A friend is planning to name her baby girl Chlo” (or [name]Chloe[/name], without the diaresis). She prefers Chlo”, and after researching the name, she thinks that is a more accurate spelling of the name – with “the dots” which indicate that ‘o’ and ‘e’ are pronounced separately. She has read the pros and cons of each way of writing Chlo”/[name]Chloe[/name], but is unable to find any indication of an approximate percentage of girls with this name whose legal name is written as Chlo”. She wonders how common this spelling is and if it is more common in some countries than others, knowing that the name is very popular in all the English speaking countries. She lives in the U.S. [name]Do[/name] you know girls named Chlo”? [name]Do[/name] you see any problem with using that spelling?
[name]Chloe[/name] is presently ranked #10 in popularity, and of all the [name]Chloe[/name]'s I’ve ever met (I can think of about 10 off the top of my head), none have spelled their name with the diaresis. (I don’t know how to get one to appear on screen.) 
If your friend thinks that it’s important to use the diaresis, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing so, but by the same token, I do think that it will cause more problems than it’s worth (especially if she lives in the U.S.), because little [name]Chloe[/name] (with diaresis) will likely spend her entire life correcting people who neglet to spell her name with the diaresis. Because [name]Chloe[/name] is so popular, I think it’s safe to say that everyone knows that the o and e are pronounced separately. (And the same goes for [name]Zoe[/name].)
I looked on the Social Security site, and while [name]Chloe[/name] and its various spellings are listed, none of the spellings have the diareses. (Granted, Social Security may not record this aspect of the name.)
That said, I’ve never met a [name]Chloe[/name] in the U.S. with the diaresis, and I’m guessing that for [name]Chloe[/name] to have made it into the top ten, the majority of parents either opted not to use the diaresis or were simply unaware of the potential for a diaresis.
Best wishes to you and your friend!
I don’t think you will find anyone using the emphasis over the o and e in the English speaking world.
[name]Chloe[/name] [name]Skye[/name] makes a lovely combo in case she hasn’t thought of a mn yet.
I’m a french canadian and we write the name “[name]Chloe[/name]” like this : Chlo”. I think that all of the spelling are nice…my favorite’s Chlo” because I’m more used to it. 
But I like them all.
Thanks for the responses. From those (and since no one has posted that she does know a Chlo”) – and from internet searches, it appears that the vast majority of American girls/women with this name spell it without the dieresis (“dots”). This indicates that [name]Chloe[/name] is the standard spelling in this country. It occurred to me after reading [name]Jill[/name]'s post that using the dieresis (Chlo”) would have a similar result to using a “creative” spelling for a name (which I’m never in favor of): constantly stating how one’s name is spelled differently from the usual/expected way.
The parents have decided to use the standard spelling. The baby’s name will be [name]Chloe[/name] [name]Jane[/name] (no dieresis; [name]Jane[/name] is a family name).
I [name]LOVE[/name] [name]Chloe[/name] [name]Jane[/name], [name]Ellen[/name]! (And for what it’s worth, I don’t view the dots as a yooneek spelling form. I think the diaresis looks very classy, but I guess I just think it’s more trouble than it’s worth.)
Best wishes to you, your friends, and Miss [name]Chloe[/name] [name]Jane[/name]!
[name]Jill[/name], I don’t view the dieresis as a yooneek spelling either. In fact, I think that Chlo” may be the more accurate way to spell the name. But after reading your post, it occurred to me that the end result of using the dieresis is a name that is written differently from the expected way and therefore, Chlo” would have to repeatedly explain how her name is spelled – “with 2 dots over the e” – just as if her parents had given her a kreatif spelling.
I was interested in your comments about SSA baby name grouping too. I looked at their website to see if there was any mention of what they do with accent marks added to names (I think some Spanish names have these too), but could find no mention of it. My hunch is that they disregard them and as long as the letters of a name are the same – like Chlo” and [name]Chloe[/name] – the names are seen as being identical.
I like your enthusiasm for the name [name]Chloe[/name] [name]Jane[/name] and will pass that along. I love it too!
[name]Hi[/name], [name]Ellen[/name]! I agree with everything you wrote, and understand now what you mean about the yooneek issue.
I really do love [name]Jane[/name] with [name]Chloe[/name] (I think it’s very elegant!), and wish you all the best!
