I’ve been following your blog for a while, and have really enjoyed the baby name advice you’ve provided to others… so I figured I’d give it a go and ask you our question. We are expecting our first child any day now (Due date Dec 20) and are having some trouble deciding on a Girl’s Name. (We still don’t know the sex, boys names aren’t quite so contentious… we both agreed on Malcolm Marshall without too much arguing)<\/p>\n
Our last name is kind of long… sounds like “Donaldson”. Before getting married I had a fairly short name (2 syllables first name, 2 syllables last name) so I’m a bit intimidated by the length of our last name in pairing it with other names.<\/p>\n
My husband is in LOVE with the name “Andromeda” for a girl, and maybe using the nickname “Andi” for everyday. I do like the name, but I wonder if it’s too much of a handle for a teeny little girl – it’s really long, and uncommon where we live. When she grows up, she could use a shortened form – like Andi, Romi, Meda, etc – but I wonder if we might not be better off to use the nickname right from the beginning. I really love the name Andi, and it fits well with my own middle name.<\/p>\n
My proposal is Andi Lynn “Donaldson”… but the husband is insisting that it must be Andromeda Lynn “Donaldson” and still call her Andi everyday.<\/p>\n
Are we asking for trouble with such a long name? If we plan on using the nickname every day, is it better to just have that be her legal name?<\/p>\n
Thank you for your time :)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nIn some cases, I like a more formal\/serious given name to fall back on. In other cases, it seems silly to force a formal name that will never be used. In general, I lean toward OPTIONS, and so I lean toward formal names with nicknames, rather than nicknames-as-given-names. But it has to be case-by-case, because there are so many issues to consider.<\/p>\n
In this case, I am charmed by the father’s love of the name, and I am persuaded by the easy nicknames. The name Andromeda is no longer than the name Elizabeth; and although Andromeda Donaldson would be a mouthful with all those D sounds, I see from your email address that the actual surname is a much nicer fit. It doesn’t seem too long to me at all, especially with a short middle name.<\/p>\n
If you’re willing to go with Andromeda, and if you don’t think it will cause you problems later when choosing sibling names, I vote for making it the given name, and then using Andi as an easy nickname for any community. Let’s have a poll over to the right, to see what everyone else thinks. [Poll closed; see results below.]<\/p>\n
![\"Andromeda\"](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Andromeda.png\")
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong> Jolene writes:<\/p>\n Our little girl arrived on December 30, 2011 of course… And we decided to go with the name: Andromeda Lynn Richardson… But with a twist – were calling her Romy for short.<\/p>\n She’s a sweet little girl, and though we’re completely exhausted, things are finally starting to even out a bit as far as a routine goes.<\/p>\n Thanks to you and your readers for your opinions on the name. I’d be interested to know what the final tally was on the poll as well. We only had one person have a really negative reaction to the name (unfortunately my father in law) and he’s saying that he wants to call her his “little Annie” instead of Romy. If they want to have that little thing between them maybe that’s ok in the end? We’ll deal with it as it comes I guess :)<\/p>\n Thanks again!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jolene writes: I’ve been following your blog for a while, and have really enjoyed the baby name advice you’ve provided to others… so I figured I’d give it a go and ask you our question. We are expecting our first child any day now (Due date Dec 20) and are having some trouble deciding on […]<\/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":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1wo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852","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=5852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9627,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5852\/revisions\/9627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}