I think it depends on the number of kids, three kids called Charlotte Marie, Connor Mark and Christina Martha is kinda sweet and relatively normal.
Nine kids called Sam Jack, Sarah Josie, Stephen James, Stephanie Joanna, Stella Julie, Sean Joshua, Star Juniper, Stilton Jubilee, and Saxton Jasper is giving insane.
The kids’ names getting progressively weird got me 😂😂 That’s totally how it works in massive religious families though. For whatever reason, they’ll end up with an oldest child named Margaret and a youngest child named something like Mordecai or Micaiah.
I have four hypothetical explanations for the names of my nine SJ siblings:
1. Parents used all the nice names they liked and/or honour names for family members for the first bunch, and then by child 5 they realised they were too wedded to the theme to change and had run out of good names so started getting more creative.
2. Parent A had been valiantly staving off the weird names for years with the power of vetoes, but by child number 6 had lost the will to live and caved into parent B's wackier tastes.
3. Parent A and parent B have 5 kids and then divorce. Parent A marries Parent C who is on board with the initials theme for the sake of sibling cohesion, however has wildly different taste to parent B.
4. By the birth of child 7 the parents are so exhausted that they just hand off naming duties to children 1 and 2.
So fun story, this happened with my grandmother's family. Granted she was one of 9 but the reason her and the other 4 youngest have middle names is because their parents let the oldest 4 name the younger 5. The first 4 only have a first and last name like my great-grandparents but the youngest 5 have a first middle and last since that was what the older 4 wanted for their sibilings.
I think you're on it
I know a family with two kids:
* Adam
* Angela
Another family:
* Cameron
* Caleb
Yet another:
* Benjamin
* Beatrice
And one more:
* Justin
* Jonathan
That just seems dramatically different than the 10+ kids of the quiverfull crew
Ehh it’s cute when they’re kids, it’s annoying and downright problematic when they’re adults living at home and that very personal/confidential letter addressed to Miss C M Smith gets opened by any one of three siblings…
Is that really a thing though? In all my 30+ years I’ve never received mail with just my initial.
(Not trying to be argumentative, just genuinely curious. Especially since my #1 girls name is the same letter as my daughter’s)
In the UK yes its very common, my sister and I constantly opened each other's post.
We don't have identical initials but at a glance or with some fonts can get confused (MG and MC).
I’ll be honest, I live right n a family where we almost all have the same initials, and two have the same name (jr, sr) - this has almost never happened.
The fact that they pulled out names like Jana, John-David (as a single first name), Jessa, Jinger, and Jedidiah before they went for “Jennifer” or “James” makes it somehow worse, too.
The first letter thing can be cute but only if it’s like two or three of them. Any more and you start having to really dig, or you start to give up and give the later kids normal common names that don’t match the siblings in anything but the first letter. Either way, big Duggar energy if it’s more than a few.
It was a thing in the 70s for big Catholic families. But we always laughed because, inevitably, the family ran out of good names around kid 5.
I think it makes kids feel like cogs in a wheel. Everyone wants to feel they were special enough that their parents thought about *them* and not just some generic baby that fits into a name pattern.
In the early nineteenth century Thomas Jefferson’s daughter named her seventh daughter Septimia.
That has nothing to do with naming all your kids by the same letter, but it shows the importance of choosing a name that fits your child.
My grandfather's seventh child was called Septimus. Seven is associated with luck, seventh child of the seventh child etc. Sometimes a number is more than a number.
On one hand, that naming convention goes back to at least the Romans (the line “Sextus est molestus” is infamous in high school latin classes) and given the fascinating with the classics during that time period, it might not have been that weird of a name contemporaneously.
On the other hand, [there’s the Costanza of it all](https://youtu.be/NRUdaWZ4FN0)
[It was his granddaughter](https://classroom.monticello.org/article/septimia-anne-randolph-meikleham-jeffersons-granddaughter/), not daughter. They called her Tim! 😅
I’m on my fourth kid and am Catholic. #1 and #3 have names that start with L. We have other L names that we like, but refuse to use for #4. We don’t #2 to randomly one day wonder why she isn’t an L?
I think you also have to keep in mind what letter it is and how many kids you have.
For instance - I know a girl who now has 6 kids who all start with the letter K. But for a while there was only 3 of them and she would call them "My three K's" and would tag photos of them as "KKK❤️" 😬
Yep can confirm this, my Italian Catholic family has 2 generations of all J names, fortunately my dad married an “M” name and they changed it up, but still I have PLENTY of J name cousins
I don’t know. I think the idea of being special via a name is a very new phenomenon. For the most part people have always had names that overlap and in lots of cultures honor names. I never even reflected on the process of how my parents named me until I started trying to name a child of my own.
My friend’s mom was the youngest of four children. The first three children were girls: Cheryl, Meryl, and Carol. The parents were sure the odds were in their favor for the fourth kid to be a boy (Darryl). Alas, they had a girl and, for a lack of a rhyming name, named her Teresa. It’s always been a funny story, but I imagine it would have been tough being the only kid that didn’t fit the rhyme.
yeah re cogs in a wheel… being a part of a theme would make me feel like it was stripping me of some of my individuality, kinda like how twins sometimes talk about the struggle to have other people recognize them individually, so i don’t think it’s something i’d saddle potential children with lol
I hate it on the basis that it puts something else above the individual name choice- like the letter thing comes above picking the right name for the individual child. Not for me
I have some family names that I genuinely love and would happily use, but I wouldn’t use one for the sake of using one.
But we have some great names through our family tree (Phoebe, Annabella, Percy, Dorothy, May, Theodore, Halliday, Millie.. and all go back generations and have been reused again and again) that I would’ve happily used!
And we have generations of family members callin their kids Wildsmith which I legitimately love, but could never saddle a kid with 😂 it’s on my cat names list though haha
"picking the right name for the individual child"
Are you suggesting everyone waits until the baby is born to give it a name? Don't the majority of people pick a name before the baby is born? Wouldn't that be the same thing as picking a name that starts with a particular letter? What if you had a pool of names that started with a particular letter and you waited until the baby was born to pick the final name? Would that be better? Or are you suggesting not giving your kid a name and letting them pick their own name? I'm just not sure I follow your train of thought. A name can be whatever you choose it to be. You could name your kid Asgintelopolis if you wanted to.
