Thoughts on boys list please

[fudgefinger]

Couple of months until our baby boy is due and would like your opinions on our shortlist of names. Honest thoughts please!

Ben
Kit
Alexander
Ellis
George

Ellis is a girl's name to me.

Love Kit and Alexander and considered them for DS

Love Ben and Kit.

Alexander is fine.

Not keen on Ellis or George.

Not keen on Ellis or Kit. ( I think of Ellis as a boys name!)

Today I like George the most.

Not keen on Kit or Ellis but like all your others on list.

I love Alexander and Kit.

Others are nice, but I'm not keen on George.

Love Ellis and love Kit as a nn for Christopher. Don't like George.

Kit

Not keen on Ellis but the others are all great.

Christopher known as Kit. Fab.

Benedict known as Ben. Most of my ds's friends are called either Ellis or George- so I'm a bit over exposed to them.......

Not keen at all on Kit. Ellis not sure.
George good but very popular.
Really like Ben (Benjamin? Benedict?), and Alexander.

Have you considered Peter?

Kit isn't a name. But I love it as a nn.

I like Alexander and George, and Kit and Ben are ok as nicknames for Christopher and Benjamin.

Kit is nice. I prefer Ellis for girls (Emily Bronte's pen name!)

Ben and Alexander are strong, classic and impossible to find fault with. But god, not George - it's such a puddingy, ruddy-faced, podgy sort of name. And everywhere.

Emily Bronte used Ellis precisely because it's a mans name, though. She wouldn't have been taken seriously as a female writer.

I have never heard of Ellis being a girl's name. It's deffo a boy's name.

No, Bronte used it because it didn't precisely say 'definitely male' while not sounding obviously feminine, as Charlotte explains in her preface to Wuthering Heights - like Currer and Acton, the pen names used by Charlotte and Emily. Their own Irish paternal grandmother was Ellis, though I tend to assume that was either a misprint for or an anglicisation of the Irish name Eilis on a birth cert or census form.

But I'm not saying it's a male or female only name - now - either way, just that I certainly know two female Ellises, one in Scotland, one in Canada, and prefer it as a girl's name, while acknowledging it's used for boys more often.

Eilis - not seen that before. V pretty.

Eilis = pronounced ale-ish or isle-ish = Gaelic version of Alice, and also sometimes of Elizabeth. Sometimes spelled Ailis.