..to ask what you think Mrs De Winter's first name is?

[poblwcymru]

We know it's "lovely and unusual".

my favourite book in the world. The Hitchcock film is pretty special too.

I think she was a Naomi

I always thought she was a bit of a Hilary.

I always thought she was a bit of a Hilary.

I don't know why but that made me chuckle. It sounded like a mild insult (no offence to any lovely Hilarys out there)

Maybe she's a Belinda. That would have been quite unusual but not unheard of in the 30s.

Lacey-Mae

It's just the best book.
Loving this thread.

Feodorovna

Jacintha -always remember reading this name in an (ancient second/third hand charity shop) annual or school story book - which would have probably have been written about the right time.
I always like that name
or
Ayesha as in "She"
I did a lot of reading when I was a teenager

I'm seeing Balonz on a few threads, did someone actually want to name their child that?

Sylvia
Sarah
Adelphine

Delphine

I'm in camp Daphne. I wonder if Du maurier had a name for her? She must have surely called her something other than Mrs de winter even if only inside her own head!

Never heard she said it was ‘Daphne’ she had in mind. Fascinating.

How unusual was Daphne as a name in 1937/8?

Clare

Laetitia.

Actually we’d need to look to 1915-20 ish re: popularity of Daphne...

Lucrezia.

I always think of her as a Daphne, largely because of D du Maurier.
Otherwise Joan (as in Fontaine)!

When I was at school I wrote to Daphne Du Maurier to ask about this. My "guess" was Marguerite. Her secretary wrote back to say that the truth was that DDM hadn't thought of a name but that she thought Marguerite was a lovely suggestion. She enclosed a photo of DDM with her dogs.

I appreciate she was humouring a 12/13 year old girl but I thought mumsnetters might like to know! I still have the letter ... somewhere.

Though I'm loving someone has suggested Arabella which is what I named my daughter!

What a lovely story, @honeylulu!

Astrid

The second Mrs de Winter was so mousy and modest, I can't think of her with a flamboyant or gorgeous name. It has to be something very English and simple.

Maxim says her name is ‘beautiful and unusual’, and Nameless Heroine says her father was a ‘beautiful and unusual person’.

Mind, you, even Rebecca was an averagely unusual name then, and various critics have pointed out that it would have had connotations of Jewishness it doesn’t have today. Not suggesting R was actually Jewish, just that the name goes some way to characterising her as ‘other’ and a bit exotic. The character was partly based on Du Maurier’s husband’s previous fiancée, a dark-haired glamorous woman called Jan Ricardo who killed herself during WWII, and partly on Daphne du M herself — bisexual, non-gender-conforming, boaty, unfaithful, independent-minded.

Du Maurier tells us, and this is memory, so do correct me it was ‘a lovely and very unusual name’, so it has to be unusual and uncommon at unnamed heroine’s birth - which was:1917 ish...

Honeylulu - Wow! Letter will be valuable and priceless to you of course.

@Maireas

The second Mrs de Winter was so mousy and modest, I can't think of her with a flamboyant or gorgeous name. It has to be something very English and simple.

She does, though! Agreed that her demeanour suggests something very bread-and-butter.

Leonie