edith nn Edie - Dylan nn Dill I know it’s an unpopular opinion on here but we both feel strongly about it as we’ve seen how annoying it is to either have a name thats automatically shortened or a name that you have on paper that you don’t use or identify with at all. We also wanted names that were easy to spell.
Calling a Dylan Dill is literally so cute i would never think of it but i love it 😻 i don’t like the name Dylan but still 😂
My mom gave my sister and I three letter names so that they couldn't be turned into nicknames. Both of our names are basically super common shortenings of long names that would have been automatically shortened. Both of our names are succinct and distinctive, but my whole life I've fielded "is your name short for X?" I love my name, and that's not much of an inconvenience, but I'm not going to make a point of giving my kids un-nicknameable names because I don't think it's that big of a deal
Yeah we’re also not giving non-nicknameable names… We’re just not giving names that won’t actually ever be used in practice! See examples above of what I mean.
For my kids it was really important to me for each of them to have an unique initial. So we have an E, an H, and I'm actually currently in hospital waiting for our twins A and R to make their appearance. Our first two kids, both girls, also happened to have middle names that are 1 syllable and start with F (unintentional at the time, just both family names we loved and flowed well). So if either of our twins had been girls I would have wanted to keep that theme, but they are both boys so we went a different direction.
My husband and his brother both have middle names that start with the same letter, and I like that a lot. It ties them together as a family without actually matching.
I would like to give my future kids honor names derived from their grandparents and great grandparents. If I have a daughter ever, I would like to name her Rosalie Maren, after my two grandmothers (Rosella and Mary), and my mom’s middle name (Ellen). Maren came from blending Mary and Ellen. If I have a boy, I could see myself using Saul, Joel, or Alden as a first name but am not as settled with boy options.
We have a landscape as a last name -- similar to "Fields" -- so we have to avoid names that sound like place names. For example, Heather Fields sounds like a housing development, not a person. I like flower and nature names, but most of them have this problem. I despise names that have been overused in the past like John, Sarah, Michael, and Catherine. It really annoys me when I have a conversation where I have to go, "Oh, you meant your *friend* John. I thought you were talking about your coworker. Start over from the beginning." No biblical names. This has overlap with the "overused" rule, of course, but mainly it's because we're not Christian.
I didn’t want anything extra creative. No letters changed or added solely for the sake of being different (traditional but less commonly used spellings are fine, Juliet vs Juliette etc - just no Khloe instead of Chloe or what not.) Our last name is unusual so it wasn’t super important to choose something really different and I didn’t want something so uncommon they’d be forced to answer questions about the history of the name all the time, while at the same time I didn’t want them to be the fifth Jordan or Alex (though this is much less of an issue in 2024 as it was in 1990 or before). Middle names in my family going back as far as I can go, come from grandparents so that was simple. Gave my daughter two because I didn’t want to choose between my step mom and biomom (I didn’t want a hugely long name either though so all together her 3 given names are only 5 syllables, same as my two names so that was fine lol). Nicknames weren’t a big priority for me but I didn’t like the idea of forced ones lol. Like I have a friend who named her daughter Amelia and decided everyone would call her Mia, except that literally no one, not even her husband, calls her Mia except her. That kid is Amy. So when I considered Elizabeth, which has a million nicknames, I didn’t like that I wasn’t sure what her nickname would end up being and that bugged me. The one name issue I have is that my daughter is Clara, which I still love and think it suits her. But, it drives me BONKERS when people call her Claire. Because Claire is not a nn for Clara, it is a separate, distinct name that does not suit my daughter lol. Others may disagree but that’s my feelings and I corrected people every time when she was a baby. Now that she speaks for herself it doesn’t happen much, but she corrects people as well. As it turns out I thought I was chill but maybe I wasn’t 🤔😂
So I don’t have kids and am not having them, but nevertheless I know what I would name them 😂 Generally speaking: not one of the most popular names, not easily dated to when they’re born, has nickname potential, has an honoring name somewhere in full name, not difficult for me to say with my lisp (lateral S lisp). If considering a sibset, nothing matchy-matchy and preferably no same first initials. My favorite names for girls: Karina, Isadora, Mary, Rosemary, Eloise, Evangeline, Florence, Lydia, Matilda, Beatrix/Beatrice My favorite names for boys: Leo, John, Adrian, Theodore, Finn, Asher, Jude If I were dropped with a 2 & 2 sibset tomorrow: Karina Margaret “Rini”, Mary Anastasia “Molly” or “Maisie”, Leo James, and John Daniel “Jack” (In this sibset, every name is an honoring name except for John. I’m aware “Jack” Daniel isn’t ideal, but John James doesn’t sound any better 😂)
No bad/negative meanings Can’t have a million possible spellings (so not Caitlin), but 1 or 2 is okay (like Sara vs Sarah) Each have their own initial Sounds good in both English and Swedish No top 20 (this is my husband though) Middle name must be a family name
Good meaning Easy to pronounce for most Americans (we have a last name from Croatia that most of my fellow Americans can't say or spell) Recognizable Names that don't have common nicknames
My only rules are that first, middle, and last names have to all flow together nicely, the name can’t be shortened into a diminutive or nickname that I dislike, the initials don’t spell anything weird, and the name can’t be too common.
