Are hyphenated first names a bad idea?

[NannyOgg26]

Are hyphenated first names a bad idea? There are a couple that we like, but I've heard people be quite disparaging about hyphenated names before. The ones we are considering are
Anne-Marie and Amy-Beth.

The Anne-Marie I know gets called Amrie for some reason now!
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Yes.

My friend has the same name as you - everyone calls her MJ.

The Anne-Marie I know gets called Amrie for some reason now!
I knew an Anne-Marie as a kid. I thought her name was Emery.

Thanks everyone, it looks like there are very mixed opinions on hyphenated names.

What's Balonz?

A very popular name for boys.

I know two people with hyphenated names. One like Anne-Marie and one like Poppy-May. Both go by their full names so it is possible to have the whole thing used.

I don’t like them. But I also think double barrelled surnames are naff. Just personal preference. All my DC have 1st name surname no middles

It is a name which, like strict rules about hyphenated names, is known only to MN!

It was a thread where the name Balonz was floated as a baby name. I think it turned out to be two men actually - joke thread. Someone might correct that, but in any case, it is the archetypal MN version of a ridiculous yoonique name.

It's quite a fun read if you're bored: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/baby_names/2197937-Help-Difficult-choice-of-boys-names-Sean-Daniel-or-Balonz

I think it depends on whether the component names are more traditional or not. Marie-Anne or Sarah-Jane have a very different vibe to Keely-Mae or Mia-Jade. The latter are likely to feel very dated in a few years time.

There's also the cutesy ones which I think are maybe a wee bit overused, even when objectively lovely names (I'd hazard a guess there are a lot of hyphenated Mollys, Lilys, and Graces out there!)

I knew a Siobhan-Marie at school and of course everyone just called her Siobhan, and she was forever going "it's Siobhan-Marie actually". She was also incredibly annoying, so I'm afraid it's rather put me off the hyphenated format in general.

Yes they’re a bad idea. Amy-Beth is like something from the Deep South circa 1975.

It's just down to taste. I hate them, but others love them.

Chav bingo.

Extra points if you go for yooneek spelling.

I like hyphenated names and I have never understood why many people on here don't. You get to choose two names instead of one; and you can make any number of interesting combinations using quite ordinary names.

They end up going by one name so seems pointless really. I say this and my daughter’s name is hyphenated. If I could change her name I would. I would remove the hyphenated part and separate them. I don’t even call her by her first legal name.

I will not have a word said against my beloved Millicent Margaret Amanda. I love those stories to this day. The time when she looked after Horace is my favourite.

I know siblings with double barrel first names and surnames. They're sweet children but I do wonder how they will be judged as adults.

I teach 3 Gracie-May/Mai/Mae's (different classes) all known as Gracie. I think hyphenated names are not as fashionable today.
Anne-Marie or Anna-Maria are 'real' names

This is pretty usual though, I went to school with a Sarah-Jane, a Sarah-Louise known as Louise and a Mary-Kate known as Kate. They all said that their parents had named them this because the names the other way around sounded odd, which they do. You never hear of a Louise Sarah, for example.

I have a hyphenated first name but I only use the first bit. Nobody calls me by it and not many people know they are my first names.

I went to school with a few double names of the Sarah-Jane variety, almost all known as just "Sarah" etc. But at 14 one of them was called Diane; at 17 she was Diana-Jayne; now she's just Diana. :)

I once had a joke name dictionary which said that when you are 14 half your contemporaries are called Julie. By 25 they are all Julia..I guess it was a similar situation.

I also had a friend whose little sister had a fairly classic pair of names - think "Caroline Ann" or the like. Always known as "Carrie", but in a sort of joke reprimand they called her "Carrie-Ann" if she'd been mildly naughty, which a few turned their noses up as American, not realising it wasn't actually her full name.

They usually aren't interesting and often the combinations don't work.
Even if it sounds pretty, they're often a bit silly e.g. Ivy-Rose (two unrelated plants) or Violet-Rose.

Often the combination is clunky (Elsie-Skye, Isla-Marie) or the names run into each other and you don't hear the two names just a combination like the Amarie/Emory example.

@LilyLemonade ,do you have examples of ones that work?

I don't mind them for non-Brits but they're dated, I think.

My friend is Marianne and that works better than Mary-Anne I think. They’re pronounced differently of course but one flows better than the other.

This kind of thing:
Anna-Francesca
Claire-Louise
Lisa-Marie
Katie-Jo
Sarah-Joy
Mary-Eliza
David-James
John-Paul
I'm sure there are many more interesting ones but I like how the combination makes the ordinary name a little more unique if you see what I mean.