Our name choices don’t seem very liked

[Fritesky]

DH and I have just had our twin baby girls, they are 3 weeks old and we have named them Gigi and Lola. We love their names and put a lot of time into picking them. We are a Anglo-Franco-Italian family so tried really hard to pick names that everyone would be a fan of.
Since then we’ve told family, friends etc. our babies names and got lots of “oh are the nicknames” and “oh that’s interesting”, which I guess just makes me feel really crappy. We haven’t registered the girls yet so we could change the names, but I’m not sure if I want to. Their full names are Gigi Apolline and Lola Gabrielle.

What are your thoughts?

I've only read your posts not the whole thread but for what it's worth I think a lot of people are being ridiculous.

Personally my kids have longer names, 3 syllables each! But there's absolutely nothing wrong with Lola (or Lila) or Gigi.

Perfectly good names. Less nicknamey than Ellie, Katie, Evie, Archie as you've said yourself.

Plus you're picking names to suit your international background not just what some people in the UK think. I would ignore the comments about strippers and nicknames and feel confident in your choices.

Ae they showgirls?

Tbf it's not really relevant if other children don't think those names are weird, people don't interact only with people of their exact age.
I'm afraid if I were interviewing someone called Khaleesi I would have to actively fight my subconscious bias against such a stupid name. I would of course remind myself that it's not the woman's fault that her parents decided to call her that and I hope I would set that aside in my own decision, but I would also be thinking "if we employ her what will our clients think of this name". Maybe that's all surmountable but it's a hurdle which I imagine most people won't want to create for their children.

Hmmm........Lola always reminds me of the transvestite subject of The Kinks song, and Lola Ferrari from Eurotrash days. Gigi gives me similar vibes.

Seriously, nobody under fifty is thinking 'showgirl' when they hear Lola, please don't let all the old fogies on here convince you otherwise! I would be amazed if even any of the other parents of your daughters contemporaries have ever heard the Barry Mannilow song, let alone that it would be their first thought on hearing the perfectly lovely name Lola.
When I think of the name I think of the singer Lola Young and the peer of the same name, or maybe I think of the lovely children's programme Charlie and Lola. Not that that matters, but please don't take the old-fashioned posters on this thread as a fair representative sample of people you will encounter in real life. Their reference points are so out-dated that they are hardly going to chime with those of yours and your children's contemporaries!
Also, what's wrong with being a showgirl? As a devoted Swiftie, I am very much in my showgirl era right now and loving it!
If anyone in real life ever was so crass as to make a crack about Copacabana or The Kinks I'd be tempted to give them a withering look and tell them that, of course, you had named your daughter after the character in Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, which they would obviously know if they weren't such a philistine!

My mums goddaughter is Gigi (not short for anything) and she is the most brilliant, strong, fierce woman (She's also an award winning lawyer for all those concerned) and she suits her name fabulously.
I nannied a Lola who is also freaking fabulous, strong, cool and effortlessly brilliant.

It doesn't matter what someone else thinks, YOU chose them for your daughters and you love them, if anyone has a problem or a dislike of their names well they don't have to worry themselves with seeing them do they.

My name is one of the most popular girls names in the uk for my age (think Sarah or Emma), its completely inoffensive and et its constantly bashed for being boring or too popular.

You are NEVER going to please everyone with your name choices so choose what you both want, they're lovely names and im sure suit them beautifully. Congratulations and welcome to the world Lola and Gigi!

Exactly, the world is not fair, and people are not always kind. Everyone has their own (conscious or unconscious) biases and we make our initial judgement about someone based on the things we can see and hear, including things like the clothes they wear, their accent and their name. It's incredibly unfair because children have no control over any of these things. But they will still be judged for them and placed into a certain mental category by everyone they meet. It's human nature and it's staggeringly naive to think that people won't still be doing this in 20 or 30 years' time.

There might be thousands of Evies and Rosies applying for jobs as heart surgeons and astronauts in 20 years' time. But that doesn't mean that Gigi would be perceived in the same way just because it's a two syllable name ending with an "ee" sound. If you want to know how people will perceive a particular name, you need to figure out what kind of people are calling their child this name. Because whatever social class they are, people will assume your child is too.

