Is it a bad idea to put a ligature in a child's name?

I love ligatures. Love this idea. Love “Æmelia”.

That said, it’s a terrible idea. I wish it weren’t, but it is. “Æ” isn’t a letter, it’s a character. It’s actually two letters, “AE”, but typographically connected. However, computers can’t (or couldn’t early on) handle that, so we humans made the “Æ” character. Which, again, still represents two actual letters. So the problems are:

1. They may not let you. “Sorry folks, but our computer doesn’t have ‘A jammed into E’ on the keyboard.” Trying to then direct a busy nurse on how to get a hospital Windows machine to do a ligature is not something I’d want to try. (And I’ve spent a lot of time around nurses.)
2. If they do, they might be doing you and her a disservice, because government systems are always out of date (here in the U.S. even worse that they should be!) and may not accept that character. So she’d likely end up with being “Æmelia” in your fancy grammar school’s database, but “Aemelia” in your healthcare provider’s database, and possibly even “melia” or even something like “^[OAmelia” in the Social Security database. This can make things very difficult with everything from loans, to banking, to creating her email address, etc.
3. She’s not an accessory. You think ligatures are cool. And I totally agree with you. But you don’t know that she will. Don’t saddle her with a pretentious name that reflects your pretentiousness. (I’m not accusing you of anything I’m not admitting to myself here.)
4. In fact, she’d probably grow to hate ligatures, with all the confusion and annoyance that name would cause her. At the beginning of every school year, and every time there’s a substitute teacher, she’d brace herself for “um… Aymelia? Emilia? A-Emelia?” And no matter how down-to-earth she ended up, people would take one look at her name and “know” that she’s a fancy-pants, stuck-up snob.

If you want to go that route, name her “Aemelia” officially (which is already more than pretentious and confusing enough, now that I look at it), and then just use “Æmelia” whenever you get the chance, like on holiday cards and such. Let her develop her own pretentiousness at her own pace.

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