Steph writes:<\/p>\n
My husband and I are pregnant with our first child together, due July 27th, and we do not know the gender. <\/p>\n
This is the second marriage for both of us, and we have three other children. My son and daughter, Christopher Zachary (10), and Emily Rose (8), and my stepdaughter Amanda Morgan (11). <\/p>\n
I looked it up, and all of our children’s names are in the Top 20 for their respective birth years. They have all gone through elementary school being Chris C., Emily C., and Amanda L., something I didn’t think through when I was pregnant my first two times around, and something I really want to avoid now. My name preferences have changed so much since then, as have my husband’s. <\/p>\n
Some names on our list now include (in order of how much we like them)<\/p>\n
Kalia
Lyra
Britta
Honor
Hazel
Bree
Honor
Valentina
Lyla
Piper
Willow
Hollis
Sage
Lola
Myla
Charissa (Cuh-riss-uh)
Lana
Vera<\/p>\nLian
Cedric
Blaise
Everett
Sawyer
Trace
Griffith
Keane
Asher
Tad
Hudson
Wyatt
Cory<\/p>\nThese are just some names we have thought of, not our final list of names to choose from. We like all these names, but none stand out as the right name for our baby. That’s where we’re hoping you can help.<\/p>\n
Problem one: all the names we like are very different styles, so we can’t really narrow down on one and find more names like that to eventually find the perfect name.<\/p>\n
Problem two: they’re all very different from our children’s names, and as there is such a big age gap, the kids will be the baby’s half siblings, and the baby already has a different last name than Chris and Emily (the last name he\/she will have is Lucas, by the way), we feel like with such a different style of name there will be too much separation? Do you think so? <\/p>\n
So we’re hoping you can help us find a name that’s not very popular and has the same style as the names we’ve mentioned, but still works with Chris, Emily, and Amanda. <\/p>\n
Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Blended families raise so many interesting issues, as do age gaps. Two things you have going for you: the children from the first two families have such very compatible names, and you and your husband have such similar tastes now. One thing you have going against you: again, that the children from the first two families have such very compatible names. If you had, say, Margaret Elizabeth and Edmund John, and he had, say, Starshine Tulip, we would just throw in the towel at this point and tell you to pick ANY name because NO name is going to join these names in a seamless way. Instead, we have three children whose names go BEAUTIFULLY together, which makes it trickier to change styles at this point.<\/p>\n
But not at all impossible: for one thing, because of the change in family situation, NOBODY is going to be thinking, “Huh, THAT’S weird, wonder why they just changed styles on a dime like that?”<\/p>\n
A name that comes to mind for a girl is Briony. It can be pronounced like the name Brian with an ee-sound on the end or it can be prounounced like BREE-uh-nee, and I prefer BREE-uh-nee. I think Amanda, Christopher, Emily, and Briony goes just fine, and Briony is similar to Bree on your list.<\/p>\n
For a boy, I wonder if you’d like Milo? Amanda, Christopher, Emily, and Milo.<\/p>\n
Or Keegan: Amanda, Christopher, Emily, and Keegan.<\/p>\n
You know, I just had another idea. It’s probably a TERRIBLE idea. But…I wonder if you could enlist the help of the first three children in choosing a name for the fourth? If nothing else, this would let you explain the different style in a SUPER SWEET way. The problem, of course, being that the children might only like names you don’t like, and vice versa. And I’m remembering how my two older children icked and ucked every! single! name! mentioned while we were trying to name the younger three. Maybe forget I said anything.<\/p>\n
All right, I’m going to turn this over to the collective mind now—this is such a hard one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Steph writes: My husband and I are pregnant with our first child together, due July 27th, and we do not know the gender. This is the second marriage for both of us, and we have three other children. My son and daughter, Christopher Zachary (10), and Emily Rose (8), and my stepdaughter Amanda Morgan (11). […]<\/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-6716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Kk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6716","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=6716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}