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Baby names

Find baby name inspiration and advice on the Mumsnet Baby Names forum.

Baby girl name - sister for Calliope

103 replies

NamingBabies · 31/03/2021 12:19

We have a 2 year old called Calliope (pronounced like Cal-Eye-O-P, think similar to how Penelope ends!) who goes by Callie most of the time. We fell in love with the name when I was pregnant with her and found out at 16 weeks I was having a girl and from then on she was Calliope. Really easy decision to make and we never queried our decision.

Pregnant again now with a second little girl and finding it SO much harder to find a name to go with it! Before we heard Calliope we quite liked Willow and DH thinks we should go with that for a girl but I’m not sure the two names go together very well.

I did a little Google and (I assume because of the Greek connection) Ophelia came up as an option. I absolutely love it, and think it would be a perfect sibling match and similar to Calliope has the option to shorten it. DH is not so sure and is worried it would be shortened to FiFi which makes him think of a dog (and I secretly love!).

My name is reasonably unusual. Not anything that would shock you but it’s unusual in that I’ve never met anyone else with the same spelling as mine, and I was the only one in school with this name but it’s definitely not super ‘out there’. DH has a consistently ‘top 100’ boys name and is worried it may look odd if we go with two quite unusual names (I mean it’s a bit late now for Calliope but oh well!).

If you heard Calliope and Ophelia, would it sound negative to you? Any alternative names you could suggest?

OP posts:
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Starsandglitter · 31/03/2021 12:32

I think Calliope/Callie and Willow are fine together but Willow is very popular these days so I can see why you might not feel it’s the best choice. Ophelia is more common than you think so I don’t think it would be perceived as too ‘out there’ Are there any other shortenings you could go for that your DP prefers? I don’t love fifi and Ophelia is so beautiful, it would seem a shame not to actually call her that but that’s just personal preference. If I heard of siblings calliope and Ophelia, I’d probably think you were a bit posh (but would never dream of saying this in real life!) but they’re not desperately unusual. Callie and Fifi fit in with the general trend for girls names at the moment I think, lots of ie endings and nicknames type names.

LookAChicken · 31/03/2021 12:27

I'd think it a bit surprising if you had Calliope and Eve.
(I am thinking in terms of sibling fairness in number of syllables! But that's just me.)

The two names sound like they "go".

Katekeeper · 31/03/2021 12:21

I like it. Also how about Hebe?