I love [name]Chloe[/name] [name]Jane[/name] too. Totally beautiful!
Update on my friends who are naming their baby girl Chlo” [name]Jane[/name]: they’ve decided to write her name as Chlo” – with the diaeresis – because they believe that’s the more accurate way to do so. The mother-to-be explained that their Chlo” will then have the option of using “the dots” or not.
I was hoping some UK Nameberry readers would weigh in on this topic. Since that hasn’t happened, I’ve done further internet research on the name. My conclusion is that Chlo” is more usual in the UK than in the USA and may be the preferred spelling in the UK. I found several UK baby name websites that when listing the top names record Chlo” with the diaeresis. I came across two baptisms on the same day, same church, of Chlo” [name]Summer[/name] and Chlo” [name]Elizabeth[/name] and a reference on a ministry for women website to Chlo” in the Bible. And then there’s Chlo” [name]Smith[/name], youngest Member Parliament. That said, what about the use of the diaeresis in the United States? I’m guessing it’s far less common than in the UK, yet it’s used here too. I found a baby name website that gives Chlo” as the preferred spelling of the name (babynamesworld): “Chlo” (which is also written as [name]Chloe[/name], without the accent)…” and “Chlo” also edged her way into the top 10 most popular names for the first time ever”. I suspect that SSA omits all accent marks when tallying name popularity and considers [name]Chloe[/name] and Chlo” as the same name. I personally prefer the latter.
It might not be really her option. ” is not a letter on the American keyboard and many places that enter or print your name do not bother to account for it. I had to type five keys to get one letter. Names with hyphens or apostrophes stand a much better chance, just as a matter of fact, because those marks are on the keyboard, and would only be rejected by databases that reject characters that aren’t letters on the name.
EX: Whereas Chlo” and her best friend [name]Ana[/name]-T”resa put their names in for class president, when the list was printed up and posted to the bulletin board, they will be called [name]Chloe[/name] and [name]Ana[/name]-[name]Teresa[/name]. The hyphen stays, the diacritics are out. She can put whatever she wants on her campaign materials.
People typing these things in will rarely put in the effort to fish around their character map in the US. In other countries, I understand they have foreign keys on their keyboard - only which are common to their language and spelling, so Chlo”'s name would be spelled different than she intends it in some other countries as well (were she to go there/live there whatever).
Chlo” may care to type in the alt-0235 making her five-letter name into a 9-keystroke name (or re-program another key so it’s there all the time) that’s a lot more trouble than other 9-letter names, but she can’t insist and depend on this effort to be made throughout her life. That’s the only real problem. I have a few character map entries memorized because I used to do so for my job - because it was an academic program WITH a multicultural focus, and BECAUSE a lot of the applicants wrote their names like this on their application materials, AND PLUS because I care, that’s the sort of person I am. Some of them modified their names themselves. There was someone with 5 different diacritics in their name who applied, which I entered in the database. In another type of office, with the same applicants, I probably would have made sure with the payroll and their nametags, but that’s it. If the payroll and ID offices then couldn’t handle the diacritics, then it’s out of my hands, and that’s still, only because I’m the language nerd who cares about these sort of things.
Cases where I think or hope efforts are made on her behalf - diplomas. I can imagine wanting them to re-print my diploma if I had a ” or a ” or a ” in my name, and maybe my business cards, and show them how to print that; my wild guess is that people whose job it is to pro-print things especially a lot of names have more awareness and computer applications to help them with this. They don’t want to have to re-do 5000 business cards because the customer said they were wrong - as well as the client ordering things wouldn’t just assume the printers recognize the difference between an a and an ” on the order after a lifetime of just accepting the a for regular non-personalized stuff.
It only becomes an issue if the person with the ” in her name or her mother goes through life insisting on the insertion of the ”, you know, having an unreasonable expectation. That you picked a name with a letter that’s not on the American keyboard is your issue, don’t make it everyone’s issue - that your kid deserves or commands more attention or recognition than another person. I think at the heart of it, this is most people’s (in [name]America[/name]) faulty reaction to people who do have diacritics in their name - they pre-suppose she is going to demand a lot from the world, starting with their name, that her parents gave her this name and probably raised her to be overly fussy not just about her name but a lot of things. People are scared of and judge a lot of inane things, you know, they might like a name originated in another country, but once you start throwing it in their face and spelling it with weird letters they can’t find on their keyboard, they might think things that aren’t true.
