Are these names too pretentious?

[HeadFairy]

Carlotta
Giovanna

??

To be fair to me, I do have an Italian father and and Argentine mother, and dh's parents are both Italian. We do have Italian surnames (both my maiden and married names are on ds's birth cert) and I have a French first name, dh has an Italian first name, ds has an Italian first name.

But really we sound English, live in England, have British passports (dh does have an Italian one as well and I can have Italian and Argentine should I choose to)

Too pretentious to have such foreign names for someone who will be born and grow up (in all likelihood) in the UK?

hassled - that is exactly the character that i thought of in the enid blyton series when i saw the name Carlotta. i love it.... and i LOVE enid blyton....my daughter won't go near her....damn jacqueline wilson....

Totally love Italian names. My DH worked for a few years in Italy and we lived there when the DC started school. My DD's have gorgeous Italian names and everyone loves them. Carlotta and Giovanna are beautiful but be aware that in England most people will pronounce Gee-o-vanna. Love Gaia too, so many lovely names to go with your Italian surname. Lucky you, good luck

fab names

not at all, they are both lovely. And with the family connection you are fine! Even without it, it may be ok

• how did you yourself feel having a French name although your parents were not French? I think most people would not worry about that at all.

Both lovely. I particularly like Giovanna. I knew a beautiful girl with this name growing up and it was shortened to Giovi, pronounced 'Jo-vee' in an Italian accent . So pretty.

Lovely names but Alice is my all time fave

hmm i was at uni with a Giovanna - she elected to be called "Gio". She was a bit of a bitch actually, sorry!
I love Alice.

I like both.

I have an Italian name (not one of those) which I like. It is not particularly common in England which is great, and spices up my spectacularly boring surname (very English).

Recently someone got v v v embarrassed when they asked what my maiden name had been before I got my "boring married name" -I have never changed my name but DH's surname is even worse than mine but he has other great qualities

i have italian first and middle names, even though there was no italian connection in my family (until i moved there as an adult), my parents just liked the names.

i was the only one with my name at both primary and secondary school, but i don't remember ever feeling weird about having a 'foreign' name.

i think both names are lovely, but then i also like Viola (although it would annoy me if people pronounced it Vy-ola)!

There have been some truly shocking Baby Names threads this week (honestly someone wants to call a baby Kenneth!! ) so these two seem relatively nice to me!

Both lovely names and not hard to spell for the xenophobic. Go for it!

lovely names, not at all pretentious given your background.

Far better than Giulia, which gives non-Italianates nightmares to spell (they always seem to end up spelling it Guilia , which would obviously be pronounced Gweelia instead of Julia) - we had one at our school and no one could spell it right, poor girl.

Lovely lovely names and go perfectly with your Italian heritage
I'd definitely go for one of the Italian ones though rather than Alice as you wouldnt want the poor wee thing feeling left out!

Love Carlotta and Enzo