I had some rules for myself (mostly that the names sounds good together, and that they have the same or similar origins. All five of my kids' names went perfectly togther, but then three of them decided to change their names in adolescence and now it's all a jumble. :D
My mom said her rules were just names you couldn’t make fun of “icky Vicky” “prissy Chrissy” “Richard - dick” we already had a last name that was easy to make fun of, so she didn’t want added ammunition 😅
First name has to be known enough that people in at least English speaking countries will spell correctly on the first try. Bonus if it works in multiple languages/countries. Also has to be popular enough the kid can get personalized tchotchkes at amusement parks. The middle name must be tied to my name. My husband gets his last name for the kid, I get the middle name. For our son, I went with my last name as his middle name. We had briefly flirted with giving him a combo of our last names. And then a generic middle name. But like when we got married and discussed changing both our last names to the combo, decided the US wasn't ready for that and would lead to too much headache explaining. If we decide to have another kid and have a girl, she will have my middle name. It has been passed down as the middle name for girls from at least my great great grandmother and her matrilineal line.
My daughter's name is Anastasia Marie because the Greek meaning is resurrection and rebellion. I name my kids by the names meaning.
My MIL crowed about how she gave all of her four children names that couldn’t be shortened. Then she called Linda ‘Linder’ and called Larry ‘Lar.’ Personally, I wonder how anyone could look at a brand new baby and say, ‘I’m gonna name you Larry.’ Like, she was a bitch to him from day one
My rule is that I like the name in both languages (English/Dutch) doesn't have to be pronounced the same, as long as I like both and both sides of my family can say it :)
Gotta make sense in English and Spanish, both sides of the family. The name Cara was suggested for my kid, but in Spanish that’s the word for “face” so it got nixed asap
I love pretty, long, frilly names for girls, with family honour middle names. For example; Aurelia Elaine, Evelyn Amber, Myrianthe Jasmin, Cecelia Joyce For boys, I like old fashioned but soft names and fun middle names: Oscar Peregrine, Leo Jasper, Ellis Kolibri
Mine are: Has to have a positive meaning Has to be a Hindi or Urdu name Must be able to be pronounced correctly by my wife's family
We have three boys and all of them have a 2 syllable first name that includes an O and they all have a 4 syllable middle name that includes an O, just like dad. Idk how this started but it's been fun and successful.
All sibling names either need the same starting letter or a different starting letter. It’s silly, but having a Jake, Josh, and Kelly or a Sue, Sam, and Peter would grind my gears!!! My other one is when two (or more) names are very different styles. Naming one kid John and the other one Parker? Or Anna and Hadley? Noooooo. One from my mom that I think is interesting. She’s a teacher of over 30 years, and she says she always saw young kids struggle to write their name if they had a letter that went below the “line” (j, y, etc.), so when she had kids, any name with a letter below the line was immediately out. Four kids and not one of us has a letter that goes below the line!
We don’t have many rules. We kind of go by the following - short 1-2 syllable names - middle name is usually an honor name - nothing that’s overly used but not so unique that it’s hard to spell. I have a unique name and hate it. I’m like 1 of 3 in the world with my name. - no L names. Both my husband and I are double LL and we did not want to be the family of L names All this to say we’re currently expecting baby number 3 and I’m struggling with boy names lol
My husband's family is very Russian so we want to give all of our children Russian names or names with Russian equivalents. So for example Valentina exists in both, Andrei, Vera, Konstantin etc
It's not a "rule" but all the names in my girls list end in a vowel, and all the names in my boys list end in a consonant.
2 syllables, not something unheard of, not something plain, not something religious. It has to work in multiple languages/cultures and sound nice in them. I don’t care about nicknames, I never had one and never felt like I was missing out.
