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?

Don’t like to be mean about names but have to agree about the ladies of the night vibes. Not sure either sound great for say a surgeon or a lawyer. Gigi is a cute nickname.

Copacabaaaaaahhhna duh de duh her name was……..

I LOVE Gabrielle & Gigi

I think they’re lovely. Don’t try to please other people- you can’t please everyone. As long as you and your DH love them and are happy with them.

I have a Russian friend who knows a LOT of Lola’s - I think it’s quite a hard sounding name, it’s not pretty at all. Gigi is a bit cutesy. It’s not what I’d choose for a first name but it’s ok as a nickname.

I think it’s rude of your friends and family to say they don’t like the names. I know I’ve said above I don’t, but it’s a forum and you did ask! At the end of the day it’s your choice, if you like them then keep them. You’ve chosen beautiful middle names, but perhaps that highlights why the first names aren’t great?

I rescued a cat called Lola. I immediately changed it as Lola always brought to mind a stripper.

I don't care for either name. My immediate associations with Lola are the songs referenced above. Gigi sounds like a diminutive to me, not a full name.

But who cares what I think? If you love the names, that's all that matters. Sometimes people come up with truly appalling names that they should think twice about. But that isn't the case here.

Yes, afraid I thought of strippers too

I would lengthen the first names to Giselle and Laure for the birth certificate tbh.

I think they are good names for a couple of pet hamsters or cats but twin girls not so much.

I love the names, congrats on the birth of your daughters

If you like them, stick to your guns. Everyone will soon get used to them. Any name becomes normalised when it's firmly linked to a person / child you know.

Some of my family were scathing of a family member's choices for their children - mostly as they were strongly linked to a country neither parent had ever lived in, but was linked to the heritage of one of them. But 20+ years on, their names are just who they are.

Not completely different names - Lolita = Little Lola.

Wish I’d thought of that when my mum said similar

"She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

There's a reason the PP associates the name Lola with Nabokov's Lolita.

I think they are lovely fun names, but better as nn rather than full names. There are so many beautiful full girls names (especially given their heritage) that you could shorten to Gigi and Lola.

Apart from the references already mentioned, I wonder whether when written down the brain also jumps to Gigolo as it is only 1 letter different to Gigilola. Or maybe that is just my brain being weird!

Hm thank you everyone.

We don’t really want to use the middle names as first names, and I find the whole “I wouldn’t trust a surgeon” with that name narrative a little strange as loads of babies have “cute” names now like Evie, Poppy, Elsie.

I hadn’t thought of the “lady of the night” connotation.

I did study literature so I’m very familiar with Lolita but it hadn’t crossed my mind (I thought of a girl I went to school with, a character from Gossip Girl and the Barry Manilow song which I figured no one their age would know!)

For Gigi I guess I just associated with lots of girls I knew who used it as a nickname.

I think we are more attached to Gigi as a name than Lola so maybe we should change Lola. We had
Romy/Rory (too masculine?), Mila, Lena and Cami on our list too.

Romy, Rory and Cami are all far too similar to Gigi - you can’t have twin girls who both have two syllable names ending in ‘ee’ sounds.

I think for twins it’s tricky, I wouldn’t want to name them names that sounded too ‘matchy’ and I would worry these do- both four letters, repeated first and third letters with consonants in between, they also do have the same ‘vibe’ as others have mentioned. I’d go for something longer or less ‘nicknamey’ for one of them. But that’s only my opinion and I do strongly feel that they’re your babies and you should go with whatever you really like 😊

Would you consider Lola and Romy?

Beautiful names, congratulations 🥰

I think we really want to use Gigi, we are pretty attached to the name compared to Lola which was more of compromise. We have spoken about having a little girl called Gigi since we got married!

They're lovely names.
You clearly love the names so that's all that matters. Others should keep their opinions to themselves quite frankly.
No idea why people go on about having a longer name and using them as nicknames either, ridiculous.
If I was you I'd go register them as soon as and ignore everyone else.
Congratulations!

I think you should just go with the names you’ve chosen. You are the parents. You get to choose.

Agreed

that’s a very polite way of putting it.