Name Spot of the Week: French Textbook

Today I received my new French textbook, to start my second year of ALevels. My teacher has decided to spend the last term ‘culturing’ us in the finer parts of French culture. Thus, we’re starting a DVD marathon, beginning with A Very Long Engagement, starring Audrey Tatou. Since I’m currently partially deaf, I didn’t get the benefit of the French, so spent some of the time flicking through the textbook, looking at the names:

Abdel

Albert

Alfred

Amélie

André

Angela

Antoine

Ariane

Arielle

Arthur

Aurélie

Brice

Bryan

Céline

Chantal

Clarisse

Clément

Coline

Didier

Dounia

Edgar

Edouard

Élise

Elysa

Éric

Fabio

Fatima

Félix

Fodé

Franck

Ibrahim

Jacques

José

Kamissa

Karima

Karine

Laetitia (umlaut on the e)

Laurent

Luc

Lucienne

Ludivine

Marek

Marie-Rose

Maryse

Mathilde

Mo

Nadja

Nastia

Nora

Óceane

Pierrick

Rachida

Romain

Rosalie

Samir

Samy

Sébastien

Sihem

Stefan

Tania

Than

Thierry

Toria

Xavier (the exam board LOVES this name)

Zahra

In other news, Jenson Button won the Canadian Grand Prix, snatching the lead from Sebastian Vettel in the final lap. I love the name Jenson, and reckon it’s going supernova for boys in the UK in the coming years. And at the moment, there are two Sebastian’s in the F1, Vettel and also Sebastien Buemi.

I watched the F1 from start to finish, despite the 2 and a half hour gap in the middle, when the torrential rain halted the race. That gave me time to contemplate names with associations with rain, which reminded me of Indra, meaning possessing raindrops. Perhaps one of my favourite name meanings.

England is famous for it’s rain, but you may have heard the news that parts of England now have official drought status; I live right on the edge of the drought area. Either way, Martin Brundle had his friend Ted running up and down the pitlane talking to various people for most of the two and half hours we had to wait. Then Jake Humphrey and Eddie Jordan cornered George Lucas for a chat. This had me contemplating a George/Ted sibset.

Butterfly is a name I secretly love, she has such a great sound to her, and any name that sounds fun to say is a fantastic name in my book. It was therefore a surprise to see the name Flutura on The Character of Names, which is the albanian word for butterfly.

Whenever I stumble upon a new blog that I enjoy, I always spend forever reading through the archives.

To be fair, I stumbled across Bewitching Names a few weeks ago, but a post caught my eye the other day, 13 Names for the Number 13. Although I don’t recommend Judas, Baudelaire raises a smile.  It makes for an interesting way to get the nickname Bo. I feel another list coming along.

With the new month of June upon us, I had a nudge from a family member to use the name Pearl, in honour of my Nana, who is called Margaret. It kind of feels unsettling that out of my cousins, I’m now the one most likely to have the next baby, ever since my cousin Ciara came out, and married a rather lovely lady (who has a cat named Edith).

Either way, I’ve coined a new nickname for sister#1: Hebeline. Although I’m thinking of starting to call her Hedwig, which is in no way like her actual name, Heather, but I know I’ll get bored of three-syllable Hebeline soon.