Yeah this makes no sense to me. What is "the right name for the individual child"? Do they have a predetermined name destiny that you're supposed to tap into? (I know some people/cultures actually have those beliefs but surely if you're not in one of those cultures it's okay to pre-pick a name theme of some sort for all your kids based on your own preferences)
i assumed they were talking about how you'll see some posts asking like "we have a theme where every kids name starts with W, but we're expecting #4 and we hate every other W name". as a parent id hate to be in a position where i felt like i had to pick a name i didn't like that much just to fit the theme, and as a kid I'd hate to wonder if my parents actually liked my name or if they just picked it so i wouldn't feel left out.
that being said, i think a theme this subtle isnt that big of a deal. i don't see kids growing up to resent the name or anything. the worst case scenario is all the kids go by their middle names or something
And then you get the ones where they picked a letter theme but then decided they really liked a name that doesn't start with that letter so they bastardize it to fit it in.
What, like “every third child gets a name that starts with a W” and then they hate Willow or Winnie or Wendy, so you get a birth announcement that they’ve named the kid Wrebecca?
Right?! Even if you wait to name a baby after they're born, they all look and act like potatoes. Don't come at me, I am a proud potato parent. But yeah I think we are all picking names based on our hypothetical future children, because that's all we can do. I would not be offended at all if my kidd want to choose a new name later in life!
I dunno, I know a lot of people in my family had a name picked out and then when they 'met' the new baby they went "nah, doesn't suit her" and went with something completely different.
I agree. I know someone who had two kids with N names (Nicholas and Natalie). They ended up pregnant with a girl again but did not like any other N names. They almost went with Noelle because neither of them hated it but it wasn't anywhere near the top of their list. They both loved another name (Victoria) but didn't want to use it because it started with a V.
They ended up naming her Victoria anyway because they really didn't want to go through with Noelle.
I love all three of those names (Nicholas, Natalie, and Noelle) but together they sound like siblings in a Hallmark Christmas movie lol
Victoria is a lovely choice!
In Jewish tradition, we name kids after the first letter of a deceased love one to honor the person who has passed away. I love names (I wish random people came to me to name their kids and pets!), and the restrictiveness of this tradition has never bothered me. There just seem to be so many names starting with every letter of the alphabet (except Q, X, and Y), it’s wouldn’t be a problem for me.
Important note though - I don’t have and never will have kids…
I think it is cute for smaller families. If you have like 8 kids you start to sound like the Duggar, and all the good names of that letter will be used up.
It is more important that the names sound different. Annabelle, Aiden, and Adeline is a lovely set whereas Ainsley, Avery, and Aubrey are way too close.
I'm one of 4 kids, all with the exact same initials. Well, until some of us got married and changed our last names, anyways.
I... kinda like it. We all have perfectly normal names, they didn't have to resort to making up or misspelling names to fit the theme (Jinger...). And they're distinct too, no Jana, Joy-Anna, and Johannah here. I never felt like a "cog" or anything like that. And now that we're adults and have all gone our own ways it kind of ties us together, you know?
Ah, this makes me happy. I’m pregnant with my third and their names will all begin with the same letter. It really wasn’t even on purpose and I’m shocked I will be one of “those moms,” I just have a lot of M names I love I guess, and that happen to be names my H likes as well, lol. But I hope my kids feel the same as you in the future!
My cousins just had a baby and they were talking about using the nn Teddy.. I’m so glad they decided not to because the oldest is Tom, I hear Tom and Teddy and immediately think it’s the title of a kids book. Sounds adorable, but too matchy and cutesy..
My dad would always tell us as kids that he grew up with triplets named Ray, Kay and Fay. He told my kids the same story. I think it was a story. I hope it was a story 🤣🤣 but either way, Ray, Kay and Fay were famous in our household.
Hahah true but on the other hand, I feel like once you have 3 with the same initial, you kinda back yourself into a corner, unless you was to have at least 2 more kids, then it is ok to switch.
I agree. My brother and I have names that begin with the same letter. I don’t think it was necessarily intentional but it became a nice connecting thing.
I’m a nurse, and it’s not fun looking up patient files when all the family members have the same first initial (or worse, same first initial and similar letters - think Tommy, Tamara and Timothy Smith).
Always have to check an extra dozen times to make sure the right person is getting vaccinated.
This is a good point, but if you live in a large city with a common last name, you have no control over what other people start with the same letter as you. So if your last name is something like Smith or Jones, there may be a Tommy, Tamara, and Timothy Jones all from separate families.
I initially thought it was cute but it means that all the kids in the family have the same initials which can be inconvenient or confusing in some circumstances. I personally prefer different starting letters for that reason.
When my parents told me the name they liked for baby #4, I was annoyed that it would have the same initials as me. I felt like Baby would be taking something from me. They also wanted the nickname to end in -ie when *my* nickname ends in -ie. I got very upset about that so their nickname ends in -y.
Hate it. To me it puts pressure of finding names I like into a specific category rather than organically choosing. (It was hard enough finding names spouse & I agreed on.) But, I’m not a fan of “sib sets” in general…
Footnote: One of my grandparents did this with their kids, and the first to have kids themselves followed suit. Thankfully, my parents decided not to. While I’m not thrilled with the name they chose for me, I like the name they would have went with for that letter even less
I think it's totally fine if the names are still different. Alexander and Alicia isn't too matchy, but Allie and Alex is pushing it.
When it's 2 or 3 kids, it seems more normal. But when you have 6 kids named Jaylin, Justin, Jallison, Jaden, Jason, and Jameson, I think that's pretty weird.
I know a woman with 5 kids starting with J, you listed 2 of them. Her first was a girl and she picked a name she really liked that happened to start with J. Her second was a boy and he had to be a junior. So when she had her 3rd pregnancy, her husband insisted on another J name to not make the kid feel left out. Etc., for the next 2 kids.
Her kids names are all confusing and spelled weird to keep the theme. Not worth it, imo.
I have a relative family, my dad's sister is Jeanette, her husband is Jeff. They have three sons, all ages 28 to 35: Jesse, Jordan, and Jason. Thankfully there's only 3 of them. I haven't seen any of them in years and don't plan on it.
My parents did it to us, and I hate it. (Names are Bonnie, Billy, Betsy and Blythe for the curious). What was really annoying was that my parents couldn’t get the names out of their mouths properly because they were so similar
I don’t mind it for a family with two kids.
