Melissa writes:<\/p>\n
Hi! We’re expecting #2 on October 6th (or, if you believe the doctor, more likely in late September), our second girl, and are sort of stumped on the perfect name. (Although we still agree on the perfect BOY name we picked out the first time around, pretty well ensuring that we will never have boys to name. Oh well.)<\/p>\n
We tend to the very traditional on naming and prefer names that have meanings we like. Any name that’s likely to get shortened needs to have a “good” nickname that we can establish early on. My husband is Jewish, so using the name of a living relative is off the table, although we’d love to find a name with family meaning otherwise. Not a lot to choose from there on the girl side, unfortunately – we’re not big on the Doris, Helen, Mary category (traditional but meh).<\/p>\n
Daughter #1 is Abigail Claire – Abigail means “father’s joy” (which she absolutely is) and Claire is after my grandfather (Clarence). We loved it as soon as we hit on it, and 2 1\/2 years later it’s still the Perfect Name. We sometimes wish Abigail weren’t so popular (we didn’t know – I swear!) but we still love the name. So now we need to match it!<\/p>\n
Our front-runner first name right now is Caroline (my grandmother’s middle name), which we might shorten to Callie if we get the urge. I also love Margaret (with Maggie or Meg as the short options), Madeleine, and Amelia (would be Mia for short). My husband likes Hannah, Rachel and Sarah. We’re considering Elizabeth for the middle name, although I’d also love Emma, especially since it’s too popular to use for a first name!<\/p>\n
Help us find the perfect name! Thanks!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All of your options look great to me. Let’s put them in a list with the sibling name so we can take a good look at them:<\/p>\n
Abigail and Caroline
Abigail and Margaret
Abigail and Madeleine
Abigail and Amelia
Abigail and Hannah
Abigail and Rachel
Abigail and Sarah<\/p>\nAbigail and Amelia seem too similar to me for sisters—but then, I get confused if I’m reading a book and two characters have names that start with the same letter.<\/p>\n
My favorite, I think, is your frontrunner. Abigail and Caroline is a great combination, and the nicknames are cute together: Abby and Callie. I like Caroline Elizabeth, and I also like Caroline Margaret.<\/p>\n
But I don’t see how you could go wrong with any of the names on your list. They’re all great girl names. Let’s put it to the vote and see what everyone else thinks.
Poll is to the right.<\/strike> [poll closed; see below]<\/p>\n[Poll results<\/span> (215 votes total):
Caroline: 122 votes, roughly 57%
Margaret: 20 votes, roughly 9%
Madeleine: 20 votes, roughly 9%
Amelia: 20 votes, roughly 9%
Hannah: 13 votes, roughly 6%
Rachel: 12 votes, roughly 6%
Sarah: 8 votes, roughly 4%]<\/p>\n[Name update<\/span> 10-21-2008! Melissa writes:<\/p>\n
Thanks to everyone for input on daughter #2’s name. Caroline Amelia was born on October 3rd, healthy and gorgeous, and her name suits her perfectly! The middle name was up in the air until the last minute, but Amelia finally won out over Elizabeth. Her big sister is very proud of “her baby Caroline” and so are we!<\/p>\n
Thanks again!]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melissa writes: Hi! We’re expecting #2 on October 6th (or, if you believe the doctor, more likely in late September), our second girl, and are sort of stumped on the perfect name. (Although we still agree on the perfect BOY name we picked out the first time around, pretty well ensuring that we will never […]<\/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-7180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-1RO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180","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=7180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}