I am expecting and we haven't found out if it's a boy or a girl. This is likely to be our first and last child as I had fertility issues and this baby was a miracle really.
We are Jewish (reform) and are planning to send the baby to Jewish nursery and probably jewish primary school (perhaps even jewish secondary school as most kids from that primary school go onto to jewish secondary school). So we want a name that is jewish but dh also wants to honour his German great grandfather /grandmother (his mum was a convert).. I am also of east Asian heritage (convert) so baby would also have a Chinese name.. DH has a very israeli sounding name (even though he has never lived in israel) and has suffered antisemitism as a result We don't know what the situation would be like in 20 years, I suppose if it is bad when the baby is an adult, he or she can drop the Chinese or Jewish names so having a German first name also works.
This works very nicely for a girl, as his late grandma was called elise. Elise Dalia has a nice ring to it.
For a boy I am not as convinced, his grandpa and great grandpa have names like Kurt, Hermann which were popular German names. I am not sure I want to send a child to Jewish school with the same name as Hermann goring. We could call him after dh's great great grandpa (Karl) but we know almost nothing of the man.
So the boy's name would be:
Kurt Raphael
Hermann Raphael
Dh had this idea of using the French version of Hermann
Armand Raphael
I don't think it's nice and am tempted to just call the baby boy Raphael and leave it at that but at the same time it would be nice to honour DH's grandpa (or great grandpa). He is 94 and this would probably be the last great grandchild that he sees. Dh has a very close relationship with him.. I think Kurt isn't too terrible a name (dh's grandpa idolised his father), but many mumsnetters seemed to disagree.
What do you all think.