How did you pick your child's middle name?

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I'm a little uncertain about how to choose a middle name for our baby due this summer.
I love the name Violet which happens to be the name of one of our grandmothers but I worry (and I'm aware this is likely not going to happen at all but hello pregnancy anxiety ) that family members may be secretly offended if we use a family name from the other side of the family and not their side (call me ridiculous please but my mum can be slightly weird when it comes to stuff like this!!)
We giving our baby 2 middle names but the two we like don't really go together at all - they sound weird in either order.
Alternatively we could just go for a name we like that is not a family name but I think it's quite nice for a middle name to have some meaning to it.
Thoughts? Suggestions? How did you choose a middle name for your children? Is it odd to give 2 middle names?

One has his grandfather’s name but the others have the names of protagonists from our favourite books

My dd has my Mum's first name as her middle name (which coincidentally was my grandma's name and dh's grandma's name). My ds has my fil's middle name as his middle name.

DD has a name we both liked
DD2 shares a middle name with cousin
DS was named after his grandfather although that was ‘luck’ as neither is knew and we were asked to use the other GF name as a middle name. It works well.

for middle names my eldest boy has my dad’s name, my middle boy has my brother’s name, and my daughter has my sister’s name. i’m due another girl and we’re planning to use my mum’s and my boyfriend mum’s names as middle names this time. we all tend to use each other’s names in my family. my niece has my name and i have my aunt’s.

DD - After my husbands grandma
DC2 will be my great grandmas name, or my grandads middle name

I looked at the family tree and picked names I actually liked. I'm not bothered about making it "fair" on either side of the family. The men in my husbands family all have really goofy names like Melvin and Walter so I wouldnt have used those.

Ds2 and DD have two middle names one from each side of the family but because we liked them not out of obligation to keep it even

Both DC have two middle names, one from each side.
I did want to use one of my Grandma's but they were Edna & Hilda, & as a friend of mine said 'some names are meant to die out...' So we went with GMIL & my Mum's middle name.

We just picked names we liked, no family connection. DD1 has a quite classic, conventional first name and her middle name is a bit more unusual. DD2 has a slightly more unusual first name so we gave her a more traditional middle name. It's nice to have a choice if you grow up not liking your first name.

DS has two middle names, both family names, one from each side. There were reasons why we picked the ones we did.

We thought we'd done OK with one from both sides, but my dad chose to be an arse about us not having picked any name from "his" family (the one I chose from my side was from my mum's family). But most of us generally always have at least one relative standing ready to be an arse, about any given event or decision :-) As you can't please everyone, I strongly believe when picking your baby's name(s), your job is therefore to please yourself. If that means a family name, OP, use the family name!

DS got my dead father's name. That was always the deal.
DD, got a similar version of my middle name - my grandmother was French and I have her name but I thought it might be funny us both having the same, so I chose something very similar.

My elder daughter's middle name is my mother's name - and the name of my favourite Jane Austen heroine.

My younger daughter's name is a similar style name. It's also my sister's middle name, my oldest friend's name, and the name of another Jane Austen heroine.

I thought about using one of my mother in law's names, but they're both very dated and I don't like them.

DS has my grandads name for his middle name. He was the most positive male influence in my life. If my in-laws are offended they haven't said anything.

We were going to use DH a grandpas name - who roared his head off laughing (it’s not the thing to do where he is from) before he realise we weren’t kidding, so we went with Plan B - a name we both liked and went with the first name (no brainer - after my late, great dad).

It was done at short notice! We got a letter from the registry office telling us we had 3 days left to register. My husband came up with a slightly unusual (but not freakish) name, that actually fitted well. So off I went. Came home and he was very excited about sneaking a football team reference past me! However, he hadn't - he'd got the name of the stand at his team's ground wrong so the name isn't anything to do with that team. How I laughed!

DH's mum's name as she died a few years ago and never got to meet her first grandchild It's also the same name as my best friend's mum, who I was very close to, who passed away a couple of years ago too.

2 middle names for ours, one from mine and one from dh’s family.
Just check they don’t spell out a real word with the initials.
Middle names are rarely used so don’t worry about them ‘going together’ if they are otherwise nice and meaningful to you.

I vetoed DH's choice of first name, which was almost a tradition in his family as too many already had it both sides of family, so let him choose within reason.

From the name of the ward I was on, they were really kind to all of us and it felt right

DD's first middle name is her late grandmother's name. If my mother was offended, she never mentioned it. Second middle name is my surname. (in my country traditionally you get both mother and father surnames but I didn't want to double-barrel).

Used my late Dad's name. I wanted to honour my Dad who never got to meet his grandchild. Everyone on both sides of the family was very nice about it, but even if they hadn't been nice about it, I wouldn't have given a shit. Our child, our choice....

My little one was due to have my grandmas name, but she was rather late, born in a different month to when she was due to be and I liked her birth stone as a middle name.

Her middle name was originally going to be her first name, which is after a grandmother, but then somebody suggested my great grandmothers middle name which I loved more so we demoted the original to a middle name. Her fathers surname is also a middle name. We later found out the grandmother and great grandmothers middle names are from my great great grandmothers full name. So for instance
GG grandmother Joan Ruth
G grandmother Susan Joan
Grandmother Wilma Ruth
My baby Joan Ruth
We never even knew my gg grandmothers name until I was actually in labour!

DD1 - late paternal and maternal great grandmothers

DD2 - a close friend of mine who passed away and her other late maternal great grandmother

So DD2 has not one but two from the same ‘side’. DH was given months to come up with something from his ‘side’ but in the end he conceded that these two names were both very important to me and that since he didn’t have anything that he cared about having more, that was the way it should be. Which was lovely.

And someone has made a very good point upthread - they have his surname anyway!!

Ds has 2 middle names, one is my dad's first name and the other is my exh's grandparents surname.

I always think that if baby has just one surname from one side of the family (often the father's, could be the mother's though), they should have a middle name from the other side of the family. Of course if there are two middle names you can have both.

My DS has two surnames (mine and DH's) and we will do the same for DC2. Because of this we wanted just one middle name (actually DH didn't want one at all but I won that debate!) We gave DS a middle name from my family, after my DGF who died before he was born. So DC2 will have a middle name from DH's family, hopefully after a grandparent who he is very close to, but it depends whether baby is a boy or girl!

In answer to your dilemma, I think you should just choose the names that are most meaningful to the two of you and/or that you like the most - don't worry too much about how they sound or look together (unless the initials spell a swear word or something) because middle names are hardly ever used anyway.