{"id":16628,"date":"2024-06-09T08:35:57","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T12:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=16628"},"modified":"2024-06-12T06:53:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T10:53:18","slug":"baby-name-to-discuss-audra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2024\/06\/09\/baby-name-to-discuss-audra\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Name To Discuss: Audra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

I know you must be inundated with name requests but wonder if you would be able to provide even just a brief explanation of the vibe you feel for the name Audra. My husband and I are seriously considering it for our baby girl but aren’t able to rule it in or out definitively as it is uncommon and not a name we heard before we started looking at baby names.<\/p>\n

I have seen you list it as an option in many of your posts but it’s unclear to me the reason it is suggested. I have read its entry in “The Baby Name Wizard” book and am still uncertain. Is it vintage-y? Sort of a modern classic? I have scoured baby name forums and can’t really pinpoint the vibe that it presents to most people. I have test driven the name to friends and strangers – reactions are mostly neutral, as it seems most people are unfamiliar with the name but there have been effusive reactions among them “gorgeous!”. We are in Canada so I don’t know if it’s more known in the US but I would assume it’s similar. I suppose my question is very similar to your recent post “Baby Name to Discuss: Gemma<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Thank you so much for reading!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Oh, yes, this is another good one to get a collective response on. I think I tend to suggest Audra when it feels like the parents are looking for a name that is approachable and not too difficult to pronounce or spell, yet not a modern invented name, and also not something they’re likely to encounter in the wild. It’s familiar from the similar-sounding name Audrey; and when I encountered it on the one person I’ve ever encountered it on, I found it easy to learn.<\/p>\n

The one Audra I know of has a brother named Ev@n, which to me indicates that the parents have a different style for boy names than for girl names. I’d be more curious to know what sister names we’ve heard of for Audra.<\/p>\n

I don’t have a strong feeling about the name’s style. I would put it with other unusual choices such as Gemma, Willa, Bianca, Nadia. For popularity reasons alone, I wouldn’t put it with Sophia, Olivia, etc., but I don’t think those are a style clash. I would be similarly unlikely to put it with names such as Elizabeth, Catherine, Margaret—but again, I wouldn’t say it was a clash. I would say it clashes with modern unisex sister names such as Bailey, Riley, Logan, Ryan, Everly. Well, and not just the unisex ones, because I would also say it clashes with names such as Brinley, Kinsley, Paisley, Keelyn.<\/p>\n

According to the Social Security Administration<\/a>, the name’s usage in the United States has been fairly rare, and it’s been out of the Top 1000 for over two decades. There’s an interesting little thing where it dropped out of the Top 1000 in 1939, and then reappeared in 1966 already at #283—a very sudden and successful reappearance! I searched online for “Audra 1965” and found it was the name of a character played by Linda Evans on the TV show The Big Valley, which aired from 1965-1969. The name hung around for awhile in the 200s\/300s\/400s ranks, dropping out of the Top 500 by the late 1980s, and then out of the Top 1000 a little over a decade later. In 2023, the name Audra was given to 108 new baby girls in the U.S.; that’s similar to the current usage of the names Mildred, Odessa, and Yvette.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don’t have your copy of The Baby Name Wizard<\/a> at hand, here is the entry for Audra:<\/p>\n

This pretty, old-fashioned name had its revival 25 years ahead of the pack. Audra is the only name you’ll find in both the Stately Antiques and ’70s-’80s categories. The result is a name that can fit with many different styles but truly stands alone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s odd to me that it WOULD be in the ’70s-’80s category, since Audra’s absolute highest rank during those years was #300; its lowest was #579. Filing it with the other popular names from that era (Melissa, Michelle, Amy, Nicole, Kimberly) doesn’t make much sense; and it doesn’t seem like a Mom Name to me now, the way those other former hits do. (Pretty soon we’re going to have to start calling those Grandma Names.) The one Audra I know was born in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

How does the name Audra strike YOU? Where WOULD you file it? What sister names would you imagine it going with? Do you know any real-life Audras, and do they have siblings, especially sisters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, I know you must be inundated with name requests but wonder if you would be able to provide even just a brief explanation of the vibe you feel for the name Audra. My husband and I are seriously considering it for our baby girl but aren’t able to rule it in or out […]<\/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-16628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4kc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16628","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=16628"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16639,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16628\/revisions\/16639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}