My baby girl name thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I will give you my background first. I am a New Zealander with ancestors from England, Scotland,Denmark, Australia, New Zealand(Maori) and France. My wife is Cambodian.We have a baby boy named Darcy. My wife is pregnant. She is due in October. We do not know what sex the baby will be. I would like this thread just on girl names. I had another thread before on possible boy names.
My wife said I must think up names. But she has the final decision. She does not like Cambodian names. The baby will have a middle name starting with ‘R’ and a last name starting with ‘M’.
If you would like to contribute please go ahead. Please would you be so kind as to tell me why you like or dislike a name.
I do not like nicknames especially.
I like unusual names but I do not want my child to have a name that invites teasing. I do not think that an unusual name invites teasing just because it is unusual.
My wife and I have no problem with me being New Zealand, she being Cambodian and our baby having a name that is Japanese, Italian, French or any other ethnic origin.
Here is my list of names-

**Amarina **means - rain in one of the Aboriginal languages.
Arabella means - beautiful.
Belena is my creation- a mix of Belle and Helena.
Casami is my creation.
Cosette means victorious people.
Jenessa is a mix of Jennifer and Vanessa.
Mizumi is my creation. Mizu means water in Japanese, and Mi means beautiful.
Virginia means pure.

2

You are absolutely right there.

I had four kids, and named three of them (relatively) conventional middle-class English names. One though I made up, as a combination of two separate names (one English, one Welsh), and there is only ONE other person named that in the entire world, so yes, it is unusual indeed.

However, this kid was big enough to ‘wear’ the name. Nobody gave him any shit during his school years, because a) they just assumed that such a name was normal because all kids in prep think that all names are normal, and b) by the time he got to high-school everyone was so used to it they didn’t give a monkeys pistle anymore, and c) when we moved house and school, if anybody commented on his name, they’d incur not only HIS ire but the wrath of his older brother and sister…WIN! :smiley:

He’s 21 now, and LOVES his unique name, and I couldn’t possibly imagine him being anyname else.

3

May I suggest Lemonjello or Orangello?

4

Since you mentioned danish ancestors, I had a look at the top 50 danish names for baby girls born in 2007, and sorted out the ones that are also common in english (Emma was #2)

The result is:

Mathilde
Freja
Ida
Maja
Clara
Amalie
Signe
Frida
Nanna
Alma
Liva
Malou (this one baffles me. It’s at #31, and I’ve never seen it before. Does anyone recognize it?)
Mille
Astrid
Johanne
Karla
Tilde
Sille
Asta
Silje

These are all perfectly common danish names (exept for Malou), and they are all lovely to my ears. If you like any of then, I’ll be happy to dig up a history/meaning for you.

5

Thanks for contributing. I was looking for input about the names that I have chosen rather than any other suggestions. I have gone through many baby name books. I have considered hundreds, possibly thousands of names.

I keep seeing this “May I suggest Lemonjello or Orangello?” I presume it is some lame attempt at humour. But it is not funny. Please do not threadshit here. I suppose that will generate the usual response, but I thought I would try.

I put these baby name threads here because I expect intelligent replies. Do not get me started about the parenting message boards.

6

Belena makes me think ofBelenos the ancient Celtic god (more specifically, Asterix books “By Belenos! By Toutatis!”

Casami doesn’t have an obvious pronunciation for me - is it CAH-sa-mee or cas-SAH-mee? I think unusual names should have obvious spellings and pronunciations to make it easier on the owner.

On a purely aesthetic level, I think Aramina, Arabella and Mizumi are the prettiest

7

CAH -sa-mee or CAR SAR MEE

8

Malou Aamund. Danish politician, probably more known for dating the crown prince back in the nineties. Not common in my age group though.

From the list of names in the OP, the only one I like is Virginia. Imho it’s a lovely name and the others just seem silly to my “living in a country with strict rules on what you can name a child” eyes.

9

Seriously, blinking, if you want dinkum replies to a baby-name thread, you’re probably better-off on a parenting MB.

Asking the SDMB for intelligent replies to such a topic is akin to pissing in the wind, so to speak. :smiley:

You’ll get smartarse, you’ll get debate, you’ll get ridicule and you’ll get the odd poster who thinks that the name you’ve chosen is just wonderful. But they’re ODD, remember.

Why don’t you just do what most parents do and pick a couple of names you like, wait until the baby is born, then chuck a dart at the name choices…VOILA!

Simple: saves a lot of shit here, really. :cool:

10

If there’s ONE name likely to lead to incessant teasing, it’s got to be the one starting with the word “Virgin”

11

If you name the child something unusual, you may run into people who can’t pronounce it. Of course, if they take the time they can learn to pronounce it but many won’t take the time and the child grows up with people constantly mispronouncing their name. Ditto on spelling, though yours look pretty phonetic.

