My wife is pregnant with our first child, and we just found out its a girl! She is due in May. We have narrowed down a short list of first names that we like:<\/p>\n
Dorothea
\nJosephine
\nRosemarie
\nWinifred (Winnie)
\nSylvia
\nEvelyn<\/p>\n
I would like to take Evelyn off the list because it’s too high on the popularity list, and I don’t like any of the potential nicknames, but my wife really likes it, so it’s still on there.<\/p>\n
For a middle name, we will be using either her father’s name – James, or my father’s name – Thomas. We also like Ross as a middle name – a family name for me and my sister’s middle name.<\/p>\n
We’ll be hyphenating her last name, so it will be [snip].<\/p>\n
Possible contenders:
\nDorothea Thomas
\nWinifred James
\nRosemarie Thomas
\nEvelyn James
\nSylvia Ross<\/p>\n
Since a hyphenated last name is kind of weighty, we’re sort of concerned with finding a first\/middle name combo that fits well. I love Winifred\/Winnie, which was my grandmother’s name. Is that too much name for a little girl? Also we’re concerned that Josephine paired with a male middle name leans too masculine.<\/p>\n
We’d also like something with a cute and easy nickname, like Josie for Josephine, or Rosie for Rosemarie. My wife likes the nickname Dor for Dorothea (a character in Middlemarch which I have never read) but neither of us like the nickname Dora for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n
Help? Thoughts?<\/p>\n
Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Winifred jumps out to me from your list. It’s underused; it has great flexible nicknames (Winnie, Freddie); it’s a family name.<\/p>\n
My second choice is Sylvia. One upside of the name Sylvia is that it’s lighter in sound than Winifred (though no lighter than Winnie), which may help with the issues you mention of having a masculine middle name and a double surname. And Sylvie and Syl are great nicknames.<\/p>\n
My third choice (hot on the heels of the first two) is Rosemarie.<\/p>\n
I would have put Josephine somewhere in this list too if it weren’t for the male honor name in the middle. It isn’t that the male honor name makes Josephine seem masculine, but more that it draws my attention to it as a feminized version of a man’s name; suddenly the name starts to feel unfairly tipped toward honoring men (even though you’re not honoring a Joseph), especially if the surnames are also from your fathers. (If those are instead your mothers’ surnames, my feelings shift and it seems fine to keep James or Thomas.) I think if those ARE your fathers’ surnames, I’d be inclined to use Josephine with a middle name honoring a woman in your family. Ross might do it, depending on where in the family that name comes from.<\/p>\n
I’d add another possibility: Minerva, nickname Minnie.<\/p>\n
And Genevieve, nicknames Gen and Genny and Evie.<\/p>\n
And Geneva, nicknames Gen\/Genny\/Evie or Eva or Neevie.<\/p>\n
Or Dorothea makes me think of Theodora, which makes it easier to avoid the Dora nickname. I’d use the nickname Thea, and she’d also have Theo if she wanted it.<\/p>\n
Let’s have a poll to see what everyone else likes best!<\/p>\n
[yop_poll id=”44″]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong><\/p>\n Swistle, thanks so much for answering our question. After much discussion we decided to go in a different direction. We chose two family names. Below is a picture of our baby, Will@ C@therine hyphenated last name.<\/p>\n Cara writes: My wife is pregnant with our first child, and we just found out its a girl! She is due in May. We have narrowed down a short list of first names that we like: Dorothea Josephine Rosemarie Winifred (Winnie) Sylvia Evelyn I would like to take Evelyn off the list because it’s too […]<\/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-8467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2cz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8467","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=8467"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10793,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8467\/revisions\/10793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image1](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/image1-copy.jpg\")
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