Anelie

We continue our week with a name who really seems like she should be popular – but isn’t.

First glance at Anelie and you can’t not draw comparisons to the current (2013) England&Wales top name: Amelia; especially when you consider Amelia’s french form of Amelie is only one letter different. But that one letter is all it takes. Whilst Amelie is riding off the curtails of Amelia, ranking at #52 in 2013, the name Anelie is not only a non-ranker, but a never-ranker, also. In my mind, that more than qualifies her for this series of offbeat names, since she’s so like such popular names – yet barely used in her own right.

The name Amelia first hit the top spot for girls in England&Wales in 2011, and speculation has it that her rise in popularity is due to Doctor Who companion Amelia ‘Amy’ Pond. Despite almost 1500 less girls being given the name in 2013, the name Amelia remains at the top spot.

Whilst both Amelia and Anelie share roots in the Germanic language, they do not share a common root. The name Amelia derives from the Germanic name Amala, which means work. Anelie on the other hand is a German diminutive of Anneliese; the name Anneliese is a combination of two names :

• Anna. She comes from the Hebrew name Channah, and means gracious.
• Liese. A Dutch and German diminutive of Elisabeth, who means my God is my oath.

Whilst the name Anelie herself does not rank, two slightly different respellings of her do (albeit not spectacular high up):

• Annelie. Not only a German diminutive of Anneliese, but also Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. She ranks at #4050.
• Anneli. A Finnish diminutive of Anna (not Anneliese) who ranks at #4739.

When it comes to nicknames, the obvious choices are Annie and Nell, who both enjoy reasonable mainstream success, ranking at #125 and #345, respectively. That lends a familiarity to the name.

I think the big thing that might hold people back from using Anelie is a worry that people will want to try to correct your babes names to Amelie. I think it’s a moot point, since only the other day I was on the phone to Virgin Media, and the customer services man decided that Louis suited me better than Lucy. Since I was more concerned with sorting out my broadband contract, I didn’t bother correcting him, although it’s bemusing to think that even my former Top 10 name can be misheard. But that could just be my accent, more than anything.

At the end of the day, Anelie remains an intriguing name that is desperately underused. If we can find it in our hearts to love the likes of Amelie and Amelia en masse, then surely there’s a place for Anelie, also.

Name Spot of the Week: Sailing Across the Sea

The Team GB Sailing Team for 2012, from dailymail.co.uk

A few days ago the Team GB sailing team was announced for the 2012 London Olympics. I’ll admit that I’m a rower, not a sailor – I was one of the many Brits who had never heard of the Yngling class of sailing until we won a gold medal in it at Beijing. For the 2010 Olympics, it’s being replaced by the Elliott 6m. Other names of sailing classes?

We have the Finn class which has been dominated by Ben Ainslie in the past few years. By coincidence, he’s been covered in much detail over at My Advice this week. A quick selection of the names of other classes in the world of sailing gives us: Tempest, Soling, Dragon, Firefly, Corsair and Buzz. If any sailors read this post, and are offended that I’ve missed out their class, I’ll repeat that I’m no expert in sailing, so feel free to add your own list in the comments section and put me to shame.

Sticking firmly to the sailing theme, the names of the sailers which have been selected are quite interesting – the stand out one for me being Saskia Clark. The other selected few were, in alphabetical order:

Andrew Simpson

Annie Lush

Ben Ainslie

Bryony Shaw

Hannah Mills

Iain Percy

Kate MacGregor

Lucy MacGregor

Nick Dempsey

I’ve been hoarding Metro newspapers for the past fortnight of so, not just because I’ve yet to have time to the sudokus, but because I keep forgetting I’m holding them until it’s too late and I’m off the bus. Something I’ve been wanting to mention for awhile, though, is the name of one of the characters on it’s cartoon page: Nemi.

I have been reading the articles in the Metro though, and there was a new story in the Metro this week about a family who built their own ‘hobbit house’ in four months for a couple of grand. The creative parents behind the project, Simon and Jasmine Dale, have two young children: Cosmo and Elsie.

I casually mentioned Warby Parker as an inspiration behind a Names of the Week post from the start of the month, and this week Kristen over at Marginamia went one step further, bringing you the names of the entire collection.

