S. writes:<\/p>\n
My husband and I need help naming our boy\/girl twins due in June. We already have a daughter named Avery Elizabeth (nn Ave), and I would like to give our twins names that began with a vowel as well. Our surname sounds like “Bame”; and I would prefer to have first names that begin with more than one syllable. I like unusual or trendy names, while my husband prefers more traditional names.<\/p>\n
We have agreed on a girl’s name (Olivia Jean nn Liv) but are unable to agree on a boy’s name that would go well with Olivia and Avery.<\/p>\n
We have vetoed the following boys names:
\nAllistair
\nAsher (husband dislikes)
\nEvan
\nEthan
\nOliver
\nOwen
\nIan
\nAaron (too normal)
\nAdam
\nAndrew
\nEverett (husband dislikes)
\nEmmett (husband dislikes)<\/p>\nPlease help! Do we need to select a boys name that begins with a vowel, or would a name that begins with a consonant be ok?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
This is an excellent example of when it’s time to drop a preference: you’d prefer to use a boy name starting with a vowel, but you don’t like any of the boy names starting with vowels. That’s exactly where I’d brush off my hands briskly and say, “Well, this would have been our ideal, but I guess it’s not going to work out.”<\/p>\n
And in fact, I have brushed off my hands briskly in a similar situation: when I was expecting boy\/girl twins, my preference would have been to have something twinny about their names: a shared initial, a shared number of letters or syllables, swapped first\/middle initials, a strong shared sound—something like that. As I made list after list, it gradually emerged that in order to do that, we would need to choose one name we liked and one name we would never have chosen except to meet the preference. That trade wasn’t worth it to me, so I dropped the preference. (Giving them matching initials for their blog pseudonyms was fun.)<\/p>\n
We’ve had the “Do we have to keep going with vowel names?” question come up on the blog a couple of times before; the general consensus has been that it’s not the kind of theme people notice—or if they happen to notice, it’s not the kind of thing they think is a big deal. If you had five children all with vowel names or all with the initial C. and you wanted to leave one twin out, it would be another matter; after only one vowel name, adding one vowel name (a different vowel) and one consonant name seems unnoticeable. For anyone who DID notice, the way I’d spin it is that you like vowel names for girls. Perhaps the twins could have something else in common—the swapped first\/middle initials idea, for example, or a strong shared sound (Olivia and Noah, Olivia and Leo).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. writes: My husband and I need help naming our boy\/girl twins due in June. We already have a daughter named Avery Elizabeth (nn Ave), and I would like to give our twins names that began with a vowel as well. Our surname sounds like “Bame”; and I would prefer to have first names that […]<\/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-8678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2fY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678","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=8678"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8680,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8678\/revisions\/8680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}