Duana! Help! I'm due in March with our second and we have no clue!

So, typical of many of your questions, we have a multi-cultural family and would like names fairly easy to pronounce in English and Spanish. The first problem is my husband happens to have an E name, and we named our daughter an E name. So while I would love to name my potential son Everett (my grandpa’s name), or Elías, I just don't want to be that family. My husband doesn't care at all about it being too matchy. He thinks if we like the name we should just go for it.

We also gave our daughter 2 middle names and now I feel like the next one has to have two middle names too, but I don't want to do it if they don't have good flow. It worked out so beautifully the first time, and now nothing is coming together.

For a boy, we’re tossing around using Everett Jordan or Jordan Lee in the middle (family names). My husband really likes Frederick for a first name, but I can’t love it. We've also talked about Josiah and Levi, but nothing’s clicked yet.

For a girl we’d probably put Rose or Rosa in her middle name (again, family name) and we have no clue about the rest. Abigail has been mentioned. And Ariadna, but I think that sounds too clunky with English pronunciation. I also like Lily and Leigh but they haven’t been met with enthusiasm.

I feel like we're all over the map. Maybe we just need to open up our name book and start again entirely. Hoping you can make sense of all this and help us out.

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Usually if people do the initial thing, either intentionally or not, it’s all names from very, very common letters. M and J. One friend of mine in school was devastated that her family were all Js and she was a C. But I don’t think of E as a common letter, nor do I think I’d look twice if a family had three E names, particularly since you mostly seem like you’re talking about names for your son. If this is all that’s standing between you and Elías, why not go to it?

If I can’t talk you into it, I will retreat to the fact that your middle name choice, Jordan Lee, makes me think of Harry Potter. I hope this is not offensive to you. But as such, I would say there’s nothing so fitting as Frederick! Actually, if you’re a trendwatcher out there, Frederick is about to happen big time. Get in on the ground floor if you have any hopes of someday having a Freddie (which, personally, I think is adorable). I also like Levi, but if you don’t, how about Adrian or Vincent or Donovan or yes, Everett? 

Or, if you want something more Latin in the old sense, how about Caius or Magnus or even – and I know I step out on a limb here –how about Fabian? There was an intense discussion of Florian in my circle recently, and a pretty hard split for and against, but if you like it, why not?

For your daughter there are more options of course. Aren’t there always, for girls? But I would caution you not to put Rosa and Ariadna beside each other, because they will run together and people won’t be able to hear whether it’s AriadnaRosa or the other way around, and will avoid saying or commenting on them. Which is too bad, because the middle spot is there for admiration. Isn’t it? I don’t want to neg and run, but I do think that you are probably more interesting than Lily and Leigh, even if one of those is also a Harry Potter name. Luna fits in but also is pretty outré (and popular), and I don’t want to walk you too far down a Hogwarts hole. But there is no reason not to consider the lovely Helena, if that fits in your world. 

Let me know!

A note to name-nerd letter writers,

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