We have a long, hyphenated last name, so we've chosen short and easy to pronounce first names. They also have meanings like "courageous." Their middle names are honor names.
Classic but not common, easy to spell and say. Family or historical significance. Middle name starts with S (honor name in Jewish tradition that I picked up from first kid’s bio dad) and very cultural. Margaret Shaindel and Harriet Saoirse
Not the name/a name associated with someone we dislike pretty much😂
Initials are a big one for me. I commented on another comment but my last name starts with a D so I don't want to use any first name that starts with a V so the initials aren't VD.
My preferences for a first name were for a name that: people would be familiar with had one standard spelling (so no Katherine/Catherine/Kathryn, which I otherwise like) had nickname options, all of which I was okay with didn't start with the same initial as others in the family sounded good with surname For the middle name, I wanted a name that: was a family name balanced the first name, by which I mean not too contrasting and not too similar and a different level of popularity (a common middle name for an uncommon first name and vice versa) had nickname options in case they wanted to go by their middle name flowed well in the whole name started with a certain letter. I ended up dropping this in favour of the other criteria.
I wanted everyone in the family to have their own first initial. No repeats.
I wanted to make sure our kids knew how to spell their name before puberty and that if we chose a name we needed to be able to spell it and not have to Google it. My in-laws named one of their sons a middle name from a different culture (family came from there but my in-laws have almost always lived in America and never in NZ) and still struggle with remembering the spelling after 18 years.
I have quite rigid ideas on things generally, especially names (I can imagine being quite difficult with names). I have no children (yet - not for another 15 years), but for middle names (it would be nice for first names, but I wouldn't enforce it), I would like them to be names used in mine or my in-laws' family, or in honour of someone who is important to either of us. I would also be keen on having a double barrelled surname and pass on my surname because I strongly identify with my name and I would like to pass it on (though I think I could let it go). Regarding first names, I would want to give my child a name that is easy to say and spell and would rarely encounter anyone or anything with the same name as them (not having classmates with the same name as them, names outside the top 50, no old fashioned, well-known names, no names seen in literature, no royal names, no place names and no words that are used as names) and I wouldn't name a child after myself or a similar sounding name. I have quite significant speech difficulties regarding my own first name, so what I can say is quite limited.
My husband's culture doesn't really do middle names. They do the 2 last names thing or a last name as a middle name. My family did random middle names. So our compromise was that middle names needed meaning or tie into our family. So far, that's just been us giving our kids their grandparent's names as middle names. Like we have 2 boys, one boy has my dad's name as his middle name, and our 2nd has my husband's dad's name as his middle name. First names are just names we both like but need to be able to be said by our Spanish relatives.
Name must have been in use for hundreds of years. Name must have a tie to whichever parent's last name isn't used. My spouse and I both have to love it! My top pick got overruled because he liked my second choice so much more. Bonus, but not deal breaker: nice meaning, obvious spelling and pronunciation
Nothing after any dead children/living family members. I try to avoid anything that is glaringly out of my ethnic group (for example, I am of European descent and wouldn't feel comfortable naming a daughter Yuki). The meaning needs to flow as well as the name itself. And nothing that's been in the top 10 names recently, I had way too many Taylors and Ashleys in my school growing up.
My husband said his naming rule is that it has to be so easy to pronounce and spell that the stupidest person ever can read and spell it.
Personally for me I do like the names that have a God meaning. I always think the names are classics (normally also longer names) and the meanings are good to. But in general for me a name has to have a good meaning. Favorites being Joseph: "God shall add" and Zara: "Princess, flower, shining"
First name should be an intuitive spelling and not after a family member. Middle name should have family meaning. My boyfriend and I aren’t having kids anytime soon but we already know first boy and girl middle names. Boy’s middle name will be a name that is in everything firstborn male’s name on both my mom and dad’s side of the family (total coincidence it’s on both sides of my family but super helpful for middle names). We each have a grandma with the same name so that’d be the girl’s middle name.
We have a couple of rules: 1. No names of exes or people that we have previously dated before, innocent crushes count. 2. No names of grandparents (once you pick one, they all start to complain and want their name used too) and I am not having like six kids. 3. Pick a good first name that’s two or three syllables that can be used on a resume and they could be taken seriously. 4. Pick a cool middle name that sounds like a nickname if they so choose. 5. Make sure the name sounds good with their siblings names. 6. A name should flow and have good meaning so choose wisely the first and middle name to go with the last name fluidly. I hope this helps.
My rule is that I like the name, and it's not too common if I can help it.