How would you perceive a girl called Mabel?

[Homeontherangeuk]

Ttc & Mabel was on my list the past two times? How would you picture a Mabel?

I can only picture an old woman who grew up in the Edwardian era. Mabel, Doris and Ivy off to have afternoon tea.

I love it, I knew a wonderful Mabel so all really positive for me. I am surprised it isn’t more popular, especially as Russell Brand I think named his daughter Mabel.

@Lemur12

I think it's a very pretty name and very sweet for a little girl. I do struggle with seeing a grown woman with this name - it doesn't seem particularly 'strong' and, for me, it does have slight cow-like associations, in the same way that Daisy does... I much prefer the Welsh version - Mabli, pronounced Mab-lee.

I’m the opposite. I struggle to see a modern day baby or school child with this name.

I'm sorry I think it's a truly awful name. I can't understand its resurgence. As for how I would picture a Mabel, I imagine someone who would be the spotty, awkward one in an Enid Blyton boarding school story.

“‘Tis Mabel!”
“Yes, ‘tis Mabel!”

Etc. But I am very old,.
Love the name by the way!

great name
i looked after a mabel in her 90s, no teeth, cockney

I quite dislike this name but I would treat the unfortunate bearer as an individual. Is it more professional class parents than anything else?

That her parents were wannabe hipster types - sorry you did ask!

it's a lovely name, I think it's the sound, close to May Belle, nice and soft but not frilly. I don't have little children so I don't know if it's popular.

re the older mabel, i used to have great fun giving her a table and telling her, here's a table mabel

I personally think Maggie is an adorable name less try hard than Mabel

Helen MacDonald called her goshawk Mabel... because falconers have a superstition that names like Killer or Spike will make their hawk into a jinxed lazy lousy hunter. They try to call their falcons a name which is the opposite of the personality they want in the animal. The more ruthless the killer, the more benign the name given. I'd try to think of the playful powerful assertive hawk called Mabel. Not a dozy lumbering boring docile cow, which is my first prejudice.

Love Maggie, too. Classic.

As a scullery maid in downton abbey.

Tbh, if your other daughters have M names, I would go with a different initial letter for this one.

My friend has a 25 year old Mabel. It seemed really old fashioned and unusual to me when she was a child, and I wasn't keen on the name. She is clever and successful and the name has grown on me.

It’s very frilly/extremely feminine to me - I’d picture her in a pink gingham dress with pigtails and a Barbie.

Love it but becoming very popular. Know three born in the last few months.

I have a Mabel. I get a lot of compliments on her name. I don’t really see it as hipster though!

I wanted old fashioned and something I didn’t know of any. There’s now been 3 other babies of mutual friends that had gone on to have a Mabel and it’s a bit annoying, but I should have known 😁

I’d like a Martha or even an Agatha next.

Frumpy dumpy provincial.

Not a fan - just too twee, granny-ish, dowdy for me.

It's my middie name. I think it sounds like dribble. It maybe wouldn't be so bad if it was pronounced more like may-bell

I would assume she had recently-middle-class aspirational parents who were trying to fit in with all the other vaguely left wing vegetarian professionals at their older child Wilfred’s nursery.

@GodolphinHorne

I would assume she had recently-middle-class aspirational parents who were trying to fit in with all the other vaguely left wing vegetarian professionals at their older child Wilfred’s nursery.

What an odd remark. How, from the name alone, could you be so sure Mabel’s parents weren’t established middle-class professionals who chose the name not out of aspiration, but because they liked it?

Is there some rule that says working class parents can’t call their kid Mabel?