One last post for DD2 please?
Hi all! I posted a few months ago about help with names for DD2 and got some great suggestions. Just had a dr appt this morningand she thinks any day now so I was hoping for some more input if y'all don't mind.
Here is our final list:
Jane
June
Blythe
Alice
Pearl
Dd1 is N0ra Frances. Our last name starts with Y and rhymes with bagel. Thanks everyone!!! Oh, and we are really clueless about a middle name so throw those out as well :)
By Norasmom
Tue, 08/21/2012 - 3:11pm
Tue, 08/21/2012 - 3:11pm
Replies
June is great! I think it flows nicely with your last name and goes well with Nora.
Since nearly all your choices for the first name are one syllable, I'd suggest a longer name for the middle. Some options:
Penelope
Bryony
Fiona
Your names are all so good, it's hard to pick. I don't think you could go wrong with any of them.
Alice seems like it'd be good if you wanted to do a mix & match approach with your current list. Alice Pearl, Alice June, Alice Jane are all lovely (I especially love Alice Jane), or Jane Alice, June Alice and Blythe Alice.
For some other middle names suggestions, Constance, Elizabeth (just suggested by my 9 year old!), Amelia, Evelyn, Miriam, Augusta, Florence, Josephine. I'll also second Fiona--Alice Fiona would be wonderful!
Of those, I favor Alice first, with Jane being a close second, followed by June, Pearl, & Blythe.
My favorites are Jane and Alice as well.
Another vote for Alice and Jane. (Toss a coin for which one's the middle name?)
Blythe is only OK for me, for no real reason. June is nice, but you'll forever get questions about her birthdate (or people will wonder and/or assume, without getting up the nerve to ask); Jane is just as good, but without the birthday thing. Pearl is the daughter in The Scarlet Letter, which may not be much of an issue for most, but it was required reading... It rhymes with 'girl', so it lends itself to use in endearments ("my little pearl"); dunno if that makes a difference one way or the other. Alice I love, both for sound and for associations (personal as well as pop cultural).
To go with N0ra Frances, I think I'd pick Jane Alice. That way both girls have four-letter given names. Plus, JAY is kinda fun as initials go.
Those are all very nice names! My far and away favorite is Blythe, because it's still so very different and unexpected; it also has a fantastic meaning (happy!), and it's orthographically so cool—it will look beautiful in a signature. My second favorite is probably Jane, largely because I like the assonance of Jane Y—l. It sounds like a name that would belong to *someone*, if that makes sense. Alice is perfectly nice and pleasant, and a very good match for Nora. I agree with NotAGuestAnymore that as the only two-syllable name, it works well in combination with any of the others (if you go with Alice, my vote is for Alice Blythe!) June and Pearl lag a bit behind the others for me, though I'm not sure I can articulate exactly why. My first association with June is my aunt's elderly neighbor who loves gardening. I don't know any Pearls, so don't have strong associations there, but I think maybe it's that unfashionable -url sound that I'm not the biggest fan of. It's a pretty-looking word, though, so I would like it better in the middle slot (since you see middle names written more than you hear them spoken).
Oh good, another Blythe fan! (And I agree with all the reasons why!)
I really like all your options so I dont' think you can go wrong.
I'm not sure I'm much help but here are my thoughts on each name.
Alice is probably the most obvious pick for a sister to Nora. I really like it and it pairs well with your surname. It gives the sibset a slightly sweet but on-trend feel.
Jane is lovely and makes the sibset feel slightly more retro to me. My only concern is that Jane is a little plain next to the sweetness of Nora.
June would be my preference over jane. It has a similar vibe but is a little more interesting. I think it sounds great with Nora and I don't think the birth month question will come up that often.
Blythe is the most unexpected of the choices. I really like it and it gives Nora more character. I think if you were to have a third child this would give you the most scope for picking a name that 'goes' (should that matter to you). The other options are more style defining, to me at least! Blythe is also slight quirky, which I see as a positive.
Pearl I also really like. I feel like Pearl and Nora are a sweet pair but this combo is moving towards being a little old-fashioned chic/hipster. I don't mean that in a bad way at all, just that the two names together are more hipsterish than say Nora and Alice or Nora and Jane.
I'm not sure I could pick one over any of the others, they are all great names, and I think they are all fine with your surname. I like the option of using Alice as a middle if you don't go with it as a first, it seems to flow the best.
Other possible middle names: Penelope, Mabel, Josephine, Jocelyn, Lucinda, Abigail, Hazel, Margaret
I agree with Chimu!
My vote is for Blythe! I think it's charming, has a lovely meaning, and works well with Nora without keeping the sibset in the "super sweet, antique" category (not that there is anything wrong with that category).
My second choice is a tie between June and Pearl. I grew up with both an April and a May, and as far as I know, the month association was not a problem.
Although I think Jane is pretty and I like it as a MN (which I know is trending right now), as a first name it lacks a certain *umph* in my opinion. I know June is really similar, but for whatever reason, I'm crushing on it at the moment.
