Shelly writes:<\/p>\n
I love reading your suggestions for names, and would really appreciate any names you could think of for our first child, who is due July 11, 2010.<\/p>\n
My husband and I very quickly decided on a boy’s name: Max Armando (Armando is my husband’s middle name and my father-in-law’s first name). But we’ve recently found out the baby is a girl, and we’re stumped.<\/p>\n
Our last name is Terrazas (pronounced “tear-AS-is”, and is Spanish for terrace). We loved how Max went with the Spanish-sounding last name and seemed unique to us (but I’ve noticed it is quite high on the popularity lists).<\/p>\n
My husband wants a cool-chick, strong, feminine and beautiful name. I want a name that is traditional, beautiful, feminine, with likable nicknames for when she is a baby\/little girl, but is strong\/professional sounding for when she gets older. I don’t want the name to be too popular or high on the usage lists, though.<\/p>\n
My husband really loves Alexandra, but I dislike the nickname Alex for a little girl. I could live with Lexie, however. I’m just not super-in-love with it, though.<\/p>\n
If we have boys in the future (we plan to have 1-2 more children after this one), their names will be Max Armando and Samual Warren, in respective birth order (all family names). But girls’ names have us stumped (none of the female names in either of our families are particularly appealing to me).<\/p>\n
We like the idea of using family names, though, and because I’m so close to my father, whose first name is James (but he goes by his middle name), I was thinking of pairing James (or Jaimes) as our baby girl’s middle name. But if she’s called Alex James, I’m afraid she’ll get a complex that we gave her two masculine names.<\/p>\n
Here are the names on our list, but none of them light my fire. The problem is, NOTHING has struck me as THE ONE in terms of a girl’s name. What is wrong with me? Am I expecting too much to have a lightening-bolt moment in terms of choosing a baby name, or is it normal to just choose a name that is “OK”?<\/p>\n
Names Still On Our List
Alexandra (Lexie)
Audrey
Lilly
Irene \/ Irena
Morgan
Madeline<\/p>\nNames We’ve Discarded:
Emma
Samantha
Sophia
Brooke
Paige
Gabrielle
Rose
Olivia
Gretchen
Bridgett
Penelope
Julianne
Georgia
Charlotte
Scarlett<\/p>\nThanks for any help you could give us!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
To address your most important question first, YES it’s definitely normal to have nothing in particular stand out as THE NAME. Sometimes a name hits like a lightning bolt, sometimes it grows on you gradually, and sometimes you run out of time and just have to pick what seems like the best bet on the list.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it helps to play games, like taking your list and seeing how you’d feel if each of those names was a baby in your arms, or how you’d feel if you knew the name was the one you were choosing, or how you’d feel if you knew the name was off the list. Or imagine each name in turn is the one, and then imagine someone saying, “What’s your baby’s name?” and giving the answer. Or handwrite each name with your surname a few times and see how that feels, or say each name with the two boy names you like and see which group sounds like YOUR group of children. Or each parent take turns crossing off a name from the long list until you get down to, say, the final three, and see how you each feel about those names. Or each parent put the name list in order, and see which names you both have high on the list. The point of the games is to try to get opinions to surface and solidify.<\/p>\n
Would you like the name Alexandra better with the nickname Ally? Or you could go with a variation such as Alissandra and use Liss\/Lissie.<\/p>\n
I think all your name choices are good ones. They all go well with your surname and with the two possible future boy names. Let’s see if we can make a list of more possibilities to consider.<\/p>\n
Anastasia (Anna, Annie, Stace)
Cassandra (Cass, Cassie)
Francesca (Frankie, Chess)
Emeline (Emmie)
Geneva (Gennie, Eva, Evie)
Genevieve (Gennie, Evie)
Josephine (Jo, Josie)
Karenna (Karie, Rennie)
Lissandra (Liss, Lissy)
Meredith (Merrie)
Philomena (Phillie, Mena)
Veronica (Ronnie, Nicki)
Willemina\/Wilhelmina (Willa, Mina, Minnie)
Winifred (Winnie, Freddie)<\/p>\nI had Georgia (Georgie, Gigi) and Penelope (Penny, Nellie) on there too until I saw they were on the discard list. I like both of them a lot. I think my favorite is Francesca, because I think it’s beautiful and feminine and strong and unusual, and also cool-chick with cool nicknames.<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/span> Shelly writes:<\/p>\n
We ended up naming our baby girl Alexandra Rose Terrazas, and we call her Lexie. The middle name was a last minute call, as I thought of Rose when the doctor in the delivery room exclaimed that she was born very pink and rosey.<\/p>\n
Thanks so much for your name suggestions, my husband and I really appreciate it!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shelly writes: I love reading your suggestions for names, and would really appreciate any names you could think of for our first child, who is due July 11, 2010. My husband and I very quickly decided on a boy’s name: Max Armando (Armando is my husband’s middle name and my father-in-law’s first name). But we’ve […]<\/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-6734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1KC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734","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=6734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}