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Musical Middle Names

80 middle names for musical families, sorted into the three things "musical" actually means — real terms from the score, composers and players worth honouring, and names that simply sound like music.

Those three groups are not interchangeable, and the page is organised so you can tell which you are choosing. Music terms are the literal ones: Aria (an Italian solo vocal piece), Cadence (the chord movement that closes a phrase), Lyric, Melody, Harmony, Viola (the instrument between violin and cello), Octave, Rhapsody, Fantasia, Cadenza (the unaccompanied flourish before the final cadence), Musette (a small French bagpipe and the dance tune written for it), and the occupational surnames that are really instruments in disguise — Piper pipes, Tabor is a small drum, Fife is a flute, Harper plays the harp. Musicians are honours: Amadeus was Mozart's own middle name, Elgar wrote Nimrod, Holst wrote The Planets, Britten and Copland and Gershwin and Ravel and Tallis are all composers a family might have a reason to name a child for, and Ellington, Coltrane, Monk, Miles, Ella, Etta, Aretha, Nina, Odetta, Mahalia, Billie, Loretta, Patsy, Dolly, Cash and Django are the players. Lyrical-sounding names are the honest third category: Amara, Liliana, Seraphina, Solene, Elowen, Marisol, Rosalie and Evangeline are not musical in any technical sense, they simply have the open vowels and the rise-and-fall that make a name sing. Calling them music names would be a fib; putting them on a musical list is fair.

Two of these names carry a correction worth having. Carol is a lovely middle name, but it does not come from the Christmas carol — the name descends from Caroline and ultimately Charles, and the resemblance to the noun is a coincidence of English. Allegra is genuinely Italian for "cheerful" and is a true cousin of the tempo marking allegro, so that one holds up. Cecilia is the patron saint of music, which is why every second choral society is named for her, and is the most quietly musical name on the page. Viola needs a pronunciation decision before you write it down: vy-OH-la is the usual English name, vee-OH-la the instrument. For pairing, remember that word-names are heavy in a way that honour-names are not. Melody, Harmony and Cadence all end on the same unstressed -ee or -ence and clash with surnames doing the same, so test the full phrase — Ruby Cadence Bennett drags, Ruby Cadence Hall does not. Musician surnames used as middles (Hendrix, Presley, Lennon, Marley, Jagger) are strong flavours; behind a plain first name they read as devotion, behind another surname-name they read as a band poster.

Top picks, annotated

The lists below are alphabetical and mix all three groups, so here is the key. Terms and instruments among the girls: Cadenza, Calliope (the Muse of epic poetry and also a steam organ), Fantasia, Harmony, Lyra, Melodie, Musette, Piper and Rhapsody, with Sonnet and Sonora at the edge of the group — a sonnet is a poem rather than a piece of music, and Sonora is simply Spanish for "resounding." Among the boys: Fife, Octave, Reed, Rhodes for the electric piano, and Tabor. Musicians among the girls: Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Dolly Parton, Ella Fitzgerald, Emmylou Harris, Etta James, Joni Mitchell, Loretta Lynn, Mahalia Jackson, Odetta, Patsy Cline, Selena Quintanilla, Simone for Nina Simone, and Stevie for Stevie Nicks. Among the boys: Barber, Britten, Copland, Gershwin, Gustav for Holst or Mahler, Haydn, Holst, Ives, Ravel, Tallis and Wolfgang from the concert hall; Bowie, Coltrane, Django, Duke, Dylan, Elvis, Hendrix, Jagger, Lennon, Marley, Mercer, Miles, Monk, Nat, Otis, Presley, Sonny and Vaughan from everywhere else. Cole is both, since Cole Porter and Nat King Cole split it between them. And the lyrical-sounding group, which claims no technical credentials: Amara, Elowen, Evangeline, Liliana, Marisol, Rosalie, Seraphina and Solene.

For girls

For boys

Pairing rule: say the full name at the speed an announcer would. Musical middles are unusually rhythmic, so they expose a bad seam faster than ordinary names do — Aria and Cadence both end on the vowel or sibilant that a great many surnames begin with. If the middle and the surname share a stress pattern, swap one. A word-name and a surname should never sound like a duet.

Keep browsing

Adjacent styles: elegant middle names for the concert-hall end, cool for the Bowie and Hendrix end, modern, where Aria and Cadence properly live, and literary for the same instinct applied to books. The Italian terms trace back to Italian origin names. Then see honoring family if the musician is one of yours, or return to all 22 styles.