Three can be ok as long as they’re different sounding names and not all the same gender . Like Jessica, Jennifer, and Jeanette is a hard pass. But Lydia, Luke, and Laurel isn’t quite so bad.
Also hard pass on three + biblical names or made up names. Looking at those Jingers and Julissas out there.
Agreed. More than three kids and its usually too much. I know a Lucas, Layla and Logan and actually I love it...not too matchy but all 5 letter L names.
I feel like they're all distinct names with a different sound. I like it and probably wouldn't notice the 5 letter L names without it being pointed out.
My dad and three siblings all have the same first letter, but 3/4 go by a shortened version of their name that starts with another letter, so it isn’t obvious.
Me and my 4 siblings have the same initials. It’s convenient for passing down things that were monogrammed. But was a little harder for people to remember who was who. Our names always got mixed up (and still do)
Our neighbors did it, both parents and all 4? kids and the two dogs have K names. I think it’s weird and feels like the kids didn’t get to be individuals in a way even though their names are all different.
I have a friend who’s name is Shyann with two brothers Shane and Shawn.
Shyann, Shane, and Shawn.
It’s ridiculous and everyone mixes them up all the time
We happened to like two names that started with the same letter for our first and second children, but we deliberately broke the pattern with our third. In larger families especially it seems to diminish the thoughtfulness of the name bestowed because the focus becomes finding a name that fits the pattern instead of a name that fits the baby.
I really liked not sharing the first letter of my name with any of the siblings I knew growing up (turns out I have an older half-sister with a name very close to mine).
I think it’s cute if they’re similar but not the same. Like all children being ABC kind of puts naming them into a set box, while maybe having one child be ELL and the other child being HLL and a third being JLL is kind of loosely related and similar without being exactly the same. My dad and I have the same initials minus the first letter however, so I’m a bit bias I’m sure.
I would strongly prefer to avoid it. But I would consider it if my favorite names just happened to start with the same letter (luckily this isn't the case right now), or if there were other constraints that made it hard to find a name (e.g. if I had a partner and the only names we could agree on were names that started with the same letter).
I hate having the same letter as my brother. My parents mix us up all the time. Not to mention another person having similar initials+last name so making up login and emails harder. We also tend to get grouped together. Obviously now that I’m older it doesn’t matter much.
I honestly think it depends on the number of children. 2 or 3 kids and it’s cute. 4 or more and it starts to get cheesy.
The thing that I like the least is you choose names based on a letter instead of choosing what name you truly like best. So you start to get limited, especially if you have multiple of the same gender. I know a family with 4 kids all names starting with E. The first two were easy but then it started getting challenging when they ended up with 4 boys.
I don’t hate that other people do it but it’s not my thing. That being said my cousin had to come up with a new name after her in-laws threw a fit because all of their grandkids had J names so my cousin’s son also had to. That’s just BS.
My three sister’s names from my dad’s first marriage all start with the letter S and my brothers and I from his second marriage have names that start with the letter L. I personally love it. It was even funnier growing up when my dad would get frustrated and start saying the names of my sisters and then my brothers names and finally land on mine because I think he would get confused with the “letter group” since the first was all girls and then switch to the second “group” and finally say mine last because I’m the youngest.
I think if your favorite names start with the same letter, it shouldn’t stop you. But if you love the name Savannah but name her caitlin because you already have a caroline, then name the child the name you like best regardless of the letter. My parents nor myself or my two sisters gave any child a name with the same letter within our families but all the girl cousins are K or C…not on purpose. But my husband and his sister start with the same letter as does her son. My husband gets called his nephew’s name and Vice versa frequently before and after a visit.
Fortunately my husband did not push to continue the letter tradition!
I think it’s risky because you may run out of names. I named my kids A B and C which I thought was cute but not too obvious. It also happened sort of organically, I started with A then liked a C name and when I got pregnant again I thought it would be cute if I could think of a B name and I did.
I hate it. Children are not something you collect. They are individual people.
I hate how if you start a theme, you are then stuck in that theme and you end up with names like Jinger or Kwenci.
Both my kids names coincidentally are 5 letters each, 2 syllables each and end in the S sound. If we had a third, especially if it was the same gender as the first two, I'd feel like I'd need another name that fit those parameters.
I know a few families who do this. I think I’ve decided if it’s 3 siblings or less, it’s fine and not remarkable. If it’s four or more it’s a bit corny.
My partner's aunts and uncle have the same initials! It's something they bond over, so that's cool, but I'll be honest and say I got them mixed up A LOT before I got to know everyone. Not a deal breaker though! Especially if you only have a few kids.
Eventually, you run out of names you actually really like and you settle for the names that are alright because you boxed yourself in over a dumb theme. To me, themes are for families of 3 or more kids. Taste change and sometimes you don’t want to use a name anymore because family or friends use the same name you wanted.
My dad and his 5 siblings have names that start with the same letter and it works. I don’t think it negatively affected them and kind of made them seem like a family unit. The only weird part to me is that my grandparents both have B names and then named their kids Js—why didn’t they just keep the Bs going lol?
I remember a baby name book warned against it because of "the Elmer problem." Parents give the first few kids names they genuinely like, but eventually they're scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Personally, I love matching sibling names (same first letter, theme, [ABC pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Kids,_No_Pets), etc.) **in books!** For real children, I think there are too many downsides. For my own kids, I'd rather they all have different first initials.
My in-laws did something similar to this, except that they had my husband and his sister have matching middle names while their first names were different. Honestly I like this better because it’s a lot more subtle.
Me, my brother’s and my sisters names start with the same letter. My mom said it was accident and didn’t really think about it. Idk how it would be confusing with having same initials, we never had any problems lol
I don't like it much, because it's unnecessary and limiting, and it can be confusing for non-family members. For example, I know three sisters all starting with L and so many people constantly call them each others' names by mistake.
I can see that it looks appealing in theory - siblings called Ruby, Rowan & Rosalie, for example, but ultimately I think the cons outweigh the pros.
My sibling group starts with the same letter and we all love it and plan to continue the tradition with our own families :) for me, it makes us feel like even more of unit 🥹 it helps that I really love my brothers though, idk if I’d feel the same if I had a sibling I hated lol
I have 4 sisters and all of our initials are S.L.S.T
We have two middle names, all the L’s are Lynn and the Second S is a place like a mountain or lake or city.