I tend to like authentic spellings, but consider [name]Chloe[/name] to be authentic to the degree it’s an established and recognized variant. I think the ” doesn’t really mean too much to English speakers as far as how to pronounce a word, since the letter doesn’t occur in most of our words. I think [name]Chloe[/name] is popular enough now for people to say it the right way. I dislike, say, Chloey “for clarification.” It looks gross. Chlo” is much better, but [name]Chloe[/name] is also correct.
[name]Karen[/name], what my friend meant is that when Chlo” writes/signs her name she’ll have the option of using the diaeresis or not. My friends know that others may not always use it, know how to type it in, or in the case of bureaucracies, want to bother with it. I imagine most parents who name their daughter Chlo” (or [name]Zo[/name]”) are aware of this.
The father of Chlo” [name]Rita[/name] posted to typophile.com: “My daughter was born about 3 weeks ago and we”re just now getting around to sending out the birth announcements. Being the stickler that I sometimes am, I want to make sure, once and for all, that I understand the usage of a diaerisis in her name. Her name is Chlo”. We live in the States… I researched the diaerisis before naming her and found info in wikipedia on the mark. It was that info that led my wife and I to want to include it in her name. On her announcement, I wanted to include a simple explanation of the diaerisis for people, so I looked it up again. This time I found more info over at the Diactitics project. Now I”m not sure if we should use it or not.”
Some of the responses:
“As the diaeresis is not common in English, your daughter will run into interesting situations throughout her life. Typists of official documents will invariably not know how to enter the ” on their keyboards. They will spell Chlo”s name [name]Chloe[/name]. This isn”t a reason not to name her Chlo”, though.”
“Chlo” and [name]Chloe[/name] are both accepted spellings in English. Many people will consider the diaeresis optional, so your daughter can probably get through life using either spelling.”
“If your daughter becomes an artist or designer, she may be thankful that you put a diaeresis in her name. It offers so many possibilities.”
“We named our daughter [name]Zo[/name]”. She”s an adult now, but as a child she always enjoyed putting the two dots above the e. In handwriting, and by keyboard.”
Chlo”s dad: “Good. We”ll keep it then. It doesn”t really matter to me if most people won”t bother with the diaerisis. And she can choose to use it, or not, when she”s older. I”ve seen the name Chlo” with and without the diaerisis and people still seem to pronounce it correctly. Like ”co”peration”, I never realized before that ”cooperation” was technically wrong, yet, it”s so accepted. Funny. Hopefully she”ll grow up to enjoy and appreciate the special mark in her name.”
The British mother of Chlo” [name]Marie[/name] posted with her announcement of her baby’s birth: "This is probably the last time you’ll ever see the diaeresis over her name since my keyboard is not equipped with that symbol. It’s only for special occasions I guess… "
Far from being the hypothetical parent of a daughter named Chlo” that you described, these parents, like my friends, are realistic about using the diaeresis and chose to use it because Chlo” is the more accurate spelling of the name. Yet they accept that their daughter’s name will also be written/typed as [name]Chloe[/name] sometimes.
Another update on the [name]Chloe[/name] vs Chlo” debate. The mother is now leaning towards writing her daughter’s name without the diaeresis (aka umlaut) because it seems strange to the few people she’s mentioned it to, while the dad is still in favor of Chlo” because he thinks it’s the more correct way to write the name.
I’ve continued to research usage of the name in the US and UK. It appears that the vast majority of American Chloes don’t have the diaeresis over the ‘e’, while perhaps as many as 25% of UK Chloes use “the dots”. ([name]Just[/name] looking at “Chloes” I can see why the diaeresis WOULD be helpful - Chlo”s.)
[name]Pam[/name] and [name]Linda[/name] included [name]Chloe[/name] in their top 10 of the top 100 girls’ names Dec. 1 blog and advised: [name]CHLOE[/name] ” One of the brightest stars of the popularity list, [name]Chloe[/name] has been at or near the very top of the charts in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Europe for many years now but is still climbing in the U.S. In case you”re still unsure how to pronounce it, it”s klow(rhyming with flow)-ee. Umlauts and accents not recommended for Americans.
Does anyone else want to weigh in on this ongoing dilemma?