Henning?

[Thusnelda]

What do you think of Henning as a boy's name?

A brother for Frieda. It's a fairly well-known name in Northern Germany without being too common, but what do English ears think of it?

Sounds like something you do with chickens.

Rightup, it does. But I think I like it.

I like Henning and know a lovely German one.

Are you German/living in Germany? If so then fine, but otherwise it's too "out there" for me...

Why would it be too 'out there'? Shouldn't we be encouraging more name diversity - would make life much more interesting. Henning isn't exactly hard to pronounce for a Brit, is it?

So do I christmascheer, it's a good, strong name, just a bit chickeny!

Herring.

We live here in Britain and Daddy is English.
I like the fact that it is pronounced exactly the same in English and German and not hard to spell either. But I also thought it sounded like a verb. Chickening. We still have four months to think about it - any other suggestions are very welcome!

Lovely name and easy to pronounce in English.

Too chickeny.

"Shouldn't we be encouraging more name diversity"

No, actually I don't think we should.

A large proportion of the names I see on MN imo are trying to be different for the sake of being different. Parents seem to want to pick names which scream "we're educated in the Classics/hippies/aspirational/whatever" with no thought to the poor child Hieronymus, or Dipsy, who has to go through life saddled with the godawful name

NOT a reflection of this OP btw...

I actually agree with poppy in that the whole point of naming a person is to identify him/her. So yes, I do think we should try to give our children as many different names as possibly - that way they can be identified without having to add modifiers (e.g. surname initial, big, small Jack or whatever).

And Henning is a nice, interesting and easy to pronounce name - it would be a shame if the OP got dissuaded for not using it just because it too different.

How about Henry?

Henry is of Old German origin, and Henning is a variant of Henry.

Not bad.

I love Frieda.

I love it

Terrible.

Henning is lovely :)

also have met a couple before, from Germany and Amsterdam, I don't think it's a super unusual name.

I like it, sounds strong. My only association would be Henning Wehn who is hilarious so all positive!

lots of people will have heard of Henning Mankell as well, since Wallander got so popular here.

For me as a Swede it is a very middle-aged name, not to say elderly. Are you expecting to give birth to a 60yo?

No, but names come around again - Frieda is also the name of lots of 90 year olds.

I know a Henning. It's a lovely name but I keep calling him Herring by mistake

I like it. I think people v accepting of foreign names when it's from one of the parent's cultures

Henning v nice.