International Names

[DanVanit]

Hi all,

DH and I are expecting twins, boy/girl. He is Swiss French and I am Danish (although lived in the UK most of my life). As part of DHs job we will have to move every 2-4 years, right now we are in Vancouver and likely will be here until 2026.
Likely places we will end up in the next 18 years include

• Paris
• Zurich
• Singapore
• Munich/Frankfurt

So mainly French/German/English speaking countries though Rome, Oslo, Brussels and Copenhagen are possible too.

His work have agreed to help fund the cost of English-Speaking international schools so the children will be going to them.

Here is the issue - We can't think of names we love but work internationally. We are hyphenated our surnames when we got married and that can be a tongue twister on its own and it's pretty long so simple and short wins for first name.

Here is our thoughts

For girl we really like Lara, Alma and Maya/Maja.
For boys we are struggling and find a lot of the international names quite bland.
But I do like Alex, Isak and Emil (though I'm not sure they work as well internationally).

Our surname is super long
Kristensen-Desrochers and already has pronunciation woes so no more confusing names is key!!
Most likely is we won't have more children so are thinking about giving them both grandparents names as middle names but worry it would be too long and wordy!!

Sorry posted too soon!!!

Any ideas of names that could work internationally with our long surname would be appreciated!!

I like Lara and Alma. For boys what about Leon or Roland?

Alex would work fine, not sure about the others.

for boys:
Tim
Thomas
Ben

Girls:
Emma
Eve
Sophie

Lara and Anton

Nina and Alex

Marcus/Markus

Kaspar/Caspar

Zara and Alex.

Alma and Felix

Your girls names are all nice, I love Maya the most out of them.

The boys names are all a bit meh I agree. What about Oscar/Oskar?

I have lived and worked internationally (see user name), and all the names you mention sound fine to me, though I would avoid the Maja spelling (see below). We had to think about this when we were naming our two DC, who were born in Japan.

My main focus was on avoiding any letters or sounds that are not used in most languages, or which sound very different, eg no names with a 'th', and I would possibly also avoid anything with a 'j', as that can be pronounced in very different ways in different languages. Short and simple is good.

But the main thing is going for a name you like. My name is one that does not work well in most places, but I just got used to responding to all the different mispronunciations and having to spell it out repeatedly. I still like my name and would not have changed it!

I think Royal or Biblical names work well across different countries.

Maria/Mary
Sofia/Sophie
Alessia
Anna
Beatrix
Lucia
Christina
Helena

Luke/Luca
Felip/Philip
George/Georgia
John/Johann
Karl/Carl
David

Our school is full of expats who come and go and there’s Max, Leo, Alex which come up a lot.

Choose a name.

Then Google the roots and then see how popular it is in various countries.

I know two little boys called "Alex" because of this.

Martin for a boy?

Zoe?
Anna?

Adam seems to work in many languages.
Anders?

What about Max? Works in a lot of languages and hard to mispronounce. I had three in a year 12 class once, all of different nationalities.

Anton, Boris, Mat(tias, hieu), Marc, Tomas (to guarantee pronuniciation), Chris(tof, ian, toph), Yoann/Johan, Eduard, Andreas, Robert, Martin, Alex, Sebastian, Sven, Ruben, Hugo. Alternately, English names are trendy here like Wesley, Finn, Sam, Liam, Owen, Levi and Noah and travel just fine. Think footballers from 2005!

I have an international name with the French spelling which is considered dated by MN but is so easy to travel with, I love it. I think the French spellings travel better Germanic, but given you're both Germanic origin, the German maybe makes more sense.

We live abroad and will likely move around more in the future. We did not chose international names or common names for the country that we live in for our children, and honestly it's absolutely fine. People learn how to say things quickly and there are no issues.

I'd start again. Make two shortlists of first names you love. Then apply the Will it work in ... ? test

I teach in a very multicultural area and find the following names cropping up regularly across different nationalities:-

Emma
Anna
Amelia
Olivia
Sophia/Sofia
Alice
Maya
Eva
Charlotte

David
Alex
Adam
Daniel
Thomas
Oscar
Arthur
Max
Jacob
Sebastian

Out of your choices, Alex would work well. Many of the ones I know have different variants as full names (Alexander, Alexandru, Alexei etc) but generally go by Alex.

Out of your girl's choices, Maya works but I much prefer Lara. Gorgeous name.

This probably isn’t for you since you already said you’re looking for international names however just putting it out there since I too used to think like that.

DH and I are from different backgrounds and we speak English and Arabic at home. We originally started thinking of names that work with both languages but in the end we thought, give them names we love that show their background. I think it’s good for children to have a strong identity and sense of who they are. We move every season since my husbands an athlete so it would be impossible trying to make their names work everywhere anyway. Let their friends learn to pronounce their French or Danish names. Worst case scenario they will have a different nickname in each country lol.

Alma and Henry
Alma and Max
Alma and Timon
Alma and Otto

Kristensen-Desrochers

Lara and Erik
Louise and Alex
Isaac and Amelie
Thomas and Anna
Zara and Peter
Charles and Ilsa
James and Lilou
Rose and Victor
Emma and John
Paul and Maya

Yes, use the grandparent's name.

Before reading the body of text, for a second I thought the list of cities were names you were considering

I think the names you're considering are lovely. I like Nina as well. For a boy, biblical names usually travel well. With your surname a shorter first name is probably best. Max for a boy?

Congratulations!

I like Lara and Alexander

I’d pile in all the middle names you want, they hardly get used.

Safe international -

Anna
Emma
Sarah
Julia
Maria
Helena
Joanna
Susanna
Elisabeth
Louise
Laura
Eve
Gabrielle
Caroline
Charlotte
Isabel
Victoria

Joseph
Michael
Nicholas
Stephen
Andrew
Adam
Matthew
Peter
Gabriel
Daniel
Samuel
Benjamin
William
James
Charles
Christopher
Jonathan
David
Philip
Thomas
Anthony

For boys I would say:

Nico
Alex
Leo

For girls:

Nina
Anna
Sofia

As “international” names

Much as I like all of those names - and I do! - I actually think it would be nice to pick one Swiss and one Dutch name. It will be part of their cultural identity and particularly nice to have something “fixed” that they can take with them if they are going to be citizens of the world with no strong roots to a particular location.

I say this as someone who was brought up in Scotland with an italian name. Yes the spelling/pronunciation thing is a thing but I’m also very attached to it!