I have been noticing afresh how much difference there can be between two names that are technically very very similar. For example:<\/p>\n
Addison and Edison
\nAddison and Allison
\nAllison and Ellison<\/p>\n
Everly and Beverly<\/p>\n
Jane and Jean and Joan and June
\nJoan and John
\nJane and Jade
\nJade and Jude<\/p>\n
David and Davis<\/p>\n
Liam and Leah
\nLeo and Leah
\nMila and Milo
\nChloe and Cleo<\/p>\n
Alex and Axel<\/p>\n
Scarlet and Charlotte<\/p>\n
You can imagine that someone who came into this situation without being familiar with any of these names might struggle to understand why one of them was in fashion and another was dated, why one was “for girls” and one was “for boys,” why one was a certain style and the other was a completely different style, why one was twenty times as popular as the other, why someone might love one name and not like a similar name even a little bit.<\/p>\n
I’m less interested (though still interested) in the ones that feel like feminine\/masculine versions of a name: I feel as if we could readily understand that distinction even if were were suddenly dropped into a set of names we’d never encountered before. I’m more interested in the ones such as Everly\/Beverly, where one is modern, surnamey, and in style, and the other is dated (though poised for its next surge) and not currently in style. Or Scarlet\/Charlotte, where the sound difference is so small, but the style difference is huge. Or David\/Davis, where the former is so familiar the eye can just skip right over it in the name book and most of us know a ton of Davids\/Daves, but the latter is fresh and fits well with the current surname style.<\/p>\n
I’m interested in situations where a dated\/tired name was completely revived by changing a letter, changing a vowel, or changing the ending. Laura to Lauren. Allison to Ellison. Judy to Jude. Jason to Mason and Jace. It’s funny how this feels like something we could easily do ourselves to come up with new fresh options, but as soon as I start looking at names, I see how difficult it is. Cora to Coren? Addison to Ammison, or to Addisey? Avery to Aver? Jackson to Mackson? No.<\/p>\n
I don’t have a question per se, but wondered if you too would be interested in discussing this: mentioning Surprisingly Similar Pairs, and\/or trying your hand at modifying overly familiar names to make them fresh and new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been noticing afresh how much difference there can be between two names that are technically very very similar. For example: Addison and Edison Addison and Allison Allison and Ellison Everly and Beverly Jane and Jean and Joan and June Joan and John Jane and Jade Jade and Jude David and Davis Liam and […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-49X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15993","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=15993"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16007,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15993\/revisions\/16007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}