Names you LOVE but would never choose...

[poppymango]

For example:

A name associated with a famous celebrity

Something gorgeous but very obviously from a movie/book franchise

Something that sounds way too posh (or not!)

Etc.

I loved the name Merida (from the movie Brave) and was very disappointed to learn that it's not actually a real Scottish name at all! Naming your daughter after a Disney princess seems like something you may regret.

I also saw a TV show once with a character called Persephone, Percy for short. I love it but we are in no way posh enough to pull it off. Sigh.

What are yours?

I love Gianluca but unfortunately I'm not Italian.....

Tatiana, Honor, Valentina, Xanthe, Isadora, Isolde, Ophelia, Storm, Bianca, Lorelai, Camille, Ines, Natalia, Rosabel, Lucia…….
I had one dd and she has none of these names

Tahlie / Stella / Storie / Valentine / Arlie for girls. Love Roman and Cassius for boys.

Aviva, beautiful Hebrew name but sadly also the insurance company.

I know lots of kids with names others have mentioned! I did go for relatively unusual names myself.

Ha I also liked Ira for a boy and have an ancestor of that name but my son is half Irish so... Nope.

Indiana
Athena
Aurora
Assumpta
Santiago

Ptolemy nn Tolly or Tibault pronounced Tee bo for boys.

Imogen or Rain for girls.

I love tuppence for a girl, but apparently it’s a nickname for vagina… I still love it but other half says absolutely not.

I also love felix, but apparently that’s for cats only.

and raffi, but it makes other half think “riffraff”

i also liked Aubrey, Amos, Fabian, Auden for boys; Tabitha, Quinn, Bridget and Penelope for girls. Other half prefers Tom and Suzie!

I love Rue and Mallory but I don't like their meanings - regret and bad!
Sunday is also a guilty pleasure name but I would never be brave enough to use it.

I can only think all the “nothing would stop me using the name I love” people are either very extroverted themselves and assume their children will be too or have enough cash for a really good private school!

I mean I love names like Persephone as well - it sounds beautiful. But if you’re a shy, introverted kid or attend a rough comp like many of the people I know did, then I think it might be a nightmare - so I don’t blame you OP. Really Fabulous names are what pets are for imo, let’s try to give our kids as easy a time as we can 🤣

For me it’s Cassiopeia or Guinevere - same reason as Persephone, I think you have to be wealthy or have a particular personality to pull them off but gosh they sound gorgeous.

Also Nikita - I get an image of a kick ass, chic woman with a funky/cool name. But others seem to find it chavvy, unless on a boy. So potentially unfair to a DD.

For boys, maybe Corin? Nice Shakespeare link and sound but too close to female Corinne. Also really adore Maxim but everyone on here goes on about the men’s magazine which might put me off in case it caused issues in RL.

Oh forgot Virginia - so classic and unused and with fab nn’s. But the Virgin thing is gonna be a problem in school isn’t it? 😢

I love Charlie for a boy but it’s so popular that I just couldn’t use it. I think popularity is the only thing that puts me off a name.

I have a Felicity ☺

Names I liked but wouldn't use were

Ophelia
Constance
Clemence

Maximilian

Miley
Arianna

I actually am not a fan of either singer; I just happen to really like both names (especially love Arianna) but I cringe at the thought that people would think I had named my child after the singer. Especially as I’m the right age/generation to be a fan, obviously nothing wrong with being a fan of them but I’m just not so I don’t like the association .

Also love Dahlia, but only the typical American pronunciation and not the English one. (Darlia vs daylia)

These were two of the three girls names we had for our daughter, ended up calling her iris after our wedding song (at least the names not in the actual lyrics to this one!)

O and i adore the name Aslan for a boy, but we don’t have any Turkish ancestry.

Keir. I loved it when very few people had ever heard of him. It's kinda ruined for me now and I'm not even British.

Isla, same. Loved it donkey's years ago. Too overused now.

You could pretend it's after the book or the Irish band?

I loved Cohen for a boy, but wouldn't use as it can be considered offensive to Jewish people given its meaning within that religion.

Also loved Genevieve for a girl, but not posh enough! Similarly, Juliette.

Mariette, Valentina, Pablo, Fernando Georgiana…. the list goes on. I’m Mediterranean so my child could have pulled any of the more European ones off but DH nixed them. My daughter still has a very frilly name though.

I love the Italian name Massimo, with the pause of the double s. No way we are cool enough to pull that off though, and not Italian sadly.

Raffi, Raymond, Desmond, Ginger/Virginia, Georgia, Willa. All vetoed by DH :-)

Berengaria - Richard the Lion Heart's wife & the least well known Queen of England. Loved it since I was a kid but it's quite long and didn't like Berry or Gary as diminutives. So DD1 has it at a middle name.

Ophelia & several others that started with I or O but would have sounded silly / too alliterative with our surname.

Wilberforce, Horatio or Boris if we'd had boys. Particularly glad we didn't use Boris after Johmson's selfish & self indulgent time as PM.

Also love the name Raven for a girl but/because it sounds a bit witchy.
Cassia which I think means cinnamon which I have in everything

Hero was our top name for years but we had a boy first and called him Gilbert. Hero just didn't work with his name so it took a back seat when I was around seven months with our second baby so I'm currently feeding Marcella 😅

If G had been a girl he would definitely have been called Hero.

The only names I really ruled out were ones my husband hated or ones that I liked but were too popular.