Hermione and Lysander for twins?

[spritethecat]

I'm expecting boy/girl twins and these are our current favourites. What do you think of them? Any other suggestions are gladly welcomed

Or if you’re in a really mixed area with different cultures and names no one will blink an eye

I think Lysander is an excellent name; I am not that keen on Hermione but only because it always makes me think “hermaphrodite”, which is probably just me! I also think this “try hard” “what impression are you trying to create” stuff is nonsense, and I speak as someone whose children both have top 20 names - if you love a name, and it isn’t derogatory in some way, then use it. It is also nonsense to say “working class areas” do not have a wide range of names, they certainly do and Hermione and Lysander are not going to stand out IMO.

Exactly in London they’d be in classes with kids called Ayobunmi, Raahithya and Tzigana (all real names).

That was to Marsha ^

Only if you are happy for them to be mocked mercilessly by other kids !

Agree with Tatiana and Tumbleted. How dare anyone read and be inspired by anything not in the Sainsburys Top-10, and how dare anyone call there child anything other than Jack, Finn, Lily or Mia or anything longer than two syllables. Makes life harder for everyone else who has never hear of Greek myths or Shakespeare. This person is aspiring far above their social standing and needs to blend in the rest, not stick out and not make people perplexed. Please do be more considerate to the population at large 🤣

I bloody love them. Went to uni with a Lysander who was known as Ly.

OP I like your style of names!

I agree with Growingboys.
A bit pretentious.
They'd be regarded as very pretentious in Ireland.

I'm feeling a bit better reading this today. I've been struggling with prenatal anxiety and I was getting worried yesterday that I was ruining their lives before they were born!

We are in a very diverse area where children have a wide mix of names and I don't know where a child would start with knowing which unusual name to pick on. Not from a posh area, just a normal one and the children I know with 'try-hard and pretentious' names aren't posh or bullied for it. George and Amelia are nice enough, but I don't love them and we were wanting something a little offbeat and fun.

The attitudes on this thread are deeply unpleasant.

I have a very boring, ‘classic’, popular name. It didn’t protect me from bullying. I was bullied for years because I was a clever, bookish child in a badly-run school which made no attempt to celebrate academic success and only fêted sporting ability.

The children who bullied me did it because they had learnt somewhere that academic ability, and curiosity, and knowledge, were to be sneered at and derided. Those same children seem to be on this thread, all grown up and still determined to label anyone with horizons different to their own as ‘pretentious’ and ‘try hard.’

Kids don’t give a fuck about each others’ names unless they happen to sound a bit like rude words. If OP’s children were to be bullied for their ‘pretentious ‘ names then the blame would lie squarely with their parents for teaching them to fear and mock anything slightly different to them.

The children who bullied me did it because they had learnt somewhere that academic ability, and curiosity, and knowledge, were to be sneered at and derided. Those same children seem to be on this thread, all grown up and still determined to label anyone with horizons different to their own as ‘pretentious’ and ‘try hard.’

I’m sorry to hear of your experience and I totally agree.

The narrowness of the horizons and the intolerance of difference is so depressing. The idea that anything to do with education or culture is ‘pretentious’ or ‘trying to be posh’.

Kids don’t give a fuck about each others’ names unless they happen to sound a bit like rude words.

The only boy that I heard getting teased a little in ds's school is a Will with Willy. I can also imagine that a Benedict may get called Bendy Dick by silly kids. Or Smellie Ellie.

But Lysander? That's a beautiful classic name that sounds no different to kids than Christopher or Alexander! Nothing tease worthy about it! Also nothing tease worthy about lots of other beautiful names that some of you find ' pretentious'!

The narrowness of the horizons and the intolerance of difference is so depressing. The idea that anything to do with education or culture is ‘pretentious’ or ‘trying to be posh’.

I agree. Our kids have names we love, that to us sound beautiful and aren't overused. And we are normal people and are not 'trying or pretending' anything else!

Buxbaum has said it much better than I could.