Alice is also adorable, but I've met a lot of them over the past two years, so it's lost some appeal for me personally. If you don't know many little Alice's, or are simply in love with the name, I say go for it!
There's not a bad choice in the bunch!
MN suggestions:
I'm with the Jane-June-Alice camp, to me those are all wonderful combos with Nora. Alice would be a favorite of mine if we have another girl except it doesn't sound great with my last name, so I would vote for that so that another Nora can have a sister Alice! Then again, June Alice is really standing out to me!
But ya, you can't go wrong. So June Alice is my favorite followed by Alice Jane.
As others have noted, you really can't go wrong here.
I think June gets my pick.
It's a darling name, pefectly sweet, but perfectly suited to an adult as well and charming with Nora.
My first instinct was Jane, for much the same reasons, but it does seem a tad more predictable, for lack of a better word, and with the way I'm saying your ln in my head it's a bit harsh with the repeated long a sound. I could still get behind it, though!
Pearl is darling, but for me runs together the teensiest bit with your ln. I'd ignore it if you didn't have this whole list of other,darling options.
Alice is my second choice. It's got all the vintage charm of Nora, and seems like a natural match. I'm sure it's quite in style now, but I only know of one. She has a sister called R@by, and I just love hearing their names together.
Blythe is a name I like the idea of, but the reality is that I just don't love the sound. I also wonder if it doesn't upstage Nora a bit?
I think either June Alice or Alice Pearl would be lovely. Again, though, you really can't go wrong. Is Nora old enough to have an opinion? I remember someone on here ultimately picked the one they liked the most when they heard the older sib say it.
I vote for Alice. I love the names June, Jane and Pearl as well, but I think Alice sounds best with your last name.
I agree that Alice sounds best with (Y/B)agel.
Jane (Y/B)agel is a bit heavy in the /ay/ sound.
June (Y/B)agel is a little confusing sounding to me. Something about the oo-ay vowel sounds, as well as the fact that Y last name and J first name makes me want to pronounce the J of the first name like a Y. Does that make any sense? No, but there it is.
With Pearl, the L ending of first and last names kind bugs me a tiny bit. Whereas with Alice, with the L internal to the name, it's a lovely echo.
Clearly, I'm being super picky, and realize my tastes may be idiosynchratic. Any of these, really, would be great. But I agree that Alice is best.
WelI, I also don't like the sound of Pearl with the last name.
Alice is my top fave for sound and style, but Jane takes 2nd place.
It's so funny to hear the suggestion of June Alice.
I'm an Allyson who was named after the 1940's - 50's actress June Allyson (I have a love/hate relationship with the letter "y". It's been my identity for the last 30 some odd years, but no one ever spelled my name right), so naturally that's all I see.
When I look at the name objectively, it's lovely... but really, I can't look at it objectively.
And it's unfortunate because you know what most younger people's association with June Allyson is, right?
"Because you've got a lot of living to do!"
I know! My mom fell in love with the 1949 version of Little Women (O how I wish she had named me Josephine!) hence the bright idea for Allyson was born. Growing up my namesake was the Depends lady. Sigh...
Thank you for all your insights! I'm glad to hear that we have a good list of names. Baby is still baking for now so we still have some time to make a finally decision! I'll let you all know what we decide :)
I agree with the others insofar as all your potential names here are awesome, both alone and with big sis Nora, so you really can't go wrong.
Personally, June and Pearl are my very favorite names on your list, in that order, so I would go with one of those. On the other hand, I think Alice sounds the best with your surname (mainly due to the 2 syllable flow), and has a very pleasant, classic feel with Nora, so that would be a nice choice as well. Although I love Jane in theory, and would love to meet a little Jane, it has always felt just a bit too plain/simple for me to actually pick myself. Blythe is possibly my least favorite of the bunch, despite the happy meaning. I have no good reason for this, but here goes--my first association with the name is Blythe Danner, which is certainly not a bad one, but which makes it feel slightly dated to me since I think of her largely in conjunction with her 1970s/80s career (so I might group it stylistically in that sense with Farrah or Brooke). On the other hand, while I prefer crisp names over frilly ones, Blythe seems a bit bumpy to me, mostly because of the BL- combination, and also because I say the last -TH as a hard sound (as in "the"), rather than the soft TH sound which is much more typical in names (Theodore, etc.). The more I say the name now, though, the more I like it (and I do quite like how it looks when written), so I could easily get past these idiosyncratic issues and join the Blythe fan club, especially if I knew a sweet little girl with that name.
As for middle names, I agree that something 3 syllables or longer would be an ideal choice with any of these, so I would sign on to suggestions like Eloise, Eleanor, Josephine, Theodora, Susannah, Rosamond, Rosalind, Philippa, Violet, Vivian, Eliza, Sylvia, Beatrix, Anthea, Virginia, etc. Maybe June Eloise Y. or Pearl Josephine Y., for example.
Anyway, good luck! Really, you have all excellent choices there, so just go with your heart and it will be the right name for your sweet little girl!
I like Alice!
Alice Louise?