{"id":10519,"date":"2014-10-07T08:42:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T12:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=10519"},"modified":"2014-10-07T08:47:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T12:47:00","slug":"baby-name-to-consider-winsome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2014\/10\/07\/baby-name-to-consider-winsome\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Name to Consider: Winsome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I have no baby to name at the moment but always have names and words on the brain. I’d love to know what you and your readers think of Winsome as a name for a girl. I’ve decided it is about my favorite word in the English language and have started to wonder if it could work as a name. I wondered if maybe the Puritans used it, with their penchant for out-there virtue names, but I can’t find any evidence to suggest so in my limited searching. It seems like nicknames like Winny or Wynn could make it more wearable, but is it maybe still a bit too much?<\/p>\n

Thanks,
\nJodi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

My first association surprises me, because I’m familiar with the word winsome and I like it very much (a winsome smile, a winsome curl, a winsome glance)—and yet my first association when I said it aloud as a name was with wince and wincing. I wonder if it’s because I’m familiar with the word in books but I don’t use it in speaking? I continue to like the way it looks written down, but I liked it less when I said\/heard it.<\/p>\n

My second association, after I’d said it aloud a few more times, was “win some, lose some.”<\/p>\n

My third association was with the name Winston, which is a name I like. But perhaps because it’s a name I’m familiar with, while Winsome is not familiar to me, my tongue tangled over it—as if the name were supposed to be Winston and I were saying it wrong.<\/p>\n

The name is very uncommon (I looked in a sampling of Social Security data bases and didn’t find it in a single one, which means in the U.S. it was used 0-4 times in those years), but it HAS been used from time to time: I found references to Winsome Evans, Winsome McCaughey, Winsome Pinnick (Nameberry<\/a>); and Winsome Sears (The Baby Name Wizard<\/a>). I suspect that being familiar with one of those Winsomes would dramatically improve the name-like feel of the name.<\/p>\n

“Win” is a moderately familiar name segment, though not currently in style: Winifred, Winnie, Winston, Winter, Winslow, Winona, Darwin, Edwin, Irwin. The “some” segment is less familiar for names in the U.S.: Summer and Blossom were the only two I could come up with—but Summer was more common in 2013 than all the Win-\/-win names combined. Oh, wait, I forget about -wen\/-wan: some of those might count as Win-\/-win names, depending on local pronunciation: Owen, Rowen\/Rowan, Ewan—even Wendy and Gwyneth and Gwendolyn might increase the name-like quality of the sound.<\/p>\n

One thing that makes me nervous about many virtue names is that they seem to set such a clear expectation—and to make the wearer look a little foolish if that expectation isn’t met. A girl named Patience would have reason to assume that her parents expected her to exhibit that trait—and any time she ISN’T patient, she sets herself up for an easy joke. Winsome is less of an issue because the word is less familiar\/used than a word like patience, but I still feel it could be a bit of a burden for a serious sort of girl. The definition isn’t particularly appealing to me if I imagine it applied to myself: “Charming in a childlike or naive way” (American Heritage Dictionary<\/a>). Sweet on a small girl, but less so on an adult.<\/p>\n

I feel quite differently about it as a middle name. It’s in the category of names I sometimes wish I’d used for my own kids’ middles: something adventurous and fun and interesting.<\/p>\n

As a first name, I think I’d be more inclined to choose Winifred: you could use Winsome as a pet name without committing her to it.<\/p>\n

Let’s see what everyone else thinks:<\/p>\n

[yop_poll id=”59″]
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I have no baby to name at the moment but always have names and words on the brain. I’d love to know what you and your readers think of Winsome as a name for a girl. I’ve decided it is about my favorite word in the English language and have started to wonder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-to-consider"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2JF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10519"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10523,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10519\/revisions\/10523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}