Michaela writes:<\/p>\n
I’ve been fond of names for most of my life. At eight, I named my first two cats Zanzibel and Sylvester! Probably a decision which greatly disgusted their cat sensibilities, but I was ever so pleased. My husband and I are expecting our first child (gender unknown) but I’m not feeling no such certainty with my name choices. I’m very lucky I am to have a very open-minded husband – he didn’t bat an eyelid when I suggested Zanzibel as a plausible name!<\/p>\n
More realistically though, our last name is Campbell, and we like to use either Dianne (his mother’s middle name) or Lynn (from my mother’s middle name Lynette) for a girl, and Derrick (his dad’s middle name) or Dominic (my dad’s first name since he goes by his middle name). I’m fond of long vibrant first names for a girl that aren’t intuitively reduced to a nickname, but I don’t want something that feels too flowery, stodgy or pompous (i.e. I don’t really like names that end in -ia, like Cecelia or Alexandria, or names like Eleanor and Elizabeth). But conversely, I’m attracted to short names for boys that (to me) have a strong, resilient and earthy feel, but I don’t want one that feels too lightweight (I’m not being difficult on purpose, really!)<\/p>\n
We’re hoping you can suggest some names similar to these names we like (but don’t love).
Girls: Veronica, Felicity (I like the upbeatness of this), Juniper, Meredith, Gillian (but not Jillian or Lillian), Angelica (bordering on fussy for me)
Boys: Reid, Jon, Noah (too popular), Ross, Tom, Adam<\/p>\nI’d love to hear your thoughts, and anyone else who might add some comment, advice or insight please feel welcomed to!<\/p>\n
Thank you in advance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Okay! Let’s start with long vibrant girl names that aren’t too pompous, stodgy, or flowery, and don’t end in -ia, and don’t have an automatic nickname. Some of these suggestions do HAVE a nickname or two, but I don’t think they’d be automatically reduced to one if you (and the child) used the long version.<\/p>\n
Abilene
Angeline
Ariadne
Briarly
Corinna
Delilah
Elisheva
Esmeralda
Evangeline
Francesca
Geneva
Genevieve
Giovanna
Gwendolyn
Imogene
Isadora
Josephine
Julianna
Lisandra
Lorelei
Marigold
Melody
Minerva
Penelope
Philippa
Philomena
Rosalind
Wilhelmina<\/p>\nAnd now for some short, strong, earthy boy names:<\/p>\n
Abe
Amos
Elias
Gus
Heath
Hugo
Ian
Joel
Nolan
Otto
Rufus
Saul
Wade<\/p>\nName traits such as strength and stodginess are highly subjective, so you may find yourself going through my list saying, “Whuh? But that’s, like, the stodgiest of all stodgy names!” or “Ack, that makes me think of the skinny little weakling I went to school with!” This is why it’s so nice to have a big group to offer other options: in the comment section we’ll get other people’s ideas of non-flowery girl names and resilient boy names.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michaela writes: I’ve been fond of names for most of my life. At eight, I named my first two cats Zanzibel and Sylvester! Probably a decision which greatly disgusted their cat sensibilities, but I was ever so pleased. My husband and I are expecting our first child (gender unknown) but I’m not feeling no such […]<\/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-7036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Pu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036","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=7036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}