Eva or Grace?

[Minty82]

Having trawled through the Mumsnet archives, I know the consensus on both of these seems to be that they're a bit boring/too on-trend, but we both love both of them and think we're pretty much settled on one or the other (if it's a girl!).

Very torn between the two though, and just wondered whether one of them is seen as more 'all the other girls in nursery will be called that' than the other?

I love Eva, but it would not work with our surname.

I'm not a fan of Grace, or any virtue names really. What happens if cute little Grace grows into the least graceful person you have ever met?

Why don't you use both ?? Eva Grace ?

I prefer Grace.

Slinkingoutside - brilliantly put, agree very strongly with you.

It broke my heart but I had to give up on Sophie for that reason, and think it was the right thing to do. Would have driven me mad for DD to be one of 4 in her class.

how about both?Eva-Grace;-)like Ann Marie?

Eva is lovely.

Grace .... don't like names that start with Grrrrrrr .......

Eva Grace is lovely as a combination, but the middle name's already fixed, as our mums conveniently have the same name as each other so that was an easy choice. And not too keen on hyphenated in general (I actually have a slight illogical hankering for Mary-Kate, but was never going to get my own way on that one...)

BluddyMoFo - thanks, both for the reassurance that a Grace can pull off not being 100% graceful, and that it won't date even if its popularity comes and goes. I'm inclined to think that holds true for both of them; they may be having a peak now, but they do crop up in each generation.

NadiaWadia - love the antiGrrr sentiment! I happen to disagree, but see where you're coming from!

Interesting that someone's great-grandmother was called Grace, and we had Grace Kelly born in 1929, and then the name pretty much disappeared in the intervening years, only to have a resurgence now.

This is exactly what I'm talking about - names go in and out of fashion, they have cycles of popularity and non-popularity.

I remember when the mother on an Australian television show from the 80s was called Grace Sullivan, my Mum who was born a decade after Grace Kelly said, 'oh, what an old-fashioned name!'...

Everyone choosing Joanne back in the 1970s thought it was a lovely timeless name - and it is a lovely name - that's why they chose it en mass. Doesn't stop it from sounding dated to our ears now.

To be clear - I don't have a problem with the name - it's very pretty to my ears (at this point in time!). I just find the whole culture around names, why we choose them, why some are so popular and the fashions and trends around them really fascinating.

I like Evangeline nn Eva, otherwise I would choose Grace.

Grace

I like Eva best (but I have one so am biased). I think it's a lovely name and certainly won't be the Tracy / Caroline of her generation . I actually have never met another (although we do have an Evie, Eve and Ava...obviously completely different names )

Grace is a bit too religious for me. Which is fine if you are Christian, but I'm not. You might be?

Slinking, oh I've come across Graces born in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s...I don't think it's ever really gone away. And with Eva, there's Eva Wiseman who writes for the Observer (30ish); Eva Green, same sort of age; Eva Cassidy (b.1963), so it's not come totally out of nowhere either. But yes, of course names have cycles of popularity. Even my own, which was my grandmother's (born in 1920), and which I thought was quite stable in its level of usage - ie. there's another one in both my NCT class and my yoga group, but the world's not overrun with us - has fallen out of the top 100 girls names altogether in the past few years. It is interesting, especially as you don't always know what factors are influencing your taste.

Wigeon, we are actually, which is why the 'graceful' connotations don't bother me so much as I think of it more as referring to 'Grace of God' etc. Good to know your Eva isn't too surrounded by others!

Thanks all of you for bothering to comment - still totally undecided but it's fun to gauge reaction (even the negative ones!).

Both are lovely names - I don't think you can go wrong with either.

Minty - I'm not the name police - choose whichever name you want. I'm just giving my opinion and throwing a few ideas/theories out there, and explaining why I'd personally never choose a very popular name.

Wigeon - OK, if you don't think the plethora of Eve/Eva/Evie variations will become this generation's Claire and Joanne, which names do you think will be? And why those names and not Eve/Eva, etc?

Because you can guarantee that when our own children have babies, there will be a sub-set of names in the baby name lists that they will completely gloss over in the same way that there are certain names we 20/30-somethings have no interest in, due to their ubiquitousness and inherent dated-ness.

I'm not deriding your choice - if you love a name you should go with it - but it's obtuse not to see that certain very popular names do eventually fall out out of fashion, and also that many names immediately conjure up a person of a certain generation simply because they were so popular with that generation.

Slinking - er, because it's our daughter's name and therefore is the best ever name and can't possibly date in any way

OP - actually, if you are Christian, and the meaning of "grace" is meaningful to you, then I think it's a rather lovely choice.