Melisande and/or Octavia & Petrina

[Cortina]

I like Melisande (I think this appears in a French opera as well as an Enid Blyton book I remember from childhood)!

Not sure if anyone has ever heard of a child/baby with name? What are your thoughts?

Octavia - another on my list but I've gone off it since I heard someone shouting it in a shopping centre.

Coming around to Petrina but unsure?

Same here. I can remember the name of fictional characters but rarely a real person.

another story about Melisande

I love those Enid Blyton books. Never quite worked out how it was pronounced though. Just as it looks - Meli-sand? Meli-sandy? Meli-sahnd?

Quite right, headbanging, and then Jack tells Jane he's ashamed of her grubby fingernails and she starts 'training' her hair to be tidy with millions of hair grips

Petrina isn't bad actually. I don't think it trips off the tongue very easily but it's quite nice.

I really don't like the other two though.

I remember him saying that Tidey.Cheeky sod.

I'm sure in the Cherrytree Farm series that there's a scene where Penny and the other children are served a rabbit pie,knowing that it's made from rabbits that their uncle had shot out in the fields.And that it upsets Penny at first then her uncle has a talk about the damage that the rabbits cause and she decides to eat it.

I have no idea why my brain remembers such pointless little details.

Our car is called Octavia - Skoda Octavia!

Skoda have ruined it as a child's name for me.

O/T Re: Cherry Tree Farm, Six Bad Boys and Those Dreadful Children are actually some great EB reads and not very well known. The 'Secret' series (The Secret Island, The Secret of Moon Castle, The Secret of Killimoonin) are brilliant and well worth picking up on Ebay if you have children around 8.

The Adventure series is also under rated - The Castle my all time favourite. All much better than the Famous Five in my opinion (with the odd exception e.g. Five Go To Smuggler's Top).

I LOVE Melisande!!! Loved it since watching Flight of Dragons! I would definitely use it!

How is it pronounced in Flight of Dragons? Thanks

DH really wanted dd1 to be Melisande. It's Old French, apparently. I think it's really pretty, but we didn't use it in the end.

I rather love Petrina but only because I went to junior school with a really nice Petrina (who wasn't snobby or haughty or in any way like cat food or flea powder - in fact, she was the prettiest girl in the class and very kind to spoddy old me).