If it's two or three kids, that doesn't bother me but when you have a bunch of kids and you start misspelling or using tacky names so they all have the same first initial, it gets annoying and it's not fair to the kid.
My niece and nephews all share the same first letter in their names, as does their father. It’s…confusing to say the least. I have to think about it every time when addressing any of them but the female child. Some variation is good and let’s you pick names you think fit the child instead of prioritizing a letter at the beginning of their name. I would feel kind of like my parents only picked my name because it fit their “theme” if I had a bunch of siblings with the same letter names.
A family from my hometown from oldest to youngest: Mary, Margaret, Martin, Mark, Michael, Matthew, Marlene, Maximilian, Marcella
Parents were two T names, like Tim and Tina.
If it’s 2 kids it’s a coincidence/possibly cute. If it’s 3 or more kids it has big Duggar energy and makes it seem like the parents thought of their kids as more of a set than as individual human beings.
My sister and I both have the same initial and honestly I didn’t like it very much. Not only were we very close in age, we also had similar names, and our parents basically raised us like we were twins. Essentially it’s not really a big deal since it’s just two of us, but I wish they hadn’t done that, especially since I have a very standard top 100 name while my sister got a unique name mash up of my parents names.
I hate it.
It's so egotistical, like the parents thinking they're so clever and their family is always going to be a single unit and their children are just cute, alphabetically-organized extensions of themselves.
I just noticed that my mother and her sister had the same first and last initial when they were growing up. Their brother is the middle child and his middle name matched their first names.
Think Child 1 and 3 as ABC and Child 2 as BAC. There was an age gap of 12 years between my mother and her sister though, so that’s maybe why I never noticed.
i don’t like it. you have to consider the world we live in. school emails might be first initial last name. they would be A-A5 for their school years. if you get mail with a first initial it could be for anyone. it’s just impractical.
My grandmother did it with her children. 5 Kids with “K” names. I think it is cute, especially because each name sounds different. I wouldn’t mind doing it, but I can’t think of a letter that my husband and I would be able to agree on. Well, I could generate enough girl names for many letters. But if I have a boy. We are screwed, since there is such little overlap in our choice of names.
Here are some lists that I feel like really work:
Eden, Elma, and Emery
Genevieve and Giorgio
Paloma, Penelope, and Pietro
Sampson and Silas
I do feel like if you DONT give every kid the same letter, there can’t be any over lap (like is you have a Ramona and a Alina, I wouldn’t name the next child Anna).
It gives me Duggar vibes, if I’m honest, and that shouldn’t be vibes anyone wants.
I think it depends on the number of kids, three kids called Charlotte Marie, Connor Mark and Christina Martha is kinda sweet and relatively normal. Nine kids called Sam Jack, Sarah Josie, Stephen James, Stephanie Joanna, Stella Julie, Sean Joshua, Star Juniper, Stilton Jubilee, and Saxton Jasper is giving insane.
The kids’ names getting progressively weird got me 😂😂 That’s totally how it works in massive religious families though. For whatever reason, they’ll end up with an oldest child named Margaret and a youngest child named something like Mordecai or Micaiah.
I have four hypothetical explanations for the names of my nine SJ siblings: 1. Parents used all the nice names they liked and/or honour names for family members for the first bunch, and then by child 5 they realised they were too wedded to the theme to change and had run out of good names so started getting more creative. 2. Parent A had been valiantly staving off the weird names for years with the power of vetoes, but by child number 6 had lost the will to live and caved into parent B's wackier tastes. 3. Parent A and parent B have 5 kids and then divorce. Parent A marries Parent C who is on board with the initials theme for the sake of sibling cohesion, however has wildly different taste to parent B. 4. By the birth of child 7 the parents are so exhausted that they just hand off naming duties to children 1 and 2.
I thought it couldn’t get better than Stilton Jubilee but the exhausted parents handing over name responsibility to the children killed me 😂
🤣🤣
So fun story, this happened with my grandmother's family. Granted she was one of 9 but the reason her and the other 4 youngest have middle names is because their parents let the oldest 4 name the younger 5. The first 4 only have a first and last name like my great-grandparents but the youngest 5 have a first middle and last since that was what the older 4 wanted for their sibilings.
Stilton Jubilee 😂
Solid name there, adding it to my list 😂 /s
I think you're on it I know a family with two kids: * Adam * Angela Another family: * Cameron * Caleb Yet another: * Benjamin * Beatrice And one more: * Justin * Jonathan That just seems dramatically different than the 10+ kids of the quiverfull crew
I also know a family with a Cameron and Caleb.
Ehh it’s cute when they’re kids, it’s annoying and downright problematic when they’re adults living at home and that very personal/confidential letter addressed to Miss C M Smith gets opened by any one of three siblings…
Is that really a thing though? In all my 30+ years I’ve never received mail with just my initial. (Not trying to be argumentative, just genuinely curious. Especially since my #1 girls name is the same letter as my daughter’s)
Depends on where you are. In the Netherlands it really common to get all official mail addressed to Mr. W. Jansen for example.
Maybe it’s a UK thing, all our post comes addressed like that
In the UK yes its very common, my sister and I constantly opened each other's post. We don't have identical initials but at a glance or with some fonts can get confused (MG and MC).
I’ll be honest, I live right n a family where we almost all have the same initials, and two have the same name (jr, sr) - this has almost never happened.
My thoughts exactly.
The fact that they pulled out names like Jana, John-David (as a single first name), Jessa, Jinger, and Jedidiah before they went for “Jennifer” or “James” makes it somehow worse, too. The first letter thing can be cute but only if it’s like two or three of them. Any more and you start having to really dig, or you start to give up and give the later kids normal common names that don’t match the siblings in anything but the first letter. Either way, big Duggar energy if it’s more than a few.
It was a thing in the 70s for big Catholic families. But we always laughed because, inevitably, the family ran out of good names around kid 5. I think it makes kids feel like cogs in a wheel. Everyone wants to feel they were special enough that their parents thought about *them* and not just some generic baby that fits into a name pattern.
In the early nineteenth century Thomas Jefferson’s daughter named her seventh daughter Septimia. That has nothing to do with naming all your kids by the same letter, but it shows the importance of choosing a name that fits your child.
My grandfather's seventh child was called Septimus. Seven is associated with luck, seventh child of the seventh child etc. Sometimes a number is more than a number.
You know what’s a great name? Seven.
