A. writes:<\/p>\n
We are expecting our second daughter end of this month (December). Our
\nfirst is Avery, with her middle name being a family name. We chose
\nAvery simply because we liked it without much thought to it being
\npopular and unisex. We’re struggling with our dd#2 name because we
\ndon’t necessarily want to have to choose unisex to match but also
\ndon’t want people to assume we have a boy and a girl.<\/p>\nOur top name is Charlotte nickname “Charlie”. My feeling is Charlotte
\nand Avery aren’t too opposite as both are French and have been used
\nthrough the ages. I also see them as cute southern names, then again
\nwe live in the northeast so what do i know! If unisex is the way to go
\nwe do like Reagan. Although our fear with Reagan is the liberties
\npeople may take with spelling and pronunciation. Ree-gan vs Ray-gan
\nand I always had to spell my name for people and it gets old. My style
\ntends to be more classic\/popular again names (ie Charlotte, Olivia,
\nEvelyn, Amelia) and my husband leans more towards the unisex names (ie
\nTaylor, Sam) but really likes Charlotte and was actually the one to
\nsuggest it.<\/p>\nSide note, any name that starts with “J” or “A” is off the list. Too
\nmany “J”s in the family and we don’t want our girls to both start with
\n“A”. We are open to other names as well. Popularity doesn’t bother us
\nthat much and the Middle name will be a family name again, most likely
\nAnn or Lynn. If it had been a boy we like classic names and probably
\nwould have gone with Matthew. I should also mention that this will be
\nour last and so matching future names is not high on the priority
\nlist.<\/p>\nThank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
I think of Avery as a modern unisex surname name, and Charlotte as a feminine vintage revival. Avery doesn’t feel French to me: Wikipedia and The Oxford Dictionary of First Names say it’s an English surname name that comes from the Norman French pronunciation of Alfred, so I don’t think the two names go together on that basis.<\/p>\n
But I don’t think the two names are a clash, either, especially if you plan to call her Charlie. And as you say, you don’t necessarily want to be stuck with one parent’s style just because the first child was named in that style. I could see it causing an issue if there were going to be a third child later on (because it might feel as if two children coordinated and the third was left out), but if you’re stopping at two I like that each parent’s style is represented. Avery and Charlotte are both currently fashionable, which helps them feel more coordinated; it also helps that although Avery is unisex, it’s currently used more often for girls (in 2012, there were 8272 new baby girls and 1998 new baby boys named Avery).<\/p>\n
Reagan seems like a great choice, too. I would expect most people to be clear on the spelling and pronunciation, but I’m hoping someone among us is\/knows a Reagan and can weigh in on that point. But it sounds like you prefer Charlotte\/Charlie, and would be choosing Reagan only for style-matching concerns; in this case, I’d side with Charlotte. Let’s have a poll to see what everyone else thinks:<\/p>\n
[yop_poll id=”41″]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A. writes: We are expecting our second daughter end of this month (December). Our first is Avery, with her middle name being a family name. We chose Avery simply because we liked it without much thought to it being popular and unisex. We’re struggling with our dd#2 name because we don’t necessarily want to have […]<\/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-8435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2c3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435","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=8435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8438,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8435\/revisions\/8438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}