{"id":10806,"date":"2015-01-05T11:29:14","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T15:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10806"},"modified":"2015-01-05T11:31:56","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T15:31:56","slug":"baby-girl-jordan-sister-to-matthew-mason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/01\/05\/baby-girl-jordan-sister-to-matthew-mason\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Girl Jordan, Sister to Matthew Mason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello!<\/p>\n

My husband and I are having a difficult time deciding on a girl name. With our son, we couldn’t decide on a middle name until we had to sign the birth certificate at the hospital! Our last name is Jordan. Our son’s name is Matthew Mason (Matthew after my father and Mason because we liked it). Our baby girl is due in June. We don’t want anything too popular\/trendy (we didn’t like that with Matthew, but it was important to me to name him after my father). We also don’t want anything too strange or unique. Here are the names we like so far (in the order that I like them):<\/p>\n

Willa
\nMirabelle or Mirabel (nickname Mira)
\nMia
\nReese<\/p>\n

To throw a kink in things, my husband wants the middle name to start with the same letter as the first name (to match our son); however, I cannot find a good middle name to sound good with Willa.<\/p>\n

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!<\/p>\n

Thanks!<\/p>\n

Eva Marie<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think the alliteration idea is a fun one, but considering the two of you already have a lot of trouble settling on a name, it seems like it adds an unnecessary additional level of difficulty to the situation. Would your husband be willing to make that an “if it works out, great; if not, fine” preference? I’d also be influenced by whether you were planning to have more children after this one.<\/p>\n

Willa is my favorite from your list, too. If the alliteration is important, I like Willa Waverly. If the letter without the sound would be enough, I like Willa Wren. Or do you have any W surnames in your family trees, or do you admire any authors\/poets\/actors\/artists\/etc. with W surnames? I’m thinking of something like Willa Whitman or Willa Wilder or Willa Wharton or Willa Winslow.<\/p>\n

Mia has been in the Top 10 since 2009, so I wonder if it might be too popular for your tastes. Its usage may be even higher than that, since it is sometimes used as a nickname for Amelia and other names.<\/p>\n

We’ve had so many letters from parents who used the same initial for the first two children and then felt stuck, it makes me feel a little skittish about Mirabel(le) and Mia—especially if the middle names will also both start with M. If you’re not planning more than two, or if you would like to continue with M names for everyone, or if you don’t think two double-M names in a row is enough to make you feel stuck, then I do very much like Mirabel. I think it fits nicely with Isabel and Annabel, while being less familiar; and Mira is a nice easy nickname, similar to Mia but less common.<\/p>\n

Reese stands out to me among the others because of its different style: Willa, Mirabel, and Mia are all very feminine and used exclusively for girls, while Reese\/Rhys\/Reece is unisex. Because on your list you have three of one style and one of another, my guess is that Reese is an outlier for you—but that’s not necessarily true, and if you’re stopping after two children it doesn’t particularly matter. It matters only if it IS an outlier, AND you’re planning more children, AND you’d like sibling names to coordinate, AND you have more girls.<\/p>\n

Because you have Willa, Mira, and Mia on your list, I wonder if you’d like Willemina\/Wilhelmina (I prefer the former spelling from my own family tree; the latter spelling may be more familiar). It gives you the nicknames Willa and also Mina.<\/p>\n

Another option, I think, is to fully embrace the alliteration idea, to the extent of using it as a starting point: there may be more names to add to your list if you go deliberately searching for double names instead of single. It might also work to look for names that coordinate with your son’s in other ways: the same 2\/2 syllable pattern, or the same honor\/like pattern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello! My husband and I are having a difficult time deciding on a girl name. With our son, we couldn’t decide on a middle name until we had to sign the birth certificate at the hospital! Our last name is Jordan. Our son’s name is Matthew Mason (Matthew after my father and Mason because we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Oi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10810,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806\/revisions\/10810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}