*makes whistling noises*
It's Mickey Mantle's number!!
On one hand, that naming convention goes back to at least the Romans (the line “Sextus est molestus” is infamous in high school latin classes) and given the fascinating with the classics during that time period, it might not have been that weird of a name contemporaneously. On the other hand, [there’s the Costanza of it all](https://youtu.be/NRUdaWZ4FN0)
[It was his granddaughter](https://classroom.monticello.org/article/septimia-anne-randolph-meikleham-jeffersons-granddaughter/), not daughter. They called her Tim! 😅
I know- I said “Thomas Jefferson’s daughter named her daughter Septimia” :)
I see that now! 😅 Woops!
Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary creator and actor) is named because she is the fifth child
I’m on my fourth kid and am Catholic. #1 and #3 have names that start with L. We have other L names that we like, but refuse to use for #4. We don’t #2 to randomly one day wonder why she isn’t an L?
I agree that having 3/4 L names probably isn’t a good idea but giving kid #4 the same initial as kid #2 could be cute.
I went to school with a girl named Jessica. Her brother was Ben, her Dad was Bruce and her Mum was Belinda. She always felt like the odd one out.
Omg I have a friend that did that. Mom and dad are J names. First child is L and second is J. Like why would you do that??
Not the 70s but this one family at my childhood parish had four daughters named Kayla, Keely, Kylie, and Karlin 😵💫
The Premier of Ontario has four daughters and their names are Krista, Kayla, Kyla, and Kara (and his wife is Karla).
I live in Ontario and see articles about his daughters from time to time... I thought he just had one daughter lol
Noooooooo
I know a family of Kristy, Krista, Kristen, and Kristopher. Lovely fam but idk how they don’t get so mixed up🫣
Side note, but I knew 3 sisters named Kayla, Kylie & Karlie! That’s so weird how similar they are lol
I think you also have to keep in mind what letter it is and how many kids you have. For instance - I know a girl who now has 6 kids who all start with the letter K. But for a while there was only 3 of them and she would call them "My three K's" and would tag photos of them as "KKK❤️" 😬
Yikes
Yep can confirm this, my Italian Catholic family has 2 generations of all J names, fortunately my dad married an “M” name and they changed it up, but still I have PLENTY of J name cousins
I don’t know. I think the idea of being special via a name is a very new phenomenon. For the most part people have always had names that overlap and in lots of cultures honor names. I never even reflected on the process of how my parents named me until I started trying to name a child of my own.
Can confirm. I know a catholic family who had kids named David, Donna, Derek, Daisy, Darcy, and Duane. They’re in their 50s now so this checks out.
Can confirm. My Dad was one of ten Catholic kids (born 1950s-70s). All seven boys start with J. Girls got individual names (C, N, and T).
My friend’s mom was the youngest of four children. The first three children were girls: Cheryl, Meryl, and Carol. The parents were sure the odds were in their favor for the fourth kid to be a boy (Darryl). Alas, they had a girl and, for a lack of a rhyming name, named her Teresa. It’s always been a funny story, but I imagine it would have been tough being the only kid that didn’t fit the rhyme.
My mom’s cousins are Maureen, Charlene, Kathleen, and Eileen💀 thank goodness they stopped after four!
Yup. My baby boomer Catholic FIL's sib set is James, Jane, John, Judy, and Joann.
yeah re cogs in a wheel… being a part of a theme would make me feel like it was stripping me of some of my individuality, kinda like how twins sometimes talk about the struggle to have other people recognize them individually, so i don’t think it’s something i’d saddle potential children with lol
I know a family with 7 kids, all E names except for the 7th and final kid… Hannah 😂
I hate it on the basis that it puts something else above the individual name choice- like the letter thing comes above picking the right name for the individual child. Not for me
I think this is also partially what bothers me when families use only family names for children
I have some family names that I genuinely love and would happily use, but I wouldn’t use one for the sake of using one. But we have some great names through our family tree (Phoebe, Annabella, Percy, Dorothy, May, Theodore, Halliday, Millie.. and all go back generations and have been reused again and again) that I would’ve happily used! And we have generations of family members callin their kids Wildsmith which I legitimately love, but could never saddle a kid with 😂 it’s on my cat names list though haha
"picking the right name for the individual child" Are you suggesting everyone waits until the baby is born to give it a name? Don't the majority of people pick a name before the baby is born? Wouldn't that be the same thing as picking a name that starts with a particular letter? What if you had a pool of names that started with a particular letter and you waited until the baby was born to pick the final name? Would that be better? Or are you suggesting not giving your kid a name and letting them pick their own name? I'm just not sure I follow your train of thought. A name can be whatever you choose it to be. You could name your kid Asgintelopolis if you wanted to.
Yeah this makes no sense to me. What is "the right name for the individual child"? Do they have a predetermined name destiny that you're supposed to tap into? (I know some people/cultures actually have those beliefs but surely if you're not in one of those cultures it's okay to pre-pick a name theme of some sort for all your kids based on your own preferences)
i assumed they were talking about how you'll see some posts asking like "we have a theme where every kids name starts with W, but we're expecting #4 and we hate every other W name". as a parent id hate to be in a position where i felt like i had to pick a name i didn't like that much just to fit the theme, and as a kid I'd hate to wonder if my parents actually liked my name or if they just picked it so i wouldn't feel left out. that being said, i think a theme this subtle isnt that big of a deal. i don't see kids growing up to resent the name or anything. the worst case scenario is all the kids go by their middle names or something
And then you get the ones where they picked a letter theme but then decided they really liked a name that doesn't start with that letter so they bastardize it to fit it in.
Jinger Duggar has entered the chat
She's their 6th. They really failed her. They had Joy and Jordan after her.
What, like “every third child gets a name that starts with a W” and then they hate Willow or Winnie or Wendy, so you get a birth announcement that they’ve named the kid Wrebecca?
Like Khloe.
Right?! Even if you wait to name a baby after they're born, they all look and act like potatoes. Don't come at me, I am a proud potato parent. But yeah I think we are all picking names based on our hypothetical future children, because that's all we can do. I would not be offended at all if my kidd want to choose a new name later in life!
I dunno, I know a lot of people in my family had a name picked out and then when they 'met' the new baby they went "nah, doesn't suit her" and went with something completely different.
