Growing up as a Lisa, in an era when that was the most popular name on the freaking planet, I wanted my girls to have names that weren’t quite so ubiquitous (but not overly weird, either). I also wanted them to have names they could shorten into nicknames, since I never had that ability.
My ex and I named our first daughter Madison after the mermaid’s name in the movie “Splash”. At the time, almost 19 years ago, we’d never seen that as a first name. Unfortunately, plenty of other woman my age must have had the same idea, because it quickly became one of the top five popular girl names. Sigh. You can’t win! Her middle name is Jeanette.
The second girl’s first name isn’t unique, but isn’t very common these days, either – Jessica. Her middle name is Yorke, and I love that pretty much no one else has that name.
The third girl’s name we really struggled with, until we came across a name we loved in a Walmart ad, of all places. She’s Alaina, middle name Faye.
All three go by their nicknames, anyway. All of their middle names are after our deceased grandmothers, (Thank goodness that in the Jewish tradition, you can just use the first initial if you want…“Yorke” is for “Yetta”!)