Amarina means - rain in one of the Aboriginal languages. [I like]
Arabella means - beautiful. [Some may read it as Arab + ella, which you may or may not like]
Belena is my creation- a mix of Belle and Helena. [Belen/Belem are common Spanish names]
Casami is my creation. [I don’t like]
Cosette means victorious people. [It’s ok]
Jenessa is a mix of Jennifer and Vanessa. [Sounds black, FWIW]
Mizumi is my creation. Mizu means water in Japanese, and Mi means beautiful. [I like]
Virginia means pure. [Old-fashioned but a classic. Potential for teasing. Ginny for short.]

12

***Amarina means - rain in one of the Aboriginal languages.
While I like this name, I have to wonder how well it works with the R middle name and the M middle name. Does it sound like a melodic repetition, or a stammer?
*
Arabella means - beautiful.
I like this one.

Belena is my creation- a mix of Belle and Helena.
My mind immediately went to whales’ baleen. The name itself “sounds” fat and awkward to my ears, which is odd, because both Belle and Helena sound aristocratic, slender and elegant.

Casami is my creation.
Sounds like a delicious lunch sausage.

Cosette means victorious people.
Despite the immediate Les Mis connection, I like Cosette a lot.

Jenessa is a mix of Jennifer and Vanessa.
Meh. Not terrible. Not great, but not terrible. I like it better spelled Janessa.

Mizumi is my creation. Mizu means water in Japanese, and Mi means beautiful.
Gorgeous. I love it. Despite being something you made up, it sounds like it has a history behind it. I don’t like a lot of obviously newly made up names, but this one sounds exotic and beautiful, and that I do like. You might just want to check with a few Japanese speakers that it doesn’t actually mean something rude or vulgar, however. You don’t want to end up inadvertantly naming your daughter the Japanese equivalent of “Golden Showers” or something! :eek:

Virginia means pure.
No, “Virginia” means dour faced British schoolgirl. :stuck_out_tongue:
I hope this was the kind of feedback you’re looking for. At the end of the day (Ha! Cosette!) there’s always going to be someone who hates the name you pick, though. My suggestion is to take care with the obvious pitfalls (my best friend growing up was named April Fuller - looks okay in writing, but when you say it out loud, April 1st becomes a year 'round gag.) and hang everyone’s opinion at the end. Choose what you like - you’re the one who’s going to be saying and hearing it most for the next 18 years. And names, despite what some people would have you believe, are changeable (at least in the US, I guess I can’t be sure about Cambodia.) If she really hates it, or you really hate it, there are (probably) ways to take on a new name, either formally or informally.

13

Cosette was on my short list for our daughter, Brainiac4 nixed it. I do know another Cosette (niece of a friend). In retrospect, “ette” names are a slightly more serious version of “ie” names. i.e. Being named Anne and being called Nancy gives you a “CEO” frist name to fall back on. Being named Nancy leaves you as six forever. “ette” has that same infantalization factor to it - not to the same extent.

Belena sounds like a morning cocktail of peach juice and champagne to me.

I like Arabella a lot, but you may want to check on how you feel about its close cousin, Isabella, and Isabella’s sister Isabelle. Isabelle went through a popularity phase in the U.S. a few years back, and I think the names are similar enough that people meeting your daughter for the second time after a three month break are going to say “Isabelle, right?” And some of them will persist.

14

Oh, take some time to consider nicknames.

Arabella is going to be Belle, Ari, Bella… and to some extent you may not be able to choose which nickname she decides to pick up. I do not have an Elizabeth because while I like Beth and Eliza, I cannot stand Liz. If there were any way to be assured my daughter would never be called Liz (or the worse, to my ears, Lizzie), she’d be an Elizabeth.

15

Lemonjello and Orangello are referring to an urban legend that is popular in the US, not actual suggestions of names. I’m sure it isn’t meant to be threadshitting, simply a way of poking gentle fun at the baby naming process.

As far as the names you have listed here I think everything but Jenessa are all beautiful options. Jenessa sounds to my ears to have a lower class/trailer park ring to it for whatever reason. I think as far as pairing names is concerned the combination of Darcy and Virginia or Darcy and Cosette sound good together (you know, for when you are signing family holiday cards and such :))

16

My coworker’s two-year-old is named Arabella…I like it, though I do worry a bit about the Arab Ella possibility when she gets into school.

17

YOu have a son named Darcy so how can you have a little girl that is anything but Elizabeth Bennett?
:dubious:
(You could call her Eliza.)

18

Heh. I was thinking Bennet[t] which means “blessed” seems to be a nice unisex name :slight_smile:

How do you pronounce Cosette? I’ve seen it written, but never heard anyone say it. Co as in cozy or Co as in cost? One of the possibilities seems like it would sound a lot like corset minus the r.

Of the rest of the list, I like Jenessa best. It’s pretty. On the other hand, I also like Jennica, Devin, and Kylie for girls so my taste might be questionable.

19

Of your list so far, I like Arabella, Cosette and Mizumi. I tend to give characters names I like, so thinking of women characters I named:

Maura
Laurel
Brooke
Hope
Eleanor

Annabelle, I like, too.

20

I’m pretty sure “mizumi” is already a Japanese word. Might want to check with the Japan Dopers.