Julianne writes:<\/p>\n
Hi! Love your blog and all your suggestions. Hoping you can help me with name ideas for our baby girl due in May.<\/p>\n
We have a son named Graham Alexander. (Yes, very similar to Alexander Graham Bell but we don’t mind that at all since first name is strong with our last name.) Both names are family names.<\/p>\n
Since our last name starts with a ‘Ca’ and ends with an ‘ry’, we’d like to avoid any first names that start and end with the same.<\/p>\n
I do, however, love the name Caroline, just hesitant because of future nicknames, like CaCa. BUT, I do like the idea of the nickname CC. Or CiCi.<\/p>\n
So names I’m not interested in:<\/p>\n
-anything ending in -ie, or -y (too rhymey with our last name) –
unfortunate because I like names like Hattie or Hallee<\/p>\n-anything starting with Ca-
(like Catherine, Cara, Carsen, Carrie) – which is too bad because I like some of those names too<\/p>\n-anything ending in -s (so first and last names don’t create the word “scary”)-
which is also too bad because I like names like Hollis and Ellis<\/p>\nI like traditional names with a contemporary feel, if that makes sense. And would love for her name to pair well with Graham.<\/p>\n
Can you help? Thanks!!! (this is obviously keeping me up at night! :))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You might be able to use an -ie\/-y ending if it has the right rhythm, or more than two syllables: if your last name were Gary, for example (Gary is what I’ll use in the post to keep the surname private), Hallee Gary might be too rhymey (though it hasn’t struck me that way with Halle Berry), but Cecily Gary might be fine. Or maybe Hallee Gary is too rhymey, but Hillary Gary would be fine—well, or maybe we’d want to avoid two -ry endings. I like Cecily, though: Cecily Gary; Graham and Cecily. And Cecily gives you the CeeCee nickname on its own.<\/p>\n
It also might work to use a full form of an -ie\/-y ending name you like, if it doesn’t matter as much to you if nicknames are a little rhymey with the surname. Hattie could be short for Harriet or Henrietta, for example. Harriet Gary; Graham and Harriet. Or, well, with that specific example I suppose we might end up with Harry Gary—but the gist of the idea is that SOME -ie\/-y names might be salvageable with full forms.<\/p>\n
If you like Hollis and Ellis but want to avoid the -s ending, Holly might still be out but Ella is available, or Ellison, or Eliza, or Elsa.<\/p>\n
Looking now for names to give you the CC nickname, I think Celeste would work beautifully. It gives you CC without a CaCa problem; it’s an established name but it’s sounding fresh again; and I love it with Graham. Celeste Gary; Graham and Celeste.<\/p>\n
Charlotte would work well, too: Charlotte Gary; Graham and Charlotte.<\/p>\n
Or Claudia. Claudia Gary; Graham and Claudia.<\/p>\n
Changing back to just names I think are good with Graham, I like Genevieve. Graham and Genevieve.<\/p>\n
Or Stella. Stella Gary; Graham and Stella.<\/p>\n
Or Penelope. Penelope Gary; Graham and Penelope.<\/p>\n
Or Rose. Rose Gary; Graham and Rose.<\/p>\n
In fact, I find I’m having trouble narrowing things down: so MANY names sound good with Graham!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Julianne writes: Hi! Love your blog and all your suggestions. Hoping you can help me with name ideas for our baby girl due in May. We have a son named Graham Alexander. (Yes, very similar to Alexander Graham Bell but we don’t mind that at all since first name is strong with our last name.) […]<\/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-6243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1CH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6243","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=6243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}