Hi all, and sorry for the long message!
I am pregnant with our second boy and we are really struggling with name ideas… Husband and I are both French, living in Scotland with no intention to leave, so our sons will likely be raised here, but we regularly go to France to visit family and friends, so we need a name that works in both languages. Four our first son, we instantly loved Leo. It works in most European languages, pronounced fairly similarly in English and French, soft sounding… but for our second one we feel like we have exhausted all the forum threads! We keep turning around the same names, and most names we like are already taken by close friends/relatives (think Theo, Noah, Paul etc.)
We have two names we really like, but they are more French than broadly European and I am worried this would just mean he would have to spell/repeat his name all the time. May I have your opinion on:
- Timothée (we much prefer it to Timothy, which we feel is a bit old fashion now in the UK). The American actor Timothée Chalamet is becoming quite popular so it may help making the French version of the name be more known here too… also he could use Tim but I feel Tim is a bit old fashion too. What do you think?
- Gael, which is pronounced Gah-el. It is our favourite choice, and people would instantly know how to pronounce or spell it in France but I am worried it will be read as Gail (one syllable) all the time here. As Gail is clearly a feminine name, it could cause teasing at school… but am I pushing it? Would it actually be ok? My name is very French, but sounds like a more English name and people always get my name wrong (like even in emails, people respond and ‘correct’ my name like I couldn’t spell my own name). It’s quite annoying so not sure I want to inflict that to my son… but we love the name so much!
our other ideas are Nathanael, Bastian, and Zachary but we are not 100% convinced yet. We are not big fans of William, Harry, Charlie, Jack or other names in the top 100… either already taken by close friends or family or we just don’t like them.
any help would be much appreciated!! We had a name for a girl before I got pregnant with our first son… it would have been much easier 😆