I prefer Lila to Lola. I also like full names with the option of nicknames, rather than putting a diminutive on a birth certificate. But those are my personal preferences.

I think that some posts on this thread are a bit ridiculous (e.g., the argument that these names wouldn’t suit a doctor or that an employer wouldn’t hire a woman with a certain name). But your strong responses seem to indicate that perhaps you have doubts about the names you’ve chosen after all? If so, that’s something to ponder.

You likely won’t change anyone’s mind here, and the associations people have with certain names can’t be changed either. I personally think changing Lola to Lila was a good call. But really, ignore everyone’s opinions, including mine! Enjoy your lovely little ones.

Didn't she end up having an affair?!
At any rate, you're obviously a lot more high brow than me 😂

Oh, it's opera, everybody ends up dying or having an affair, or having an affair then dying. It's an occupational hazard of being a female character in an opera.

Well yes, both names together are a bit, odd- given the image of both of them, but remember it’s a very short time in their lives that their names will be said as a pair.

Right now they are “the twins” but given most secondary schools aim to put twins in separate classes, it’s not a big part of their lives that the names will be said together.

Personally I would go for a “grown up” name that could be shortened to Gigi (or two names that both begin with G), but you don’t want to do that, so really you just need to accept by going for something a bit unusual, you’re going to get comments and that’s something you’ll get used to.

As for Lola - the only reason I can see to change it is that you clearly love Gigi as a name, so your other DD should have a name you /your DP feels equally as passionate about, and you seem a bit “meh” about Lola’s name.

FWIW OP I know 3 Gigi’s with no longer version of their name, all under 5.

1. My sister in law is the child’s nanny, they live in a massive townhouse in central London, the father is a solicitor at a top law firm, the mother works at a global think tank. They are very “old money”
2. Another goes to pre-school with my son in leafy south west London
3. The child of a girl I went to uni with who did her undergrad at Sorbonne in Paris and postgrad at UCL

I wouldn’t be worried about what “class” people associate Gigi with as all the ones I know are comfortably middle or upper middle class!
There is a Lola at my son’s pre-school and the only Lila I know is a Dutch girl in her teens.

I also believe there is a mum on TikTok who did a stay at home baby series who’s daughter is called Gigi and they very much give middle class vibes!

Great rock classic by the Kinks. Called "Lola."

Each to their own, but I personally find the idea of giving twins names starting with the same letter embarrassingly twee. You might as well go the whole hog and dress them in matching clothes and give them identical haircuts until they're old enough to move out and get the hell away from you so they can start to be their own people rather than one of a matching pair!

Yes, this for me too.
I met several Lolas in my stripping days.

Having said that, if you love the names, that is what is important. Others don't have to like them and they'll get used to them.

Weren't she Lolo? I do think of th kinks song though and I'm in my early forties.

You're absolutely right! I stand corrected. Still brought to mind Eurotrash and finally being allowed to watch it by my parents back in the day. I'm not sure it would work these days though. I seem to recall it usually featured the likes of naked Germans rising bicycles with socks on their noodles

Remember the first reaction to saying dd2 name to another mother at the hospital was a stunned silence. Eek. Her twins were called Ben and Tom so we were coming from very different places!

Wow calm down. I don't know how you got the massive leap from "I will judge your parents if they name you after a homicidal nutter from a tv series" to "I'm racist and hate the working class" 😂

I don’t like them at all - but if I knew you, I wouldn’t say anything.and if you did find out, I wouldn’t expect you to care about my opinion

Fwiw I didn't ask for your message to be deleted @Everlore, perhaps on reflection you realised it was a bit silly and you hadn't used your best reading comprehension and deleted it yourself. Either way I hope you warmed up before that massive stretch. I will defend my right to judge parents who give their kids stupid names, whether Khaleesi or Spongebob, (while trying my very best not to allow that to cloud my view of the unfortunately named individual) and I assure you I'm an equal opportunities judger - all races and classes are more than capable of giving out silly names.

Out of curiosity, as a self proclaimed judger. Would Gigi and Lila/Lola be names you judged, since that’s the topic at hand here?

I didn’t mean give them both a name beginning with G but the girl they want to know as Gigi - say Gabrielle Gina, it would work to make that Gigi. (If they don’t like any of the long names that would work for Gigi, like Georgina.)