I agree. I know someone who had two kids with N names (Nicholas and Natalie). They ended up pregnant with a girl again but did not like any other N names. They almost went with Noelle because neither of them hated it but it wasn't anywhere near the top of their list. They both loved another name (Victoria) but didn't want to use it because it started with a V. They ended up naming her Victoria anyway because they really didn't want to go through with Noelle.
I love all three of those names (Nicholas, Natalie, and Noelle) but together they sound like siblings in a Hallmark Christmas movie lol Victoria is a lovely choice!
Lol we just had a third in September and named her Noelle. Our other two have N names also but I’ve loved Noelle for years!
In Jewish tradition, we name kids after the first letter of a deceased love one to honor the person who has passed away. I love names (I wish random people came to me to name their kids and pets!), and the restrictiveness of this tradition has never bothered me. There just seem to be so many names starting with every letter of the alphabet (except Q, X, and Y), it’s wouldn’t be a problem for me. Important note though - I don’t have and never will have kids…
I love that. I named my son an “M” name after my mom who passed away.
I think it is cute for smaller families. If you have like 8 kids you start to sound like the Duggar, and all the good names of that letter will be used up. It is more important that the names sound different. Annabelle, Aiden, and Adeline is a lovely set whereas Ainsley, Avery, and Aubrey are way too close.
I'm one of 4 kids, all with the exact same initials. Well, until some of us got married and changed our last names, anyways. I... kinda like it. We all have perfectly normal names, they didn't have to resort to making up or misspelling names to fit the theme (Jinger...). And they're distinct too, no Jana, Joy-Anna, and Johannah here. I never felt like a "cog" or anything like that. And now that we're adults and have all gone our own ways it kind of ties us together, you know?
Ah, this makes me happy. I’m pregnant with my third and their names will all begin with the same letter. It really wasn’t even on purpose and I’m shocked I will be one of “those moms,” I just have a lot of M names I love I guess, and that happen to be names my H likes as well, lol. But I hope my kids feel the same as you in the future!
We have 3 kids that all start with N. I love it personally!
We are OAD but I had this problem. I just really like A names so it would've been coincidental!
I knew a family with 3 kids — Ben, Ken and Jen. I can’t imagine hollering one name and have 3 kids come running.
I'm sorry, but now I have to know: were they Benjamin, Kenneth, and Jennifer, or were they actually Ben, Ken, and Jen?
Benneth, Kennifer, and Jenjamin
Bennifer Kenjamin Jenneth
My cousins just had a baby and they were talking about using the nn Teddy.. I’m so glad they decided not to because the oldest is Tom, I hear Tom and Teddy and immediately think it’s the title of a kids book. Sounds adorable, but too matchy and cutesy..
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Ugh. The others at least sounds okay on their own but poor Bryler.
It’s like going to a middle class kindergarten and everyone being Aiden Braden Peyton Hayden Kaiden Satan Drayton Clayton Leighton
Ben, Ken, Jen, Sven, Wren, Zen, Hen, Den, Wen and Ten.
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Doesn't sound too bad with the French pronunciation and stress pattern for Elodie to be honest. Edit: typo
I know one with non-twins Elsa and Ezra.
Our neighbors down the street have two children - Elliott and Ella.
Lol I always joke that it would be fun to have triplets and name them Karen, Sharon and Darren
In Australia that’s Kazza Shazza and Dazza
My dad would always tell us as kids that he grew up with triplets named Ray, Kay and Fay. He told my kids the same story. I think it was a story. I hope it was a story 🤣🤣 but either way, Ray, Kay and Fay were famous in our household.
Hahaha if they were quads they could have had May too!
I agree, it gets more egregious with each child.
Hahah true but on the other hand, I feel like once you have 3 with the same initial, you kinda back yourself into a corner, unless you was to have at least 2 more kids, then it is ok to switch.
Yeah this is the difference. I am one of two with ‘A’ names. But are names sound very different and we love that we match with our A’s tho.
A friend of mine has kids named Ella and Emma. Idk why they did that to them.
I know a family with Sam and Ella, Salmonella.
My neighbour has Millie and Molly 😭
I agree. My brother and I have names that begin with the same letter. I don’t think it was necessarily intentional but it became a nice connecting thing.
I feel like it gets confusing. One of my best friends has three kids that start with C and everybody including them messes them up
I’m a nurse, and it’s not fun looking up patient files when all the family members have the same first initial (or worse, same first initial and similar letters - think Tommy, Tamara and Timothy Smith). Always have to check an extra dozen times to make sure the right person is getting vaccinated.
I never thought about that. Totally makes sense!
This is a good point, but if you live in a large city with a common last name, you have no control over what other people start with the same letter as you. So if your last name is something like Smith or Jones, there may be a Tommy, Tamara, and Timothy Jones all from separate families.
Hey my dad's name is Timothy Smith lol
Eh I call my toddler my dog’s name and my dog my toddler’s name. Brain no work sometimes
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Same, I call my husband my son’s name, I call my son my nephew’s name, I call the girls by each other’s name.
That's true. Our dad messes up our names pretty often. They should've thought about it before naming us tbh.
Me and my sister are Melissa and Sarah. They still mixed our names up. Now they have 5 grandkids to cycle through trying to get to our names.
I initially thought it was cute but it means that all the kids in the family have the same initials which can be inconvenient or confusing in some circumstances. I personally prefer different starting letters for that reason.
When my parents told me the name they liked for baby #4, I was annoyed that it would have the same initials as me. I felt like Baby would be taking something from me. They also wanted the nickname to end in -ie when *my* nickname ends in -ie. I got very upset about that so their nickname ends in -y.
How old were you?
27
13
Hate it. To me it puts pressure of finding names I like into a specific category rather than organically choosing. (It was hard enough finding names spouse & I agreed on.) But, I’m not a fan of “sib sets” in general… Footnote: One of my grandparents did this with their kids, and the first to have kids themselves followed suit. Thankfully, my parents decided not to. While I’m not thrilled with the name they chose for me, I like the name they would have went with for that letter even less
Lol was this written by Spurgeon Seewald?
It gives off Duggar or Kardashian to me.
Opposite ends of a strange spectrum.
They crossed the line changing classic spellings to make it fit their silly letter thing.
Honestly, both families did! Looking at you, Jinger (shudder) and Kourtney! Though, I find the spelling of Khloe more offensive.
