Hi there! We are expecting a baby boy in April. We’ve decided on the first name Miles, and our last name is Cline with a K. We also have a daughter named Parker. Our struggle is with middle names: our daughter’s middle name is Jane (a middle name she shares with her paternal grandma and great-grandma). Nothing sprang to mind for Miles’ middle name as far as someone we’d want to honor—both of our dads have first and middle names we’d rather not use. Then I remembered my dad is sometimes called by the nickname Jay, which was also his grandpa’s name. Miles Jay Cline has a nice ring to it, I think. But is it too similar to Jane? Does it really matter if siblings have close middle names? And this is me getting ahead of myself, but we plan to have a third, and I can almost guarantee we don’t have another one syllable J- name up our sleeves. Would it be strange to have two kids with similar J middle names and one without?
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My own opinion is that middle name similarity is a non-issue. Middle names are rarely used or even known; and even when they ARE known, similarity doesn’t cause confusion. Think of your friends and extended family: how many of their middle names do you know? and would you care about middle-name compatibility within sibling groups, beyond a fleeting flicker of interest? I’m likely in the very top tier of baby name interest, and I don’t think I can remember any of my cousins’ middle names, let alone whether or not they coordinate; and I hardly know any of my friends’ middle names, let alone their siblings’ middle names.
I care even less about middle-name similarity when honor names are involved. If I have a grandmother Jean and a grandmother Jane, and I have two daughters and I want to honor a grandmother with each one, I’m not going to balk just because my grandmothers happened to have similar names. I wouldn’t do the same for FIRST names—but for middle names, it doesn’t matter to me at all.
Thinking ahead to the possible future third child, it continues to seem like a non-issue to me: just as I don’t think it matters if two middle names are similar, I don’t think it matters if a third middle name is different—and particularly when the first two middle names went to one boy and one girl. I feel pretty strongly about sibling-name compatibility for first names (though I make exceptions even there), but for middle names I feel the mental equivalent of a giant shrug.
I guess I do have SOME preferences for a general sort of middle name compatibility. I do care that all the siblings GET middle names (or all NOT get them, either way). I prefer the middle names to be of similar significance if possible—though some honor names are naturally a more significant honor than others, and everyone runs out of honor names they want to use at some point, so I’m more “everyone gets a good naming story” rather than “everybody gets an equally-ranked honor name.” But in MOST situations it doesn’t matter to me if the middle names match or clash in style or sound. (I added that “MOST” during proofreading, because I remembered a sibling group I know of where the siblings all have extremely unusual and interesting noun middle names; if the parents had done that for three of the four children and NOT done it for the fourth, I would have thought that was strange. I would not feel similarly in the case of your children’s sibling group.)
If you have a child with the middle name Jane and a child with the middle name Jay, it might be cute to have a a similar middle name for a third child, but I would feel zero pressure to do so if I were you. And in fact, I would advise against it: it feels to me that it would lessen the honor of the honor names to choose a third one-syllable J-name just to match.
I agree that you’re probably overthinking it at this point. If you have good reasons for the middle– and you do– the similarity shouldn’t matter.
I completely agree with everything that Swistle stated: I don’t think it’s an issue at all, and in fact, I find it kind of cute to have a sister-brother set named Parker Jane and Miles Jay.
[As a side note, I can add my two cents to the topic of matching names among siblings.
So my great-grandma happened to have a dozen kids (yes, 12 kids!) and all of them got quite common at that time (pre-World War II) and totally “normal” names. However, one of the sisters basically shared a name (and I’m talking about FIRST names not middle names!) with one of her younger brothers (Stanisława & Stanisław) and apparently none (including my grandpa) ever thought there’s something wrong with that… As I said, they weren’t twins and one of them wasn’t named after the other’s death or something like that (in fact, all of my grandpa’s siblings except one reached adulthood). I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I always thought it was seriously weird!]
My kids have pretty much this exact middle name situation. Like yours, they have very different first names. I’ve never run into any concerns, and in fact I like being able to tell each child that their middle name reminds me of both honorees. For example: “Your middle name is Michelle, for my grandmother, but it also reminds us of Michael, my grandfather. Yes, that’s right, your brother’s middle name. Let me tell you about Grandpa Michael…”
I know a set of twins who both have the same middle name: Renee. They were a late in life surprise for their mom and I think she just ran out of names.
ITA with Swistle. I don’t see a problem with Jane and Jay as sibling middles. My only cause would be since both names have significance, I’d want to make sure I had at least a couple potential middles with meaning in reserve for a future child. Doesn’t mean another family honor name, maybe a place, character, virtue/nature name, etc. Anything with a story behind it would work.
Yes, total non-issue! Go ahead and use Jay with complete immunity. I really like the names you have chosen by the way.
My middle name is Patricia (an honor name for my maternal grandmother) and my brother’s middle name is Patrick (an honor name for many generations!). My sister’s middle name is Anne… just ‘cause. It has never even remotely been an issue.
I know of a similar situation. My friend’s middle name is Michelle after her dad Mickey. Her son’s (the oldest) first middle name (both kids have two honor names for middles) is Michael which carried on what started with his mom. Her daughter (3 years younger) has the first middle of Michelle for the same reason. She only has two but if she had a third in this case since both of the middles have the same source, I think it would be odd if the third didn’t have either the same or another form of the name. However in your situation since the kids would just have similar names but after different people I don’t think it would be odd for a third child to have an unrelated middle name. The other thing I wanted to mention is about her son’s second middle name. She wanted to honor her recently deceased grandfather but didn’t like his first, middle or nickname so she used his last name. So he is R_____ Michael Adkins C_______.
Go with Jay; it’s a good solid name! Miles’ and Parker’s friends probably won’t even realize their middle names’ similarity unless the friend is a serious name nerd.