Sylvia (middle name Maria) of the blog Tales from the Mommy Trenches and her husband are expecting their fourth baby girl this month! Their last name is one syllable and starts with B, and their other girls are:

Gloria Ruth

Victoria Rose

Elena Wren

So beautiful! All three girls go by their middle names, and Sylvia wrote, “I am Cuban, so we like to have a Spanish/Latin flair in there, along with a Catholic name, of course. The other three are all called by “R” names, but we might need to forego that tradition for this one. Rita is currently my husband’s frontrunner.”

I had such fun coming up with name ideas for this family!

Okay, first off I love the theme of “R” middle names that the girls go by, and I would hate to see them have to move away from it, so the first thing I did was come up with possible R-ish names (you’ll see what I mean about the -ish):

Reina/Reyna — I love this one, as it means queen=Our Lady
Roma — like Rome, where the Pope is!
Ruby — I almost didn’t include this one, because of it’s closeness to Ruth, but I just love it
Risa — I’m a little rusty on my Spanish, but I think this means laughter, right?

Risa inspired Marisa, which I also quite liked as a middle name option — it’s a way of moving away from an R given name (which they’ve already started to do with Wren), but they can still call her Risa.

And Sylvia’s husband’s thought of Rita made me think of Margarita, which would also be a good middle name — a way of moving away from R while still allowing her to go by an R name (Rita). Choosing a middle name like Marisa or Margarita could open up M possibilities if they were to have more children, which would make a really nice seemingly seamless transition from the R middles of now to something different later.

As for first names, I was a little less sure. I love Spanish/Latin-type names, but I’m just not familiar enough with Cuban culture, for example, to know if what I’m suggesting would make someone of Cuban descent wrinkle their nose because it’s only an “old lady name” or a “trashy” name, etc. Do you know what I mean? So I’m sorry if this aren’t on point! But I liked each of them for this family, for the reasons I’ll explain (I usually shoot for three, but I couldn’t narrow it down any further than I did here):

(1) A Marian name
With the baby due in May — Mary’s month! — and Sylvia’s middle name being Maria, it made a lot of sense to me for them to consider a Marian name. I thought maybe Maria as a first name, or Carmela/Carmen, or Lilia. All would be beautiful first names with really nice spiritual and familial significance.

(2) Cristina
Mary- names made me think of Jesus names, and Cristina was one of the first names I saw when I was perusing a list of Latino/Latina names. I love all the Christ- names, and Cristina is particularly lovely to my eye.

(3) Sofia
I have no reason I liked this other than it felt right with the other girls! It is a beautiful name.

(4) A papal name
My favorite ways to name a little girl after one of our recent popes are Francisca or Francesca (for Pope Francis of course!) or Carolina/Karolina (for Pope John Paul II — birth name Karol) — I thought any of those would work nicely for this family. Joanna could also be for JP2, which I also quite like.

(5) Jacinda/Jacinta or Lucia
I was only going to suggest Jacinda or Jacinta here — Jacinta’s one of my very favorite names — and then it made me think of Lucia as well, which is also gorgeous.

(6) Ana
St. Anne is Mary’s mother, and she often pops up in my name thoughts. 🙂 I love Ana, and I thought a short name like it could offset a longer name like Margarita quite nicely if they decided to go that route.

So those are my ideas! What do you all think? Do any of them seem like they might hit the right note? What names would you suggest for Baby Girl B #4?

I love to do name consultations! If you’d like me to give your name dilemma a go, check out my Baby name consultant tab.