Samantha writes:<\/p>\n
I love your blog and naming style, and I am hoping you can help us out. My name is Sam and my husband’s name is Danny and our last name is Giddings. We are expecting our second daughter at the end of May and are kind of stuck. I absolutely love our first daughter\u2019s name: Magnolia Jane (we don\u2019t use a nickname yet, but if we start it will likely be Nolie or Mags). Magnolia has a special meaning to us, it\u2019s unique without being too weird \u2013 plus she has her own Grateful Dead song \u2013 I just think it\u2019s perfect.\u00a0 I hope to find a similarly awesome name for baby girl #2.<\/p>\n
We are set on a middle name, which will be June after our grandmothers. I am not concerned about the one letter difference between it and Magnolia\u2019s middle name since they will both be named for special people. However, when it comes to first names, I don\u2019t want to repeat the same first letter or ending sound.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s our short list of names:<\/p>\n
Penny (just Penny, not short for anything) \u2013 Our top name thus far<\/p>\n
Clementine \u2013 We both love it, but hate all the possible nicknames and Clementine is quite the mouthful<\/p>\n
Charlie \u2013 This is would make an adorable girls name, but am hesitant because it may be hard to carry and I\u2019ve also seen it as a nickname for Charlotte, which is quite popular (I think). Also, it rules out both Penny and Clementine if we go for a third and it\u2019s a girl<\/p>\n
Jude \u2013 We\u2019d have to change the middle name for this one, but my husband just brought it up and it\u2019s growing on me<\/p>\n
If she were a he our short list would be River and August. Samson was our top boy name until it dawned on me that as Sam, my son would literally be the son of Sam. <\/p>\n
Can you help us? I would be forever grateful!\u00a0 I promise to email you an adorable picture with an update right after she is born.\u00a0 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s not relevant for this baby, but if you have a son later, he’ll be the son of Sam no matter what you use as his first name. Using Samson for him might cause some confusion (because of having two Sams in one house), but avoiding it doesn’t take away the son-of-Sam issue: your name will still be Sam, and he will still be your son.<\/p>\n
From your list, I think the only name that fits with Magnolia is Clementine: they’re both long, feminine, unusual names, and Clementine doesn’t seem like any more of a mouthful than Magnolia. Penny-short-for-nothing seems too nicknamey and casual with the long and fancy Magnolia. Charlie has the same problem, plus it’s used more often for boys while Magnolia is used exclusively for girls. Jude would be nice for the song issue, but it’s a short snappy mostly-boy name next to a long fancy only-girl name. It’s not that sibling names must coordinate, but it’s nice to avoid the kind of contrast that suggests different expectations for each child, or that causes them hassle.<\/p>\n
If you hate all the nicknames for Clementine, it’s not quite the issue it would be if you hated all the nicknames for Elizabeth: there aren’t any familiar, natural nicknames for Clementine. I think you’d end up using the full name as you do for Magnolia, and maybe a non-name-related nickname would happen naturally over time. Or even though I see only Clem and Tina listed as nicknames, Minnie seems like it would work just as well, and it’s similar to Penny. Or you could call her Darlin’. Or it would be a big stretch, but I suppose you could call her Charlie.<\/p>\n
Do you have a special reason for wanting to use just-Penny and just-Charlie, after giving your first child a non-nickname name? For example, did the name Magnolia seem like a good idea before the baby was born, but since then has felt too long or too fancy or too feminine for your style? Magnolia and Penelope are a good sister pair, as are Magnolia and Charlotte to a lesser extent (larger popularity difference; maybe Magnolia and Charity would work better). Maggie and Penny would also be a good combination. But once you’ve gone with Magnolia (and so far haven’t used a nickname), it makes for a startling contrast to switch.<\/p>\n
Unless you’re deliberately trying for a style change or a startle factor, I’d look for something more like:<\/p>\n
Anastasia
Anneliese
Arabella
Athena
Augusta (rules out August)
Aurora
Bianca
Briony
Calliope
Catriona
Cecilia (song)
Christabel
Clarissa
Delilah (which would rule out Samson) (song)
Emerald
Eugenie
Eveline (song)
Felicity
Francesca
Genevieve
Giselle
Gloria (song)
Gwendolyn
Imogen (probably not with June)
Isabeau
Isadora
Jemima
Josephine
Juliette (song)
Juniper (probably not with June)
Karenna
Lissandra
Livinia
Lorelei (song)
Persephone
Philippa
Philomena
Romilly
Rosabelle
Rosalie
Rosalind
Ruby (song)
Seraphina
Susannah (song)
Tuesday (song, sort of)
Valentina
Veronica (song)
Virginia (song)
Vivienne
Willemina<\/p>\nMany of those end in -a, but I left them anyway in case what you meant was more that you didn’t want to match the -lia. So many girl names end in -a, I don’t think of it as a noticeable “matching” thing the way it would be if both names started with M.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samantha writes: I love your blog and naming style, and I am hoping you can help us out. My name is Sam and my husband’s name is Danny and our last name is Giddings. We are expecting our second daughter at the end of May and are kind of stuck. I absolutely love our first […]<\/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-5964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1yc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964","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=5964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}