Cecilie

[name_f]My[/name_f] husband and i are pregnant with a girl and [name_f]Cecily[/name_f] is one of our top pix! I recently stumbled upon this alternative with an -ie and my husband prefers it. I find it aesthetically pleasing as well but am nervous about:

  1. Taking an already uncommon name and giving it a non standard spelling
  2. It getting mistaken for [name_f]Cecilia[/name_f] or [name_f]Cecile[/name_f]

I’m tempted to say it’s the preferred spelling across the pond (I’m in the US) as it seems to show up more there than here but i dunno what to think overall… how about you all?? :blush:

my instinct would be to pronounce it the [name_u]French[/name_u] way (seh-see-LEE).

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking an uncommon name and using a non-standard spelling for it, since she’d probably have to spell an uncommon name frequently anyway.

I do think it’s likely to get mistaken for [name_f]Cecilia[/name_f] or [name_f]Cecile[/name_f] more often than not, unfortunately. my sister is El!ana, and has come to anticipate that her name will be mistaken for Ela!na by everyone who reads it.

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It doesn’t look bad to me, but it’d give me pause in terms of how to pronounce it. [name_f]My[/name_f] first thought was that it’s pronounced like [name_f]Cecilia[/name_f], like how sometimes names in [name_m]German[/name_m] & [name_m]Dutch[/name_m] that end in -e are pronounced like they end in -ah. And my second thought was that it’s seh-see-LEE. It’s definitely not the end of the world for her to have to say “it’s [name_f]Cecilie[/name_f] with an ie” when she spells it, or to have to correct people who read it as [name_f]Cecilia[/name_f], I just personally don’t think it’s worth the trouble over a small aesthetic preference!

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I actually worked with a [name_f]Cecilie[/name_f] who loved her name! She said she had to spell it out for people but then again I have to spell out my name (a top 100 name for fifty+ years) anyway too.

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Cecilie feels very German to me, and to be precise, German vintage (the equivalent of Victorian style for English speaking people).

I picture a girl dressing in white and with a white ribbon, playing piano, reading, introvert, shy, from the 19th century Germany. She is a genius of the music. I like it more than Cecilia.

In order for me: Cecilie > Cécile / Cecily > Cicely > Cecilia > Cecelia

though if i met a cecilie in an english-speaking country i would pronounce her name like cecily, my instinctive pronunciation is much closer to cecilia (it’s like seh-SEEL-yeh), which is the standard pronunciation in scandinavia (as well as a lot of the rest of europe i think ??). as cecily, cecilie it looks a bit unbalanced and not-quite-right, and less neat and sparkly than cecily, but that might just be because i’ve loved the cecily spelling for a long time, so seeing her ‘experimented on’, as it were, feels a bit wrong. i’m in the uk, and cecily is definitely the more common spelling here. i can also definitely see cecilie getting mixed up for cecilia a lot, far more than i think cecily would. overall, while cecilie is pretty, she just feels like a bit of a downgrade from stunning cecily, which is one of my favourite names !!

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I would wonder if it was pronounced as seh-see-lee, seh-suh-lee, siss-uh-lee, or seh-seel-yah?

Still, I do think if I saw it without any accents and in the US, I might guess at it being said the same as [name_f]Cecily[/name_f].

I’d probably just stick with [name_f]Cecily[/name_f] personally :person_shrugging:

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