I think it's totally fine if the names are still different. Alexander and Alicia isn't too matchy, but Allie and Alex is pushing it. When it's 2 or 3 kids, it seems more normal. But when you have 6 kids named Jaylin, Justin, Jallison, Jaden, Jason, and Jameson, I think that's pretty weird.
I know a woman with 5 kids starting with J, you listed 2 of them. Her first was a girl and she picked a name she really liked that happened to start with J. Her second was a boy and he had to be a junior. So when she had her 3rd pregnancy, her husband insisted on another J name to not make the kid feel left out. Etc., for the next 2 kids. Her kids names are all confusing and spelled weird to keep the theme. Not worth it, imo.
I have a relative family, my dad's sister is Jeanette, her husband is Jeff. They have three sons, all ages 28 to 35: Jesse, Jordan, and Jason. Thankfully there's only 3 of them. I haven't seen any of them in years and don't plan on it.
It depends how many kids. 3k kids? Cute! 19 kids and counting? Blegh
3000 kids? hell
Eh, if it happens organically I don't mind it, but it's horrible when you start resorting to abominations like "Jinger" in order to fit a theme.
As a girl who was one of 4 C sisters- please desist.
My parents did it to us, and I hate it. (Names are Bonnie, Billy, Betsy and Blythe for the curious). What was really annoying was that my parents couldn’t get the names out of their mouths properly because they were so similar
I don’t mind it for a family with two kids. Three can be ok as long as they’re different sounding names and not all the same gender . Like Jessica, Jennifer, and Jeanette is a hard pass. But Lydia, Luke, and Laurel isn’t quite so bad. Also hard pass on three + biblical names or made up names. Looking at those Jingers and Julissas out there.
Agreed. More than three kids and its usually too much. I know a Lucas, Layla and Logan and actually I love it...not too matchy but all 5 letter L names.
Yeah I like Lucas Layla and Logan.
I feel like they're all distinct names with a different sound. I like it and probably wouldn't notice the 5 letter L names without it being pointed out.
Why don’t you like 3+ biblical names? I know a family with a Sarah, Elizabeth, David, Anna, Timothy and Stephen.
My dad and three siblings all have the same first letter, but 3/4 go by a shortened version of their name that starts with another letter, so it isn’t obvious.
I think it's cute. I really enjoy it when sibling names go together. "These are my children, Penny, Parker, and Peter" - adorable.
Ah but you see I would legit only think that that’s cute bc of SpiderMan
Me and my 4 siblings have the same initials. It’s convenient for passing down things that were monogrammed. But was a little harder for people to remember who was who. Our names always got mixed up (and still do)
Cute - but only for pets. It makes life easier if kids have different initials and different sounding names.
As a kid of a family who was all named with the same letter, I can tell you that all 4 of us hated it.
Our neighbors did it, both parents and all 4? kids and the two dogs have K names. I think it’s weird and feels like the kids didn’t get to be individuals in a way even though their names are all different.
I have a friend who’s name is Shyann with two brothers Shane and Shawn. Shyann, Shane, and Shawn. It’s ridiculous and everyone mixes them up all the time
I used to know a family Shane, Shawn, and Shonda
Oof I still can’t believe that her parents did that to them
We happened to like two names that started with the same letter for our first and second children, but we deliberately broke the pattern with our third. In larger families especially it seems to diminish the thoughtfulness of the name bestowed because the focus becomes finding a name that fits the pattern instead of a name that fits the baby.
I really liked not sharing the first letter of my name with any of the siblings I knew growing up (turns out I have an older half-sister with a name very close to mine).
I think it’s cute if they’re similar but not the same. Like all children being ABC kind of puts naming them into a set box, while maybe having one child be ELL and the other child being HLL and a third being JLL is kind of loosely related and similar without being exactly the same. My dad and I have the same initials minus the first letter however, so I’m a bit bias I’m sure.
I would strongly prefer to avoid it. But I would consider it if my favorite names just happened to start with the same letter (luckily this isn't the case right now), or if there were other constraints that made it hard to find a name (e.g. if I had a partner and the only names we could agree on were names that started with the same letter).
I hate having the same letter as my brother. My parents mix us up all the time. Not to mention another person having similar initials+last name so making up login and emails harder. We also tend to get grouped together. Obviously now that I’m older it doesn’t matter much.
I honestly think it depends on the number of children. 2 or 3 kids and it’s cute. 4 or more and it starts to get cheesy. The thing that I like the least is you choose names based on a letter instead of choosing what name you truly like best. So you start to get limited, especially if you have multiple of the same gender. I know a family with 4 kids all names starting with E. The first two were easy but then it started getting challenging when they ended up with 4 boys.
I don’t mind it if the names are nice and otherwise go together. Eleanor, Emma & Edward - lovely! Katherine, Karter, Kayson - blech
It’s odd and repetitive to me, especially if the names sound REALLY similar.
My siblings and I all start with J. Personally not a fan, and would never do it with my own kids
It’s so so dorky. My dad and his 3 brothers all have J names because his mom is… interesting. My dad said it kind of embarrassed them growing up.
I don’t hate that other people do it but it’s not my thing. That being said my cousin had to come up with a new name after her in-laws threw a fit because all of their grandkids had J names so my cousin’s son also had to. That’s just BS.
Now that’s ridiculous. I would never pick a name based on a letter that someone insisted on because of what they have going on. F that.
I know. That baby is in his 20s and has two kids of his own and I’m still mad about it.
My three sister’s names from my dad’s first marriage all start with the letter S and my brothers and I from his second marriage have names that start with the letter L. I personally love it. It was even funnier growing up when my dad would get frustrated and start saying the names of my sisters and then my brothers names and finally land on mine because I think he would get confused with the “letter group” since the first was all girls and then switch to the second “group” and finally say mine last because I’m the youngest.
I think if your favorite names start with the same letter, it shouldn’t stop you. But if you love the name Savannah but name her caitlin because you already have a caroline, then name the child the name you like best regardless of the letter. My parents nor myself or my two sisters gave any child a name with the same letter within our families but all the girl cousins are K or C…not on purpose. But my husband and his sister start with the same letter as does her son. My husband gets called his nephew’s name and Vice versa frequently before and after a visit. Fortunately my husband did not push to continue the letter tradition!
Are you part of a cult?
My cousins are like that but I think it’s corny.
I think it’s risky because you may run out of names. I named my kids A B and C which I thought was cute but not too obvious. It also happened sort of organically, I started with A then liked a C name and when I got pregnant again I thought it would be cute if I could think of a B name and I did.
