My god we might actually have a name!!

[Whoknewitcouldbeso]

So I'm 20 weeks, already have DS and am carrying another boy. My DP and I hardly agree on many names at all but do have a few.

Arthur
Alexander
Nicholas
Nathaniel
Christian.

I like the names above but am aware that the easily abbreviated names will always be NNs. Alex, Nick, Nat and Chris. Because I'm
Not sure how much I love the shortened versions I'm hesitant and Arthur is cute but I'm not sure.

However today we stumbled across Elliott and really liked it. There is no obvious NN though I'm read El and Eli seem to be used. It has French lineage apparently like DS1s name so I guess there is some consistency there.

One problem is that we were using my surname as the middle name for DS as it can be a forename as well as a surname. We were going to do the same for DS2 but Elliot doesn't work with my surname as a middle name whatsoever sadly. It's not a deal breaker just missing that continuity that would have been nice.

What about using your Mum's maiden name instead? So, same idea but different name?

Love Elliot and I agree with above comments that Elliot Ellis is totally fine. It sounds kind of quirky to me, in a good way. I just don't think middle names need to 'go' with first names since we rarely use them. (Our son ended up with Archer Fraser Surname because we didn't want to give up on the family name of Fraser - even though it rhymes! Some people said no to it - but now it just works as his name).
Much prefer Elliot, Arthur, Nathaniel (all v cool) to Christopher and Nicholas. Just very personal opinion obviously. While totally inoffensive as names, to me Nick and Chris were just the names of every other boy in my year group at school and so I can only see them as rather dated (boring?) names of the 1980's and 90's. Alexander/Alex meanwhile is classic and timeless.