I think they're both good names. I actually chickened out of giving DD a 'pretentious' name and used it as a middle instead with a 'normal' first name. It didn't work, the 'normal' name doesn't suit her so we've always called her a nickname based on her middle name, so a whole extra layer of ridiculousness :)

My children both have very traditional, very "old-fashioned" names, which have been shortened - think 'Elizabeth' becoming 'Beth' and 'Andrew' becoming 'Drew', for example (not their actual names!). However, the shortened versions of their names which their immediate family fell into using when they were babies... are not the shortened versions which their friends use. Think 'Liz' instead of 'Beth' and 'Andy' instead of 'Drew'. Which at the time, I have to admit, we didn't even take into consideration - both my ex and I also have very traditional, very "old-fashioned" names, which... have never been shortened. Not even by our friends. So we were unprepared for 'Drew's friend's mother, for example, asking if 'Andy' was available for a playdate (at the time, I remember asking if we were talking about the same boy, because I honestly thought she'd muddled him up with another child!).

Also, one of my godsons is called Aloysius - he insists upon everyone calling him Aly, because he hates that his parents bestowed that name upon him. And I have to look up how to spell it every single time I have to write it down (on their Christmas cards to the whole family, and his birthday cards mostly, because they hate that he shortens it at all!). So perhaps choose names which your children won't have to spend their lifetimes correcting people's misspellings of them, and be prepared that your Mya might be called Hermie, and your Sander might end up being called Ly by their school friends.

I actually like the names, by the way. Perhaps you could still incorporate them in as middle names...?

I was told by lots of people to choose 'sensible' names for my DC when I was pregnant so they wouldn't get bullied . I chose names that are ordinary at home but rare in England. The 'sensible name' people all said 'Oh, are they family names?' when told my children's names, I assume they didn't like them! The more educated and widely travelled people were the more likely they were to like their names. Fear of unusual names is as strong a marker of the lower middle class as the way they eat their bread.

Funnily enough none of the DC have been bullied about their names at school. DD regularly gets told by older girls her name is 'cool', DS's name is always mentioned on the 'cool and unusual names for boys' threads on here. We live in a multicultural society, and we are much more accepting of unusual names than we were 40 years ago when Asian immigrants all adopted 'English' names.

I really dislike Hermione, as it will scream HP to the majority of people (and I'm no fan of the name when you separate it from the book either). I like Lysander, it's nice.

I do agree with Eloise, they'd be seen as pretentious in Ireland - but then Harriet etc style names wouldn't work in Ireland and seem pretty popular in the UK.

I think Hermione was also already an established name before Harry Potter. There is a Hermione in A Winter’s Tale and Hermione was the daughter of Helen of Troy. (Not the best mother to have really but that’s not the point). So if people really only think of Harry Potter that is rather recent/restricted cultural knowledge.

Like them both - but Lysander does shag Dim Hermione in The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.

However, unless you are a Jilly obsessive like me it's unlikely you'd make that reference

@YoureAllABunchofBastards An old university friend has had two daughters and named them Harriet Imogen and Emily Octavia. She is American and has never read a Jilly Cooper in her life but I'm afraid that a few of us clocked straightaway that she's managed to hit four of the seven 'name' books...

She is American and has never read a Jilly Cooper in her life but I'm afraid that a few of us clocked straightaway that she's managed to hit four of the seven 'name' books...

And

'And' absolutely nothing, pipling. They are lovely names. Just an anecdote which might be mildly amusing to anyone else with enough useless knowledge of Jilly Cooper to get the Lysander and Hermione reference. That's all.

Is that OK with you?

Count Fosco - actually, I find that working class people tend to go for more ‘unique’ names. I know a very working class Quentin, for example (named after Tarantino - com)
It’s not ‘fear’ of unusual names. It’s just that people who try very hard to give their children unusual names, are either quite attention seeking, or not very intelligent in my experience.

OP - I think if you are going to go for an ‘out there’ name, you should mix it with a more usual one. E.g
Lysander and Amelia
Hermione and George

If I heard of someone with twins called Hermione and Lysander, I would 100% judge them, and then it into an ‘I know someone who called their children...’ anecdote. And I am very middle class

Lysander and Cordelia would be nice :)