[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:
Taking an already uncommon name and giving it a non standard spelling
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??
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.
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!
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.
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 !!