Well…Well…Wellington!! Call Now!!
(Sorry, just reminds me of an ad jingle of a local window company.)
Abraham called Abe is surely classic and cute… but… it just sounds like ‘babe’ to me. And everyone I know calls their SO ‘babe’.
I adore the name Emil, myself. Classic in many languages, uncommon in America (quite common in much of Europe), and doesn’t lend itself to dumb nicknames. Edmund is a cool name too, with no Rs.
My grandmother, aunt, and second to youngest cousin all changed their first names before they turned 20. It goes more smoothly than you’d think.
What’s the girl’s name you have picked out?
How about my personal favorite - Mathias?
He can be a Matt, or, if that’s too common - Mathias.
This is an old fashioned German/Catholic name -
Nowadays, those would be the unique choices.
Well, we have a girl’s name we love (well, I love it, he thinks it’s alright. And that’s good enough. He’s not obsessed with names the way I am, as a writer.)
Guinevere Cecilia Ann J****
I plan on calling her Ginny when she’s young, but if she wants to go by Gwen, Eve, Evie or whatever when she’s older, she has the flexibility to chose her own nickname that suits her personality. Cecilia and Ann are both family names; Ann is found on both sides (as in his and mine) and Cecilia is very important to me and my sister.
We plan on having one naturally (if my PCOS works with me … but that’s another thread) and adopting one. We believe very strongly in adoption (his father was adopted and my cousin/my parents’ godson–same person–were adopted). Hopefully we’ll be able to have “one of each” then.
I went through the past few years of class lists, and here are the boys’ names that I found that don’t have r’s in them. Some of them I think go well with Raymond, especially Owen, but my opinion is obviously worth very little here.
Adam
Allan
Anthony
Benjamin
Daniel
David
Dominic
Donald
James
Jason
Joel
John
Jonathan
Joseph
Joshua
Julian
Justin
Kevin
Lee
Louis
Luke
Matthew
Michael
Nicolas
Noel
Owen
Paul
Quentin
Samuel
Scott
Sean
Simon
Stanley
Stephen
Timothy
Todd
Vincent
Gilgamesh
Why do you seem to think your opinion matters so little? I value all opinions; I came here asking for opinions.
However, I did want uncommon names, and a good portion of your list consists of rather common names (Adam, Allan, Anthony, Benjamin, Daniel, David, James, Jason, John, Jonathan, Joseph, Joshua, Justin, Kevin, Luke, Matthew, Michael, Nicolas, Paul, Samuel, Sean). I am looking for something older, so names like Stanley, Vincent, and Julian work. Thank you for your input.
All his classmates will call him Emily. In fact, he’ll go through life with people seeing his name and thinking he’s a girl whose name was misspelled.
And this is why you don’t discuss names before the baby’s born!
This is why I am discussing names before I’m pregnant or have any intention of getting pregnant.
I do love ‘Emil’ but if I have a son he is going to be named good, old, boring, common ‘William’ - after my dead brother, as has been the plan since I was 6 or so.
I love William. I’ve wanted to name my kid William for a while (after Shakespeare), but I really, really, really, hate the idea of Billy Ray. Hate it. And Raymond is non-negotiable.
Nobody uses the nick name Billy these days, it’s Will or William. The only Billys I know are over 40. And no one calls a kid by both his first and middle names any more either. As parents, you set the nickname your kid goes by. So if you like, William Raymond, then use it.
At least not with people that are going to interact with your kid once its here. People are really blunt and open about criticizing baby names if the kids not around. But if the baby’s right there where they can see it, they’ll just accept the name and it will soon become the name for that kid. Parents have the right to pick the name they believe is best for the kid…no one else has that right.
Only until the kid’s first day in kindergarten. The mother of one of my classmates (6th-12th grades) got terribly angry whenever one of us called their house and forgot to ask for him by firstname, using his class-given nickname instead. It’s not our fault that she’d given him the name that’s been the most common one in our area for the last 3 centuries!
Why not call him Raymond William then? I think that sounds great, and you get both names you like.
I think William is one of those names where every nickname is so well-known and widely used that people will respect whatever he is usually called - but I would choose a nickname ahead of time rather than expecting everyone to call him ‘William’. Elizabeth is another one of these names - people are lazy, call her Beth or Ellie to be proactive if you hate ‘Liz’!
I know several Williams under age 10 and no one ever calls Billy, Liam or Will one of the other nicknames (or William, unless it’s their mom). I also don’t think you’ll have to worry about anyone ever knowing your kid’s middle name, much less incorporating it into a nickname. Unless you live in a mountain village in West Virginia.
My future son will be called Will as I believe Shakespeare himself was. 
If you’re a big Shakespeare fan, why not use the name of a character from Shakespeare’s plays?