Hi Duana
Im expecting twins and my hubby and i were all set to wait to find out the sexes but alas that did not happen( suspense was killing us) so we found out a week go that we are having 2 girls!!! I wrote to you a couple months ago and the hubs and I had already picked out the boys names we liked Elijah and Noah, Jonah did not make the cut ,but we also liked it very much. so of course these name are no longer suitable and we are STUCK on choosing the names for our baby girls:
my top choices:
Alison
Amelia
Juliet (too fancy?)
Marlow
I like Marley too,but it just makes my husband think of that dog movie
His top choices:
Logan
Hannah
Edith
The middles names will be Faith and Grace respectively.
Thanks in advance for your help Duana:-)
____
There is a lot about this letter that made me laugh and I just want to highlight a few things. First that your kids faked you out by not being the two boys you had planned for. Second that Marley makes your husband think of ‘That dog movie”, which just is amusing to me, and finally, that the email address this came from showed up in my inbox as “Still Stuck”. I could get way more done if my emails weren’t from “Duana” but from “Getting Mighty Annoyed Now”
So it is with joy that I approach this challenge, even though I note that your choices and his are really all over the place. That’s not to say they’re bad, but they are diverse, stylistically.
So let’s see what we can do here.
Your choices. Marley I think we can dispense with. Even though it sounds like Marlow, which we’ll get to in a moment, it’s ironically not used enough, and so we do think of the dog movie, or if you’re a particular type of nerd, and I am, you think of “Marley Jacob”, the character in the Christmas Carol episode of Popular, which I still maintain was an underrated version of what Ryan Murphy wasn’t allowed to do with Glee.
But Marlow is lovely, even though you have to know it’s being well-used right now and, maybe worse for some people, just about equally for boys and girls. You’ll never struggle for a hairbrush with her name on it but there will almost certainly be questions of “is that a boy or a girl Marlow?” If that bothers you, be warned.
And even if it doesn’t bother you, be warned about naming one child a very unisex name and another a very feminine one – this can set up expectations or situations you don’t want.
However, if you do want to go that way, Marlow and Logan are a pair that go well together and have the same amount of unisex-usage about them. They sound a lot alike and have a similar modern, unfussy style about them.
Amelia is so incredibly pretty. Popular too – there are two in a Sunday-morning music class in my hood – but will endure as being lovely if you want it. I want to say the same thing about Alison, because I think it’s got so many of the same elements to it; it sounds like a young woman who is guaranteed to be intelligent and thoughtful – and even though its mass popularity was only a generation ago I can’t help but believe it should be used again. So I can’t believe I’m doing it but I fully endorse the use of Alison.
Now, who gave you the idea that Juliet is too fancy? It’s lovely, it’s unusual enough, but still recognizable, which it seems is what you’d like, and it’s very feminine. You can’t pair it with Marlow, but you easily could pair it with Edith, if you and your husband wanted a choice each. Similar sounds, similar flavours, but different and distinct enough to be a part of a pair without being photocopies.
Hannah, his other choice, is also lovely and less popular now than it was 10 years ago, so your daughter Hannah would be unlikely to have too many contemporaries. You will inevitably say the girls’ names together so beware of “Hannah and” – it can run together as “Hannahan” without too much difficulty. I would guard against something with too many similar sounding syllables here – so Hannah and Amelia, not Hannah And Alison.
You have great combinations. Juliet & Edith, Logan and Marlow, Hannah and Amelia. Or more I haven’t thought of. Let me know what wins!
