An interesting discussion got started in the comment section of Sunday’s post Baby Girl or Boy, Sibling to Jonah. One of the main questions of the post was whether Jonah and Ezra were too similar as sibling names, and a discussion started about whether sibling names need to go together at all.

Stephanie wrote:

I’m just not in the has-to-go-with-the-sibling’s-name camp. There are limited years that they will be known as a duo (sad as it may seem to us now). In my adult life, most people I meet don’t ask to hear my siblings’ names so they can decide if they ‘go’ with mine!

And then Frazzled Mom added:

Stephanie just eloquently explained my feelings about siblings’ names going together. I’ve always said, as adults your kids aren’t going to be putting each others names on their business cards! But I agree complementary siblings are a bonus, and might be considered in a tie breaking situation where you love two names equally.

Really good points.

There’s a spectrum of how well names go together. Madison and Mikayla are the same style. Madison and Sadie are different styles but compatible. Madison and Brooklyn on one hand go together perfectly—but on the other hand, now the place-name style is getting a little strong. Madison and Addison are matchy. Madison and Velma aren’t the same style at all.

But—style categories are so subjective. When you were reading the paragraph above, maybe you thought “Madison and Mikayla are a terrible clash!” or “Madison and Sadie are the SAME style!” How many times have I suggested a sibling name and you’ve thought, “I really don’t think that goes together at all”? A lot, probably. What sounds like “the same style” to me or to you is going to depend on where we live, what we grew up hearing, what names are common in our families, what names we like and dislike. This is one of the ways in which sibling name coordination DOESN’T matter much: even if you choose names that go together, other people may think you didn’t.

A problem is most likely to arise when a family uses the same style for all their children—except one. A family with four girls, say, named Alissandra, Anastasia, Arabella, and Carson. Possibly Carson will feel she really dodged a bullet on this one, or perhaps she will feel left out. The overall effect, though, is “one of these things is not like the others,” and other people may wonder why. Perhaps they will think this means the family really wanted a boy. Carson may wonder about that herself.

It works better if it’s the first child whose style is different, especially if that child is a namesake. Carson, named for her mother’s maiden name, followed by Alissandra, Anastasia, and Arabella—well, that’s different. A boy named Wisdom, followed by brothers Matthew and Ethan and Joseph—well, sometimes people start out with one idea about names, and then change to another idea.

While sibling names needn’t coordinate, a family with a daughter named Madison may want to avoid the name Addison—not because a future coworker will care what Madison’s sister’s name is, but because rhyming sibling names can be a hassle during the time when the family shares a household.

Or let’s say a family has one son named Michael and another named Ulysses. Any reason this is something that will plague them as adults? Nah. But they’ll be children for a long time first, and during that time they are going to get sick of discussing it with every nosy Swistle parker.

A good explanation (as with “Carson is her mother’s maiden name,” above) goes a long way to oiling a style difference. The twin daughters of former U.S. president George W. Bush are named Barbara and Jenna, and those names are very different styles. But the girls are named for their grandmothers, and so in that way they DO go together.

I also think style differences matter less if a family has one style for the girls and a different style for the boys. A family with an Alissandra and an Anastasia can easily have a Mark and a John. A family with a Jenna and an Erin can easily have a Saul and a Jonah. It’s common enough for people to have different style preferences for boys and for girls, so it doesn’t strike that “Why so different?” note.

Where do you stand on the issue of sibling name coordination? Where on the spectrum are you?

R. writes:

I’m due with my first baby, a girl, on June 1st & I haven’t been able to find a name I like yet. Despite the fact that she could arrive any time now, I’ve really only started thinking about names in the past few days. I’ve been having a really horrible time of it these past 9 months so names haven’t really been on my mind till now. You see, the very day I found out I was pregnant was also the day I lost my husband to a freak heart attack (he was only 30 and in seemingly great health. I’m still in shock). We had been trying to conceive for 6 months, but everything happened so fast that he was gone before I ever got to tell him about the baby.

We were always both a little superstitious & so had decided not to discuss baby names until I was pregnant for fear of jinxing ourselves. Sadly this means that I have no idea at all what kind of names he would have liked.

