Baby Girl or Boy Cole

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Samantha writes:

Hello! My Husband, Kevin, and I, Samantha, are expecting our first baby this coming December. Our last name is COLE.

My families tradition is to name children after someone who passed away using the first letter of their name. This gives us A,F, & R. We seem to agree on girls names but differ on boy names. I LOVE unisex names, my husband does not L

So far for girls we have agreed with :
Amelia Brooke (this sounded really nice, I originally wanted to do Amelia Faye.. this was we incorporate two letters)
Alena Rae
Audrey
Addelyn (Husband does not like- I LOVE)
Felicity Reese
Arya Brooke
Ariana
Reagan (eh)
Ashleigh
Rylan

We found A R F difficult, finding so many names outside of them we like.. ESPECIALLY for boys. Other girl options if we break tradition are:
Kennedy
Hannah
Harlow
Hayden
Leighton
Payton

For boys… we have very few names for A R F ( HELP!!) We should just name him Arf..lol.
The middle name has to be Kevin, my husbands name. Its his family tradition.
All we can agree on ( I like many more then he does..)
Aiden
Reese( although he think it sounds to much like a girls name)

That’s it.

Other options we came up with are
Brodie (Husband LOVES…I am not sure if it sounds like a pets name??)
Brayden
Paxton
Nolan
Emmet
Noah
Liam
Eamon
Joshua

Any other suggestions you have we would really appericate it! We really wanted to stay off the top 50 popular names.

If you are trying to stay out of the Top 50, that takes Top-10 Aiden off the boy list. Reese would work; I think spelling it Rhys makes it seem more masculine. But it feels a little choppy with the surname.

Other A/F/R suggestions:

Abram
Adrian
Anderson
Archer
Asher
August
Axton
Felix
Finian
Fletcher
Rayden
Ruben
Reilly
Rohan
Roman
Ronan
Ryan
Ryder
Rylan


For girls, I think Addelyn is on course to be more popular than you'd like. We did a post about it earlier this year, when I only had the 2010 Social Security data to work with; here's how things looked when the 2011 data came out:

Adalyn - 1261 born in 2010; 1458 born in 2011
Adelyn - 825 in 2010; 1052 in 2011
Adalynn - 686 in 2010; 959 in 2011
Adelynn - 458 in 2010; 492 in 2011
Addilyn - 260 in 2010; 341 in 2011
Addelyn - 134 in 2010; 127 in 2011
Adilyn - 133 in 2010; 142 in 2011
Addilynn - 123 in 2010; 154 in 2011
Addalyn - 118 in 2010; 163 in 2011
Adilynn - 105 in 2010; 141 in 2011
Addalynn - 62 in 2010; 77 in 2011
Adalynne - 45 in 2010; 41 in 2011

Only two spellings (Addelyn and Adalynne) went down a little; all the others went up considerably. The total number went from 4,210 in 2010 to 5,147 in 2011, putting the name well into the Top 50.

Amelia Brooke is a wonderful name, with fun initials. Amelia was #30 in 2011---but I am starting to think that this is one of those situations where although you'd prefer to stay out of the Top 50, you LIKE names in the Top 50! (Ashley/Ashleigh is only just recently out of a long run in the Top 10. Audrey is #43. Hannah is #25. Liam and Brayden and Joshua are all Top 50, and Noah and Aiden are Top 10.) And there isn't anything wrong with that. It would be a shame to choose a name you like less, just because of its ranking.

I also suggest Baby Naming Advice for First-Time Parents.