D. writes:<\/p>\n
We’re due February 27th and don’t know what we’re having. My husband is from Germany and I am of German descent. Since we may be living in Germany at some point, we’re looking for a name that would work well in either Germany or the States. We’re a fan of modern German and Scandinavian names (meaning no Gertrudes or Rainers), and don’t mind something a little unusual.<\/p>\n
We’re down to two boy name finalists. We’re leaning toward Lukas Alexander at the moment, but Carsten Matthias is another possibility.<\/p>\n
We’re totally flummoxed on girl names, as we don’t tend to like the same ones. My husband likes very feminine names (Daniela, Liliana), but they don’t do much for me. I really like the names Corinna and Anja, but can’t bring my husband totally around. Karina is a potential compromise. We also keep coming back to some version of Annelie (Annalee? Anna Leigh?), but can’t come up with a spelling that works well in both places (also, my husband has a good friend whose daughter is named Amelie, so he’s concerned they’re too close). And we can’t even get to a middle name until we get closer to a first name, though I like Jane and Mae (my mother’s middle names) as companions to a longer first name.<\/p>\n
Any help or creative thinking you could provide would be much appreciated!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m going to flip right to the German\/Dutch and Scandinavian sections of The Baby Name Wizard<\/a> to help me out here.<\/p>\n
Actually, no, I’m going to do that second. FIRST, I’m going to do some perfunctory research into what names are currently popular in Germany. I don’t trust BabyCenter: they publish an annual list of “the most popular names in the U.S.” that includes only the names their readers report using, as opposed to the list put out by The Social Security Administration<\/a> which is based not only on the entire country (rather than on a non-random sample), but also on actual usage (rather than reported usage). But their European twin BabyCentre claims to have collected “official statistics” to come up with this list<\/a> of the top ten names around the world, including this list from Germany:<\/p>\n
Top 10 Boy Names in Germany, 2007<\/span>:
Leon
Maximilian
Alexander
Paul
Luca
Lucas\/Lukas
Felix
Elias
David
Jonas<\/p>\nTop 10 Girl Names in Germany, 2007:<\/span>
Marie
Sophie\/Sofie
Maria
Anna\/Anne
Leonie
Lena
Johanna
Charlotte
Hannah
Sophia\/Sofia<\/p>\nAny one of those names would work in the U.S. just fine.<\/p>\n
All right, now back to The Baby Name Wizard. First, boy names. You’ve got Lukas and Carsten. Here are a few more I like from the book and\/or from the BabyCentre list:<\/p>\n
Anders
Andreas
Elias
Erich\/Erik
Evert
Josef
Karl
Leon
Otto
Soren
Torsten
Werner<\/p>\nNow, girl names—again, using the Baby Name Wizard and the BabyCentre list:<\/p>\n
Anneliese
Annika
Brigitta
Claudia
Elsa
Elsbeth
Greta
Ida
Lena
Leonie
Linnea
Lisbeth
Wilhelmina<\/p>\nThis is too many choices. I’m getting muddled. What I’m fervently hoping is that we have some readers actually LIVING IN GERMANY who could give us some input. Awhile back we were talking about French names, and I loved hearing from people living in France who could say things like, “Yeah, that’s a typical French name—but it’s, like, a DAD name, not a current baby name.” These things are so obvious in one’s own culture, and so difficult in an unfamiliar one. Jess Loolu<\/a> is in the middle of a big cross-country move or I’d force her to ask her German husband Torsten for input. (And if you need a little breather between unpacking boxes and setting up utilities, Jess…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
D. writes: We’re due February 27th and don’t know what we’re having. My husband is from Germany and I am of German descent. Since we may be living in Germany at some point, we’re looking for a name that would work well in either Germany or the States. We’re a fan of modern German and […]<\/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-7089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1Ql","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7089","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=7089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}