Italian/English names

[chewbacca83]

I'm married to an Italian and we have our first baby due in October. We have a few boys and girls names but would love any more suggestions/opinions. They need to work in both languages i.e. phonetical. Some boys italian names sound like girls names in the UK. I.e. Gabrielle, Andrea

Girls: Vanessa, Francesca, Mary/Maria, Sofia
Boys: Matteo, Massimo (Max), Noah.
Thanks!

We are in the same situation, except living in Italy, whereas I think you might be based in the UK.

You've had some lovely suggestions but I'd avoid names starting with Gi as ime English speakers often pronounce the 'i', and something like Cesare will defintely get butchered! Lots of Italian names that sound nice to British ears are very very old-fashioned for Italians, or have very strong regional associations (e.g. Ciro), but if your husband is Italian you should be able to avoid those issues - or you might not care if you live in the UK.

Matteo and Sofia are super popular for Italian babies, Massimo is very nice. I love Lorenzo as a name with a similar feel to Leonardo, also Leandro. Tommaso and Alessandro work in English with obvious English nn. Maria is classic though I might assume you were fairly Catholic. Italians might say 'marry' instead of Mary, though they'd probably just automatically Italianise it to Maria (this happens constantly with my name). Francesca is beautiful and gives a choice of nn too. Lucia is 'Lucheea', I think it's easy enough once you know but people would probably need telling the first time.

Recently born babies I know with easily pronouncable names are Valentina, Eleonora, Ginevra, Greta, Frida and Viola, and Pietro, Edoardo and Federico.

I love Lucia

Also like Gabriella and Stefania

I like Noemi but the Noemi I know does get mistaken for Naomi a lot which is probably highly irritating. Kids are fine, it’s adults that get it wrong!

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!