Hi Duana!
I’m an Aunt to two amazing boys and my sister is expecting her third (and very much surprise) baby in December. We just found out this week it’s another boy. I’m in Auntie heaven already!
Here are the issues: My brother in law is Mexican-Italian and our side of the family is English/Scottish. The first two boys are Enzo and Gabriel and we are having trouble finding “the” name that completes the trilogy. For the first two, they didn’t want a traditional Spanish/Mexican name because my BIL didn’t want anyone to think they were named after this person, or that person. This became “the rule” that none of the kids would be named after anyone on either side of the family.
The other issue is their last name. In the tradition of Mexican culture, the boys each carry our family name and my BIL’s family, and the boys also each have a middle name. We’re talking a big mouthful to pronounce when all of the names are used. My BIL quite often uses their first and middle names together because it’s apparently more common in Mexico to use the middle name just as you would the first.
So, now we’re stuck. To be honest, my BIL has come up with some crazy, off the wall names (Iker, and Iñaki) and has a bit of an obsession with soccer, thus the other boy’s names have a soccer connection. Because this is another boy, I feel like this is where he is looking for inspiration. My sister likes names Dante, Oscar, Leandro.
Any help would be appreciated!
A
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Well now I want to espouse this tradition of using first and middles all the time. I know it’s fundamentally, theoretically, the same thing as a double-name, like a Mary Kate or John Anthony, but it’s so much more exciting when they aren’t a pre-packaged pair like those ones. I’m really into this.
What I’m not into, unfortunately for your nephews, is soccer. So understand that I may be committing some soccer infractions (“Hey I know! How about Pélé? How about Beckham?”), but your brother-in-law will have to police that for me.
My first instinct is that Enzo and Gabriel, despite being very different in origin, both feel energetic. So my immediate instinct is to find something equally as energetic. Hugo! It says ‘go’ right in the name! Or Victor – it says ‘winner’ right in the name! Or Inigo or Diego or – how many more names have ‘go’ in them? This of course brings up one of my all-time favourites, which may not get another appearance in 2016 so just in case – have they thought about Bruno?
Of course, these may sound too similar to Enzo, making Gabriel the odd one out (which is really just a vote for Victor), so to find another name that makes it more an equilateral triangle and less an isosceles (go ahead, find fault with my metaphor-simile thing…I dare you), how about something like Javier/Xavier? Or Simon? Cosmo?
I assume you list your sister’s choices and your brother-in-law’s separately because each dislikes the others, but I would put my vote in either for Dante or Oscar—I’d skip Leandro because I think it’s likely to be heard as “Leander”, but there’s no actual vote against it from an is-this-name-good perspective.
I feel compelled towards a vowel name, so while Iker may be a bit singular (or who knows, maybe not) I kind of understand the instinct, I would also consider names that don’t start with a vowel but sound like them? Didier (who IS a soccer player?) Leoncio? Or hey, maybe even Damian?
I cannot predict which way this is going to go, and I cannot wait to find out what they choose! Let us know!!
P.S. LATE BREAKING UPDATE – Jacek is a massive soccer fan so his and Lainey’s suggestions were Lionel, for Lionel Messi, and Kane, as in Harry Kane, of Tottenham Hotspur. My protest on Kane is that it sounds resolutely English, and the other two names don’t, but apparently that’s precisely his point. Lainey also thinks “Enzo, Gabriel, and Kane” sounds hot. So listen, you’re the unemotional aunt. You can decide which way you want this to go…what are you going to do?
