My husband and I are expecting our first child, a girl, on July 4th. Our last name is Zarembsk1, with the 1 being an i (my husband has a coaching job where he's googled frequently). We're both teachers and have started running into the problem where when a name comes up, at least one of us can think of an annoying kid with that name. We've both agreed that if one vetoes a name, it's out of the running. I really liked the name Ella, but my mom cautioned me to check what the baby's initials would be since my dad regrets his initials that spell ASS. That's what threw Ella out of the running and caused my husband to veto it.
The other thing I am 100% insistent upon is that she be given a first name that when the average person looks at it, they know how to pronounce it. With the last name of Zarembsk1, she's going to have to already battle mispronunciation problems for at least a good portion of her life.
Here's the list of names we're considering and we're definitely open to more:
Quinn
Natalie
Brooklyn
Mia
We have 0 middle name ideas right now, so any help on that would be appreciated. If it had been a boy, my husband and I had easily agreed the boy's middle name would have been James, after both of our beloved grandfathers. However, our grandmothers' names are Barbara, Verna, and Kathleen (Kathleen is too close to my name). We're not thrilled with any of those combinations.
Any help you can throw our way would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
In many ways, the first child's name is the most difficult: if you plan to have more children, and if you like sibling names to coordinate, the first name sets the course. If you choose Quinn this time, you might feel locked-in to androgynous names; if you choose Mia, you might feel locked-in to common names or short names---and so on. Each name you choose can eliminate other names, depending on your taste in sibling names: if you use Mia, for example, you're likely ruling out Leah and Amelia and Mila and Mina and Micah and maybe Milo; or if you used Brooklyn, for example, you might not want to use names ending in the same sound, or you might think of another name you love that starts with B but you don't want to repeat an initial, or you might think of another place name you love but not want two place names, or you might love the name Brandon but it's too similar, or WHATEVER.
This is why my main advice to first-time baby namers is to make your job HARDER than it already is, by thinking in terms of sibling groups. In the long run this will make your task easier, and help protect you from "We chose ____ without realizing that it doesn't go with any other names we like!" It was sheer chance that Paul and I didn't back ourselves into that very corner: if our first child had been a girl, we wanted to use the name Emerson---but Emerson is not a name in our usual style, and so we would have had a very difficult time choosing sibling names.
And this is one reason I like The Baby Name Wizard so much [side note: that link goes to the first edition, but I took a chance and ordered it, and happily I received the revised edition]: by sorting names into categories, she's made it so much clearer when a name falls into our usual style and when it's an outlier. If I'd had this book back when I was naming my firstborn, I would have seen that 95% of the names we liked fell into the same two or three categories, and that Emerson was an atypical choice for us. (Instead I was saved at 20 weeks by finding out the baby was a boy.)
So that is the BULK of my advice. I don't have many suggestions because I think you already have a good list, and also because I'm not sure which style you'll end up going with.
But I do have a FEW suggestions! If you liked Ella, I wonder if you would like Clara or Lily or Calla or Stella or Annabel? If you like Mia, maybe Amelia or Lia or Mira. If you like Natalie, maybe Meredith or Bethany or Cecily or Celeste. If you like Brooklyn, maybe Maren or Rowen or Delaney or Keelyn or Tylyn. If you like Quinn, maybe Bryn or Lane.
For a middle name, I like to wait until after I have the first name chosen, and then see what seems good with it. Sometimes a family name works even if it's not a name you love: we used one where I don't like the family name at all, but DID like the family member, and it turned out to be a very satisfying choice even though I still don't like the name. Or family SURNAMES make good middle names, or the mother's maiden name if the children will have the father's surname (I'm so tempted to call it "the father's maiden name"). Or sometimes a name gets rejected for a reason that doesn't mean the name itself was rejected (as with Ella, which had to be rejected for its initial, or as with a name you might love even though it fails the pronunciation requirement), and those make good middle names too. Or if one of you gets more sway with the first name, the other may get more sway with the middle name. Or if you have several names that don't quite make it as your first-name choice but you still love them, those make excellent middle names. Or the name of the city where you met? or the city where you got engaged? or the city where you got married? or of an author you both love?
