I hope you can help us with all of this bizarre criteria. We're expecting twin boys mid-October. Our last name is Hunt. We have a 3-year-old named Lillian (we call her Lilly).
My main objective is to find names that are uncommon but familiar. Nothing "made up" sounding. I also like names that are undeniably BOY. I don't like matchy-matchy twin names but I want them to be similar styles. I'm running into trouble finding names that aren't TOO out there, and I don't know what's best to do with twins: have one more mainstream name and one more unusual, or both unusual, or what? For example, we like Wyatt, and Arlo, and Marshall, but Wyatt and Marshall don't really go together in my opinion (also, wasn't Wyatt Earp a Marshall?) and neither do Wyatt and Arlo (using both makes it seem like we're intentionally naming after famous people). I like Davis a lot but don't know if Davis goes with the others (Davis and Wyatt are totally different styles). Anyway, here's the current list of possibilities:
Wyatt (my husband loves it, I'm on the fence)
Marshall (I love it, my husband's on the fence)
Arlo (so cute but is it too unusual?)
Carson (we're both on the fence)
Wilson (mainly I just like the nickname Will)
Names that have been crossed off the list:
Griffin (I love it, husband doesn't)
Bennett (I like Ben as a nickname, husband is iffy)
Please also remember that our last name precludes (in our opinion!) any names ending in a -ck sound (go ahead, say Mike Hunt out loud a few times!) and also any open vowel sounds (I love Luca and Noah, but not with Hunt).
We're totally open to names not on the list, obviously.
Thank you so much!
I like the name Arlo a lot (Arlo's Theme Song is what brought to my attention what a great name it is), and in fact it's on my now-almost-certainly-unnecessary list of "if I have another baby boy," along with Simon and Oliver and Frederick. I think Arlo is good with Marshall: both are gentle-ending names, and the shared "ar" sound ties them together without making them at all matchy.
I wouldn't have thought of this name except I saw it in The Baby Name Wizard as a sibling name for Arlo: Haskell. It's similar to Marshall, and maybe your husband will like it better.
Another name The Baby Name Wizard suggests with Arlo is Ezra. Both have gentle endings; both are old-timey in a currently-appealing way; and they both have four letters, which gives them just a TIDGE of the kind of twinniness I'm fond of.
A suggestion from me this time: Harvey. I came to really like that name after seeing it for the super-cute, super-nice boyfriend on Sabrina the Teenage Witch (YES, I watched it as an adult, BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME). Arlo and Harvey have gentle endings and the shared "ar" sound. I don't know if you'll like the alliteration of Harvey Hunt; I usually steer away from it, but in this case I kind of like it.
Another suggestion: Miller. That's another highly-unusual name from my own list (I hadn't noticed it until Stella McCartney used it for her son), and I think it goes well with the also-highly-unusual Arlo. Arlo and Miller.
Davis is more common than Arlo, but I think they go well together: Arlo and Davis.
If you instead go the Wyatt route, I like Wilson with it. On a recent post about twin names, several people expressed a dislike of matching initials for twins; I like it for fraternal twins, less for identical twins.
Or you could use one of Wyatt Earp's actual brother names, except Virgil is probably unusable, and Morgan is used steadily more for girls and steadily less for boys, and Warren is perhaps too different in style (though Warren would be another good possibility with Arlo). James would be good, though. Wyatt also had a half-brother named Newton.
I think my two favorite combinations are Arlo & Miller and Arlo & Ezra, but I also like Wyatt & Wilson and Wyatt & James.
