Alethea

[purplepanthers]

This is mine and DH favourite favourite name for our baby girl due mid October.
It is pronounced Alay-Thea and I just love it.
I think you are all going to hate it but come on, give me your thoughts

I knew a woman named this. She claimed she hated it - yet gave her dd the same name!!
Who did hate it and went by Lea (Lee)
Athena is much nicer imo!!

it is ok OP. I don't actively dislike it, but i'm not thinking it really grabs me. I can't see anything offensive or worrying about this name though.

Its ok. A bit bit of a mouthful. I can imagine friends will just nickname her Ally.

Do you mean Althea, OP?

Never heard of your version, but if you like it, use it. I would imagine your DD will get fed up of always having to pronounce it and spell it though.

Bit of a mouthful, I imagine it will get shortened to Thea, which is much nicer.

Ok that’s a better reaction than I anticipated.
No I do mean Alethea. It’s unusual but I love it.
It is the same amount of syllables as Amelia or Olivia, but I suppose the ‘th’ sound makes it more of a mouthful. Thank you everyone please keep replies coming. Food for thought.

I know two Alethea’s whose families both come from very conservative religious backgrounds. They are both known as Aleeetheeuh though.

There’s also a company where I lived called Alethea which is pronounced Aleetheeuh too.

I know one first letter I though!

In the 1960s I had a classmate called Alethea, pronounced Aleethea. This was rather unusual for an inner city secondary modern where we all Susan, Jean, Linda, Janet, etc!

One rather posh teacher insisted on pronouncing it Althea.

I think it's a nice name.

Yeah to be be honest when I first looked at it I did think it looked like it should be pronounced ‘Al-ee-thee-uh’ - not sure how you got ‘ay’ from the ‘e’. I think you’re right though, it’s the ‘th’ that makes it a bit of a mouthful as it’s also quite unfamiliar - but the more you say it the better it sounds really, I reckon it will grow on people. If you really like it, go for it.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Dh4t_hMi4

m.youtube.com/watch?v=_NiBaQwh9ys

That’s how the Aletheas I know pronounce it except they are from the UK not American!

When you hear it like that it sounds like a Spanish pronounciation of Alicia.

She’s going to be forever correcting peoples pronunciation of her name.

It is a pretty name. However I would be wary. I met a little girl with this name at speech & language therapy sessions. She had difficulty forming a number of sounds and her name sounded like a terrible lisp. I'm fairly sure lots of people assumed she was mispronouncing the name Alicia when she introduced herself.

It's a lovely name.

I much prefer the lay rather than lee pronunciation, so if I were to use it would you spell it Alathea?

Colleague at work has a daughter named Alethea. Lovely name

I quite like it - would have guessed the pronunciation wrong though (eeethea)
I think the nicknames Thea & Ally are both sweet

I used to think it sounded like a lisp too

I'd assume Alethea was A-lee-thea, and I'm northern so Alathea would be Al-a-thea, to rhyme with cat. I'm not sure you'd automatically get Alay-thea out of Alethea but if you don't mind telling people over and over...

Love the name

I don't like it to be honest, I accept it's a legitimate name but it just doesn't sound right to me. Saying that, if you like it go for it but with that spelling she will end up being al-eeee-thea for sure. To get the sound you want you'd need to spell it Alaithea or something?