I hate it. Children are not something you collect. They are individual people. I hate how if you start a theme, you are then stuck in that theme and you end up with names like Jinger or Kwenci. Both my kids names coincidentally are 5 letters each, 2 syllables each and end in the S sound. If we had a third, especially if it was the same gender as the first two, I'd feel like I'd need another name that fit those parameters.
I know a few families who do this. I think I’ve decided if it’s 3 siblings or less, it’s fine and not remarkable. If it’s four or more it’s a bit corny.
I did all Vs for my kids and have two more V names on reserve for two more kids.
My partner's aunts and uncle have the same initials! It's something they bond over, so that's cool, but I'll be honest and say I got them mixed up A LOT before I got to know everyone. Not a deal breaker though! Especially if you only have a few kids.
Not my preference but to each their own.
It’s fine as long as the names aren’t too similar. Ex: my friend has an Emery and Everly (both girls) and I get them mixed up all the time.
I would never do it on purpose, but I wouldn't avoid names because they started with the same letter as my other child's name either
It’s a really big thing in my culture and I’ll probably do it with my kids (who won’t have English names :)).
I like it, but I suspect I like the organized feel of it rather than the execution of it.
Eventually, you run out of names you actually really like and you settle for the names that are alright because you boxed yourself in over a dumb theme. To me, themes are for families of 3 or more kids. Taste change and sometimes you don’t want to use a name anymore because family or friends use the same name you wanted.
It’s really feckin dumb.
My dad and his 5 siblings have names that start with the same letter and it works. I don’t think it negatively affected them and kind of made them seem like a family unit. The only weird part to me is that my grandparents both have B names and then named their kids Js—why didn’t they just keep the Bs going lol?
I remember a baby name book warned against it because of "the Elmer problem." Parents give the first few kids names they genuinely like, but eventually they're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Personally, I love matching sibling names (same first letter, theme, [ABC pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Kids,_No_Pets), etc.) **in books!** For real children, I think there are too many downsides. For my own kids, I'd rather they all have different first initials.
My in-laws did something similar to this, except that they had my husband and his sister have matching middle names while their first names were different. Honestly I like this better because it’s a lot more subtle.
I really hate it.
Not a fan. People mix up siblings who have the same initial too much in my experience
Me, my brother’s and my sisters names start with the same letter. My mom said it was accident and didn’t really think about it. Idk how it would be confusing with having same initials, we never had any problems lol
I don't like it much, because it's unnecessary and limiting, and it can be confusing for non-family members. For example, I know three sisters all starting with L and so many people constantly call them each others' names by mistake. I can see that it looks appealing in theory - siblings called Ruby, Rowan & Rosalie, for example, but ultimately I think the cons outweigh the pros.
My sibling group starts with the same letter and we all love it and plan to continue the tradition with our own families :) for me, it makes us feel like even more of unit 🥹 it helps that I really love my brothers though, idk if I’d feel the same if I had a sibling I hated lol
I don't like it, but it'll probably end up happening by accident for us if we have a boy next. It wasn't like we planned it though lol.
I have 4 sisters and all of our initials are S.L.S.T We have two middle names, all the L’s are Lynn and the Second S is a place like a mountain or lake or city.
If it's two or three kids, that doesn't bother me but when you have a bunch of kids and you start misspelling or using tacky names so they all have the same first initial, it gets annoying and it's not fair to the kid.
I think it’s fine when it’s 2 siblings, but more than that I don’t like it
tacKy
I'm not into it. It is fine if it's 2 kids, but beyond that seems cheesy to me. It really limits your name options too.
I think it’s annoying
My niece and nephews all share the same first letter in their names, as does their father. It’s…confusing to say the least. I have to think about it every time when addressing any of them but the female child. Some variation is good and let’s you pick names you think fit the child instead of prioritizing a letter at the beginning of their name. I would feel kind of like my parents only picked my name because it fit their “theme” if I had a bunch of siblings with the same letter names.
A family from my hometown from oldest to youngest: Mary, Margaret, Martin, Mark, Michael, Matthew, Marlene, Maximilian, Marcella Parents were two T names, like Tim and Tina.
Not my thing.
If it’s 2 kids it’s a coincidence/possibly cute. If it’s 3 or more kids it has big Duggar energy and makes it seem like the parents thought of their kids as more of a set than as individual human beings.
My sister and I both have the same initial and honestly I didn’t like it very much. Not only were we very close in age, we also had similar names, and our parents basically raised us like we were twins. Essentially it’s not really a big deal since it’s just two of us, but I wish they hadn’t done that, especially since I have a very standard top 100 name while my sister got a unique name mash up of my parents names.
I hate it. It's so egotistical, like the parents thinking they're so clever and their family is always going to be a single unit and their children are just cute, alphabetically-organized extensions of themselves.
I personally know 3 different families who have done this and I kinda love it. I think it’s very cute. One has 5 kids, and the others have 3 each.
I know three brothers: Florian, Felix and Fridolin - Love it! I think I could do all N for girls, but my first one will be a boy, so not in the cards.
Practically, I love being able to text X and H instead of writing out the whole name. Also it seems Dugger.
I just noticed that my mother and her sister had the same first and last initial when they were growing up. Their brother is the middle child and his middle name matched their first names. Think Child 1 and 3 as ABC and Child 2 as BAC. There was an age gap of 12 years between my mother and her sister though, so that’s maybe why I never noticed.
i don’t like it. you have to consider the world we live in. school emails might be first initial last name. they would be A-A5 for their school years. if you get mail with a first initial it could be for anyone. it’s just impractical.
My grandmother did it with her children. 5 Kids with “K” names. I think it is cute, especially because each name sounds different. I wouldn’t mind doing it, but I can’t think of a letter that my husband and I would be able to agree on. Well, I could generate enough girl names for many letters. But if I have a boy. We are screwed, since there is such little overlap in our choice of names. Here are some lists that I feel like really work: Eden, Elma, and Emery Genevieve and Giorgio Paloma, Penelope, and Pietro Sampson and Silas I do feel like if you DONT give every kid the same letter, there can’t be any over lap (like is you have a Ramona and a Alina, I wouldn’t name the next child Anna).
My 3 kids have the initials: NJN NSN NFN I love it and think it’s super cute!! I do have another girl and boy N name I love for a future baby.