hey... i have been playiing around with baby names and keep getting stuck... i love the names Raya (r-eye-ah) and Aislin (ash-lyn)... need help with middle names or combinations of the two.. aislin raya or raya aislin??
also... is raya too strange of a name or a-i-s too strange of a spelling for ashlyn?? help
 

I'm sorry to be the 1st post and to have to say I don't like either choices. I am not a fan of names that are not spelled the way they sound; it will cause confusion for years to come and they will have to correct EVERYONE.

I like "unique" names but more in the sense of not commonly used, but also not strange. And not hard to spell.

thanks for your input
 

I'm with Gretchen on preferring names that are spelled the way they sound. My older son is named Marek (pronounced Mahr-dek with a rolled r). When he tells people his name and pronounces it correctly, most people hear it as "Mark" or "Mike". When people read it from print, they usually pronounce it "Mare-rick". We don't get irritated by mispronunciation, but it does get tiring correcting people.

That said, I do think the Irish names are really pretty and distinctive. There's another lady here who named her daughter Aislinn, but she pronounces it Ays-lynn rather than the traditional Irish way.

Raya isn't really my style. I'd be more likely to choose Raya as a middle name.

 
to TBC!
 


I'm with the ladies. Unique names can sound cute on paper but when a child has to spend his/her whole life correcting people, it's becomes a lot less cute very quickly.

I also think that Aislynn will not be prounced as you're hoping it will be--it'll ALWAYS be pronounced "Ays-lynn". If you like the pronunciation "Ash-lynn" then perhaps you should consider spelling it more phonetically: Ashlyn, Ashlynn, Ashlin, Ashlinn, etc. to avoid mispronunciation later. And Raya wouldn't be a first name choice--I think it would be better as a middle name.