One of my dearest friends has been following you for years and I've definitely become a loyal reader these past few months. My husband and I are expecting our 2nd daughter and we just can't seem to agree on a name. Not really, anyway. We practically chose our daughter's name when we were on our honeymoon (after a character in a book we were reading at the time, and loved) - a full 3 years in advance of her arrival! But apparently, that's all the inspiration we have. Now that we're dreaming up names for a second girl, we're stuck. It seems to be the classic problem.. I come up with a long list of lovely names and my husband vetos almost all of them.
We're due the first week of December and our first daughter is Clare Elizabeth. Our last name sounds like "Ho" (all jokes about Heidi, Thali, Randie, and Harry/Harriet have been made, I promise). My husband and his family are Chinese-Canadian.
We shy away from names that are trendy. For example, Avery was on our list until we discovered that there are 4 at our daughter's daycare centre. We seem drawn to fairly traditional names. Our top 5 so far are:
Julia
Charlotte (Charlie)
Madeline (Maddy)
Margaret (Maggie)
Catherine/Katherine (Cate/Kate)
The predicament is that I love Julia and my husband dramatically prefers Kate. Julia's at the bottom of his favs and Cate is at the bottom of mine.
The other predicament is that we have almost no plan for a middle name. My family tradition would be to choose something from the family but there are some slim pickings (Joan, Evelyn, Dorothy, Louise, Kathleen, Eva, Theresa, Cynthia for example). I would love to choose a middle name that leant itself to an initial-based nickname .. like Charlotte Joan (CJ) or AJ, JJ, JD, etc. My husband "refuses, under any circumstances to call (his) daughter by her initials." Ideally the middle name would come from the list above but feel free to offer some new suggestions for a middle name. We may just have to break with tradition this time.
Finally, I don't like aliteration and I'm not sure that I like both daughters having a hard 'C' sound at the front of their names. Hence my reservation with Cate.
Thanks so much to you and your readers!
Let's see what happens when we get rid of both Julia and Cate. That leaves Charlotte, Madeline, and Margaret. And you have GREAT family names for the middle name! Joan, Evelyn, Louise, and Eva are my favorites.
My own favorite of the three remaining names is Margaret, and I like it with any of those middle names. I particularly like it with the shorter middle names, since that gives a balanced feeling with your first daughter's name: one longer name and one shorter. Clare Elizabeth and Margaret Joan, or Clare Elizabeth and Margaret Eva.
But Madeline and Charlotte also work well with the middle names: Madeline Joan, Madeline Louise, Charlotte Joan, Charlotte Louse.
I think we'd better have a poll. I'll include all five of your finalists. [Poll closed; see results below.]
Name update! Rebecca writes:
Our baby girl arrived a little bit ahead of schedule - November 28th, 2010. Your comments really helped us come to a decision on her name. In fact, your suggestion of removing both Julia and Cate from our short list helped us realize that we really didn't want Julia eliminated from contention. Sometimes being told that you can't have something only makes you want it more, doesn't it? So, that's all it took! Our 2nd daughter is Julia Louise Ho and she's truly lovely. We couldn't be happier. Thanks for all your help.