If this baby had been a boy I wouldn’t be having this problem as I would have named him after his father. Since it’s a girl though, I’ve been thinking that a nice way to honor my husbands memory would be to give her the same initials as her daddy. My husbands name was Phillip Gregory & our last name is Moore. I think I’ve decided on Genevieve as the G middle name, but for the life of me I can’t think of a girls name that starts with the letter P that I like at all.

P names that are out because I just don’t like them:
Paris
Paige
Paloma
Pamela
Pansy
Patricia
Paula
Phoebe
Phyllis

I’m having lots of trouble even finding more P names than this! Please help, any & all suggestions welcome!

I think the name Philippa would be an excellent choice. It’s a name I love already, and in this case it seems like the perfect way to honor her father Phillip. It goes beautifully with Moore and with Genevieve: Philippa Genevieve Moore. It has cute nicknames, too: Pip and Pippa.

Other P names to consider:

Pandora
Patience
Pearl
Penelope
Philomena
Piper
Polly
Priscilla

But I lean strongly toward Philippa.

E. writes:

I’m due with our first baby–a boy–in less than a week. For a first name we’re thinking Liam (or we might make the full name William and just call him Liam), after my grandfather who recently passed away, but we still haven’t decided on a middle name.

We want a name that is somewhat traditional (i.e., not weird), but not too common, because our last name (Thompson) is so common.

My husband likes Strider, Aaron, Carter, Jackson, Philip and Eric. I’m not in love with Strider because I think people will instantly connect it with Lord of the Rings. I like Jackson a lot, but I think the son-son rhyming thing with our last name sounds weird. Do you? I suggested Jameson (pronounced JAY-mih-son) as an alternative because it is similar to Jackson but I thought breaking it into three syllables helped the rhyming thing a little.

Other than Jameson, I like Thatcher, Ethan, Richmond, Camden and Kent. My husband isn’t super keen on any of these names, though he would consider Jameson or Ethan.

Can you help us? We’re pretty much open to all suggestions at this point. :)

If you use the name Liam, my favorites are Liam Carter Thompson (LCT) and Liam Richmond Thompson (LRT). If you use the name William, my favorites are William Carter Thompson (WCT) and William Richmond Thompson (WRT), so it appears I am consistent.

Because I prefer initials not to spell anything, I’d avoid Eric and Ethan (LET/WET).

What do the rest of you think? Which are your favorite combinations? Do you have any other middle name candidates to suggest?

Pick one: William or Charles, in a family where William would be called William or sometimes Will but not Liam, and Charles would be called almost exclusively Charlie. Poll over to the right. [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results (333 votes total):
William: 206 votes, roughly 62%
Charles: 127 votes, roughly 38%

Aly writes:

I am due TODAY with a boy. It’s our first, so I have a feeling we have another week or so before he’s here.

The baby’s last name will be Weaver – this is my husband’s last name and I kept my name when we married.

We’ve decided on the first name Austin. It was hard for us to find a name we both liked. Others we liked a lot all seemed to end in “er” which we thought sounded weird with the “er” on Weaver. Examples: Cooper, Walker. Austin is a family name – my maternal grandparent’s last name. They were very important people in my life. We like the significance and the name itself. Plus it has the benefit of not being super common but also not so unique that it’s strange.

Where we’re having trouble is with the middle name.

An obvious choice would be my last name but the three names really don’t sound good together. Plus I’m afraid it sounds too much like three last names.

We’d prefer something with significance but that’s not an absolute requirement.

We live in Hawaii, and for a long time I was pushing for Kai. However, my husband absolutely does not like this name. So it’s out. A lot of other Hawaiian names just sound way TOO Hawaiian – and we’ve only lived here a year, so we both feel like giving a really traditional, Hawaiian sounding middle name would be odd/inappropriate.

My husband suggested Cal, which he likes the sound of – plus we met in college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I’m just not sure…it doesn’t sound too bad but I feel like it’s sort of cheesy/weird to explain to all these people how we chose the middle name. Is it okay? Or kind of weird?

We need help, please! Another name we both like is Jack or Jackson (and it’s my husband’s grandfather’s name), but it doesn’t sound great as Austin Jackson Weaver. Or does it??

