Traci writes:<\/p>\n
We’re due with baby number four – our first girl! – on August 7th. Her brothers are Calvin David, Henry Butler, and Charles Fenn. (Cal’s middle name is his Dad’s first, the other two have family names that we loved.) Her first name is Jane. We’ve loved it forever and the boys already refer to her as Baby Jane or Janie. However, we cannot come up with a middle name!<\/p>\n
My husband is absolutely adamant that if we are going to call her Jane, that will be her FIRST given name – none of this naming her something else and just calling her Jane. I had hoped to use a family name for her middle name like we did for the boys, but the rhythm is all wrong as a middle for Jane (not to mention the fact that our female family names are not entirely beautiful).<\/p>\n
Everything else that comes up as a pair for Jane is a first name, too – Mary Jane, Sarah Jane, Eliza Jane, etc. – since Jane has historically been a middle name. We’re also getting a little guff from family and friends about “Plain” Jane, and a few people have even commented that girls don’t really need middle names since their maiden name becomes their middle once they’re married anyway. (I’d love to know people’s thoughts on that!)<\/p>\n
Anyway – I’d like a middle name that’s maybe a little fanciful or flowery, that has a good rhythm after Jane and before our surname Miller, and\/or maybe has a beautiful meaning since it won’t be a family name. The only one that I’ve really loved so far is Lisette, so I’d like more ideas to toss around. Elizabeth is out because it’s in reserve for another girl (if and when:)). Also – we’ve been living in Ukraine for a year and will be for the first year of her life, and she will be born in London, so maybe something with a Russian \/ Slavic or British flavor would work?<\/p>\n
Help!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I am usually of the mind that there are different strokes for different folks, ESPECIALLY with baby names, and so I am trying VERY HARD to allow into my universe the “girls don’t need a middle name” idea people are attempting to sell you. The option of taking the maiden name as a middle name after marriage is by no means universal—and in fact, neither is the option of taking a married name at all. Besides, around here we LIKE names, so we WANT to choose a middle name, and in fact sometimes TWO. So I suggest we dismiss this whole theory as silly and turn our minds to the more interesting task of choosing a middle name (or maybe two!) for Jane.<\/p>\n
Here are a few possibilities (I left out options that would give monograms of JAM or JIM):<\/p>\n
Jane Beatrice Miller
Jane Belinda Miller
Jane Callista Miller
Jane Carissa Miller
Jane Cecelia Miller
Jane Celeste Miller
Jane Cordelia Miller
Jane Corinne Miller
Jane Evangeline Miller
Jane Felicity Miller
Jane Linden Miller
Jane Mirabel Miller
Jane Miranda Miller
Jane Meredith Miller
Jane Penelope Miller
Jane Rosabel Miller
Jane Verity Miller
Jane Veronica Miller
Jane Victoria Miller
Jane Wilhelmina Miller<\/p>\nI especially like the meaning of Felicity, which is luck and happiness. Wilhelmina is the feminine form of the German form of William, if you follow that, and William means “resolute protection,” which I like too. Evangeline means bearer of good news. Meredith means great ruler, and Carissa means grace. Belinda and Callista mean beautiful, and Beatrice means happy, and Cordelia means heart (or daughter of the sea, depending on whether you want it to be Latin or Celtic). Verity means truth, of course. Veronica means true image, and Victoria means, creatively, “victory.” Mirabel means miraculous beautiful one, and Miranda means marvelous. Penelope means weaver—or, er, duck. Celeste means heavenly. (I got all the meanings from The Baby Name Bible<\/a>, which is one of those total overkill name books that obviously had to strain super hard to come up with enough names to meet their “50,000+ baby names!” boast, and in fact would have been better off stopping around 20,000, but on the other hand it’s sometimes handy to have such a book.)<\/p>\n
Do you have any pretty surnames in your family tree? Those seem like they’d be nice with Jane, too.<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/span> Traci writes:<\/p>\n
After all of our angst, we ended up naming her Jane Elizabeth – she was born in London, so her 5-year-old brother kept insisting that she should be named after the Queen of England. That made us smile, so we went for it. The middle names that came in close behind were Lisette and Ophelia. Both of which I still love. Maybe if I can talk us into one more baby. :)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Traci writes: We’re due with baby number four – our first girl! – on August 7th. Her brothers are Calvin David, Henry Butler, and Charles Fenn. (Cal’s middle name is his Dad’s first, the other two have family names that we loved.) Her first name is Jane. We’ve loved it forever and the boys already […]<\/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-6975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Ov","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975","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=6975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}