A. writes:<\/p>\n
We are expecting boy\/girl twins this summer. We have a 2-year old son William who we call Liam. Naming him was a breeze because we always knew if we had a boy we wanted to name him after my husband’s late father. But naming these new babies is a different ball game.<\/p>\n
We were leaning heavily toward Noah Luke for the boy and Charlie Jane for the girl (all family names which we like using if we can) but I have hesitations with each of those. Noah is so popular right now. Liam is very popular too but we loved it so much we didn’t care. We really like Noah but I don’t think we LOVE it enough to not be bothered that it has become more common. And we both think Charlie is darling for a girl but I worry that a) it might not be feminine enough since it wouldn’t be short for anything (we don’t really like Charlotte or any of the other names it might be short for) and b) when we list off all three kids names together it would sound like three boys: Liam, Noah and Charlie. We like the idea of actually calling her Charlie Jane a lot but I know the Jane will get dropped a decent amount of the time.<\/p>\n
Now we are leaning more towards using Charles\/Charlie for the boy with either Luke or Dean as his middle name (both family names). We really love Charlie and feel pretty confident we want to use it for one of the babies. Like Liam, even though Charlie is pretty popular\/common, we like it enough that we don’t really care. And now we are considering Magnolia Jane for the girl and mostly calling her Maggie. My husband LOVES the name Maggie and I think it is pretty cute but I don’t know if I’m sold yet plus I wonder if Magnolia is too random and off the wall if our boys will have more traditional names like William and Charles? I like that the twins would be Charlie and Maggie which sounds more distinctly boy and girl and I think Liam, Charlie and Maggie goes pretty well together but we have talked this in circles so much that I am losing perspective. :)<\/p>\n
Do you have thoughts on the Magnolia\/Maggie idea and whether it fits in or any suggestions of other girl names we might consider? I tend to like more traditional or old fashioned names for girls and my husband tends to like cuter, more tomboy-ish names for girls so a more classic full name with a cute nickname is likely to suit both of our tastes. We are sold on using Jane as her middle name as that is a family name we love. (Oh, and our surname is Wallis.)<\/p>\n
Any help you can offer would be amazing!
\nThank you!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
I liked your point about not being sure you love a name enough to ignore its popularity. I frequently encourage parents to use the name they love even if it’s a popular name, and so if you loved the name Noah and were going to use a name you liked much less only because of popularity, my first instinct would be to talk you out of that idea. But your clarification shows that’s not what’s going on here.<\/p>\n
If I heard of the sibling group Liam, Noah, and Charlie, I would assume Charlie was a boy. In this case, it’s because the name Charlie fits very well in style as a brother name, but is a completely different style as a sister name. It’s common for parents to have a different preferred style for boy names and for girl names, and that generally works just fine; but in this case the particular girl-name choice happens to fall exactly into the same group of names as your boy-name style, which is what’s catching your eye as a potential issue. The style-match as a boy name and the style-mismatch as a girl name all but forces the name to click incorrectly into place as Boy. For this sibling group I prefer your alternate idea of finding a long feminine name with a short boyish nickname: if you loved the name Charlotte, you’d be all set.<\/p>\n
I love that you can still use Charlie for the boy twin: it really is great with Liam, and the name Charles Wallis makes me think pleasantly of Charles Wallace (Wallace was his middle name) from the book A Wrinkle in Time. In fact, the Charles\/Charlie and Magnolia\/Maggie twin set seems beyond perfect to me (perhaps in part because Charles Wallace’s sister’s name was Margaret\/Meg). William\/Liam and Charles\/Charlie are extremely compatible brother names\/nicknames, and Maggie fits beautifully and is great with the middle name Jane. The name Magnolia is more unusual than William and Charles and a somewhat different style, but it’s a compatible style and not one that leads to confusion or clashing. And if you do switch Charlie from your girl-name choice to your boy-name choice, I think that makes it particularly fun that the new girl-name choice Magnolia includes all the sounds of the previous boy-name choice Noah. But if Magnolia continues to feel too adventurous for your tastes, Margaret\/Maggie is terrific with William\/Liam and Charles\/Charlie. I like the way both twins would have the “ar” sound in their given names: Charles and Margaret. But I guess I would hesitate a little at making such a strong apparent reference to A Wrinkle in Time.<\/p>\n
The only preference left out by Magnolia\/Maggie (or Margaret\/Maggie) is the preference for a boyish nickname. If you wanted to keep looking to find something a little more like Charlie, here are some possibilities:<\/p>\n
Antonia\/Toni
\nAugusta\/Gus\/Gussie (too much S with surname?)
\nBernadette\/Bennie\/Bernie
\nCalista\/Cal
\nColette\/Cole
\nDanica\/Danny
\nFrancesca\/Frankie\/Frank
\nGeorgia\/Georgie\/George
\nGeorgianna\/Georgie\/George
\nJosephine\/Jo
\nKatherine\/Kit
\nLouisa\/Lou
\nPhilomena\/Phil
\nMatilda\/Mattie
\nTheodora\/Theo
\nThomasina\/Tommie\/Tom
\nVeronica\/Ronnie\/Ron
\nWinifred\/Freddie\/Fred<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A. writes: We are expecting boy\/girl twins this summer. We have a 2-year old son William who we call Liam. Naming him was a breeze because we always knew if we had a boy we wanted to name him after my husband’s late father. But naming these new babies is a different ball game. We […]<\/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-8918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2jQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918","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=8918"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8940,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions\/8940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}