Dancing with the Stars kicked off in the States this week, whilst we’re still waiting for Strictly Come Dancing to begin here in the UK. Not that I watch it, since dancing is for girls 😉 Either way, a quick rundown of some of the notable names of professionals who’ve taken part in the series at some stage or another:

Aliona Vilani

Anton du Beke

Artem Chigvintsev

Erin Boag

Flavia Cacace

Izabela Hannah

Jared Murillo

Katya Virshilas

Lilia Kopylova

Ola Jordan

Pasha Kovalev

Ice Hockey is more of my thing, even though I don’t own a season ticket as my Uncle does. I tagged along with him to the Panthers game last night, so now seems an apt time to mention that we have a player named Guillaume. I love the name Guillaume, sometimes more than William, sometimes less (Guillaume is the French form of William). For the confused, it’s gee-OM.

Let’s end on a cheery note by mentioning Nook’s list of names meaning wealth, good fortune, success of happiness – inspired by a look into the rune name Feoh. Tomiko? Aston? Love.

Babies in the early ’90s

Let’s number-crunch. Courtesy of my sister, I got my hands on the class lists for her year (grade) at school. The names totalled around 150, and when we factor in the sixth form class list, who are two years older, we have a reasonably sized data covering popular baby names for catholics (catholic school) in England in the early 1990s:

British Babies Born Circa 1990-1994

BOYS – ALPHABETICALLY

Aidan +Aiden

Alexander x3 +Alistair +Alisdair

Andrew x2

Ashley x2

Benjamin x2 +Ben

Bryn +Finn

Christopher x2

Connor +Conor

David x4

Hugo +Hugh +Huw

Jack x5

Jacob +Jakub

James x7

John +Jonathan

Joseph x7 +Joe

Joshua x2

Frederick + Freddie

Matthew x2 +Matteaus

Michael x4

Ryan x2

Theodore +Theo

Thomas x7

William x2 +Liam x2

BOYS – NUMERICALLY (3 or more)

Joseph et al = 8

James = 7

Thomas = 7

Daniel = 6

Alexander et al = 5

Jack = 5

Michael = 4

William et al = 4

Benjamin et al = 3

Hugo et al = 3

Matthew et al = 3

GIRLS – ALPHABETICALLY

Alexandra x2 +Alexa

Alice x2 +Alicia

Amy x2

Ana + Anne +Joanne +Leanne +Rhian +Roxanne

Beatrice +Beatrix x2

Cara +Clare +Clara

Caroline +Karolina

Chloe x3

Eleanor x3 +Ellen x2 +Helen x2 +Helena

Elizabeth +Eliza

Emma x2 +Emily

Esther +Esme

Eugenie x2

Frances x2

Hannah x2

Hayley x2

Jennifer x3

Jessica x3

Kathryn +Catherine +Katie x2

Laura x5 +Lauren

Lucy x4

Lily x2 +Lila +Lillian +Lilia

Maria x2 +Marie

Molly +Mollie

Natasha +Sasha x2

Olivia x3

Sarah +Sara

Sophie x3

Vanessa x2

GIRLS – NUMERICALLY (3 or more)

Eleanor et al = 8

Ana et al = 6

Lily et al =5

Kathryn et al = 4

Lucy = 4

Alexandra et al = 3

Beatrice et al = 3

Cara et al = 3

Chloe = 3

Emma et al = 3

Jennifer = 3

Jessica = 3

Natasha et al = 3

Olivia = 3

Philippa = 3

Sophie = 3

MALE/FEMALE

Daniel x6 +Danielle

George x2 +Georgina

Harry +Hattie +Harriet

Phillip +Philippa x3

Valentino +Valentina

THE IRISH GANG

Sean x2 +Shaun +Sian

Sinead +Seamus +Roisin +Bronagh +Lorcan +Ciara x2 +Niall

Patrick x2

THE NOTABLES

The prevalence of Irish names is not taken as uncommon in a catholic school.

Jack was outnumbered by several names: Joseph, James and Thomas. He began his stay at the top of the UK Top 100 list at the end of the decade. Two of the Jacks had the same surname.

Both of the Ashley’s, born when America embraced the name as a female one, were male.

The Eugenie’s were born just after Princess Eugenie, and the Beatrice/trixes born after Princess Eugenie’s sister: Princess Beatrice.

Non of the Lucy’s were a Lucille, Lucienne etc. They were all just Lucy.

The Emma’s outnumbered the Emily.

From personal knowledge:

-None of the Philippa’s in the list shortens their name to Pippa.

-All of the Eleanor’s were nicknamed Ellie.

* In the interests of not boring you all to death with an endless list of data, any name on the class lists which appeared once, without a similar name has been omitted from the data. This accounts for around 30 names out of the roughly estimated 240 names.