I really want to feel confident with a decision before we go into the delivery room! I would be SO appreciative of any help you and your readers can provide.

THANK YOU!!!

P.S. other grandparent’s/great-grandparents names include Samuel, Richard, Olin, Ron, Jack

I like Austin Jack Weaver, which takes away the repeated-ending problem of Austin Jackson. I also like Austin Samuel Weaver, and I like Austin Richard Weaver. Any of those would make excellent names. Let’s have a poll over to the right and see if we can get results before the baby arrives! [Poll closed; see results below.]

Poll results (250 votes total):
Austin Jack: 96 votes, roughly 38%
Austin Samuel: 103 votes, roughly 41%
Austin Richard: 8 votes, roughly 3%
Austin Cal: 43 votes, roughly 17%

(I’m out of town but didn’t want to fall too behind on the May baby names. Here’s one for you to work on while I’m gone.)

M. writes:

we are expecting a our third baby, a baby boy, and cant decide on a name. i loved the name jillian, and had her named long before she was born (her grandma jill and middle name faye), meredith was our number 1 pic (and middle name elizabeth after her aunt lizze whom she shares a brithday), and now i am at a loss for a boys name.
i love traditional names and 2 or more sylables, but not too common. my husband is a second william, which i like but dont know if that is too common or what i would call him (grandpa is bill and daddy is will/willie) other family names i like are thompson, may not go with the girls or my hubbys middle name is jaros (jair us) but may be too different.
i like matthew, benjamin, names like that, and an open to new ideas especially if we did william as the middle name. thanks for ANY help!!!! i would love to call him by name BEFORE he is born :)

(I’m out of town but didn’t want to fall too behind on the May baby names. Here’s one for you to work on while I’m gone.)

Becky writes:

I am due on May 24th, but will be induced on May 22nd if necessary due to gestational diabetes – so I have a definite end date.
We don’t know the gender of the baby – so we’re looking for both boy and girl names.

For a girl:
I found the name Cora on your site and immediately fell in love with it. I think it’s a nice match for Lily in that both are sort of old-fashioned, yet modernly “sassy” and both are nature names. I like short names, while my husband really wants a longer name alternative for future use. So our first daughter is Lillian, but we call her Lily. We’d like a similar name for Cora and are currently thinking maybe Coraline or Coralie. Or course the Tim Burton movie version of the Neil Gamon Coraline graphic novel was slightly annoying, but I’m thinking it wont’ be a major issue for the name. Any thoughts on a good long version for Cora? We’re also open to other girl suggestions that go nicely with Lily. Oh and for the middle name – my husband is Chinese and his parents give the children a Chinese name. So Lily’s full name is Lillian Man-Ching Wong and a second girl would be Cora (?) Man- Wong.

For a boy:
We’ve had a harder time finding a boy’s name. I’ve pretty much come up with three that I’m okay with and told my husband he could pick. But I’d love to hear you and your readers opinions on it as well. The middle name issue is more complicated here because I really want to use Daniel – my maternal grandfather’s name. I was very close to him and he passed away when I was only 10 or so. However, my husband’s parents would still give a Chinese name, so we’d have two middle names- Daniel and a Chinese name. OK so these are the current top three:

Jackson Daniel Wong –> my husband LOVES the name Jackson. My concerns here are that 1) it seems to be pretty common these days and 2) I worry slightly about the whiskey association with Daniel as the middle name. Had Lily been a boy, she’d probably be named Jackson.

Quinten Daniel Wong –> I love the nickname Quin and it turns out that Quinten was my paternal grandfather’s middle name (I had no clue!) So I like the double family tie-in here.

Zachary Daniel Wong –> I think this would be my favorite, but my mother has a cousin Zack who is not very well-regarded in the family. I keep vacillating between disliking the “bad” association and liking the chance to reinvent the name. I also think Lily and Zack sound super cute together.

I also wonder if the 2 middle names are too much. If I give up the Daniel thing then Jackson has no more issues with whiskey…..

And my “I should be packing but can’t resist” short reply:

Some long versions for Cora: Cordelia, Corinne, Corinna.

A Zack-like name that isn’t Zack: Isaac.

Would you want to use Daniel as the first name, maybe?