It just came to me that it would be fantastic if a berry baby was named [name]Beryl[/name]. What are your thoughts on that?
Is that pronounced barrel?
No it is said as Beh rill like [name]Meryl[/name]
There was a character from a book I liked as a child whose name was [name]Beryl[/name] (the author might have spelled it differently), but I remember thinking it could be sweet. It does run the “barrel” risk, but nn’s [name]Berry[/name] and [name]Rilla[/name] are cute.
I’d think it cuter if I hadn’t watched [name]Sailor[/name] [name]Moon[/name] as a child. The evil queen was named [name]Beryl[/name]!
author in writing - That was EXACTLY my first thought! [name]How[/name] funny!
Beryl is a lovely gem a very nice addition to the naming scene. However, it must be different accents because I cannot understand how you can get an ‘a’ sound out of a definite ‘e’ sound. The E sound is the same as in egg.
Can someone enlighten me please?
rollo
PS I have never heard of Sailor Moon either.
Sorry,
but beryl sounds old ladyish to me!!!
— [name]Maddie[/name] <3
Dance Like NOBODIES watching, baby!!
maddie I get that, as once upon a time I felt the same way but it is in the same style of Violet so who knows it may become a favourite one of these days with those who love the vintage names.
rollo
What’s wrong with that? Old ladies can be pretty cool.
My friend has a cat named Beryl. I think it’s nice, but it’s often mistaken for “Barrel” – which would be a tragic moniker on a person with a weight problem.
It’s a cool meaning, but I don’t love it. Has the same feel as [name]Bertha[/name] to me at least.
I [name]LOVE[/name] [name]Beryl[/name]. I remember hearing it in “[name]Adam[/name]'s Rib” (and [name]Katharine[/name] Hepburn/[name]Spencer[/name] [name]Tracy[/name] flick). The character sporting the name was not very nice, but she was played by [name]Jean[/name] [name]Hagan[/name], who also played [name]Lina[/name] [name]Lamont[/name] in “Singin’ in the [name]Rain[/name]”- my all-time favorite movie.
Wow, I just realized how old I must seem…
But I love the vintage quality to it. It also has a trendy “y” and slight Welsh feeling to it. I would love to meet a little [name]Beryl[/name] (and would have one, myself if DH hadn’t vetoed it).
I think [name]Beryl[/name] is awful, TBH. It’s very dated and I don’t find the sound attractive.
I can’t think of anything positive to say about [name]Beryl[/name]. It isn’t pretty at all.
I believe it’s the the merry-marry-[name]Mary[/name] merger in action again, where merry, marry, and [name]Mary[/name] are pronounced identically by many people (including me), particularly in the US. There’s virtually no difference, to my ear, between barrel and [name]Beryl[/name] (the one tiny difference is in the second syllable, not the first), berry and [name]Barry[/name], or even [name]Farrell[/name] and feral.
I like [name]Beryl[/name] because I associate it with pretty, green gemstones, like emeralds. The one RL [name]Beryl[/name] I’ve met, though, pronounced her name like [name]Burl[/name], and I really disliked that.
goodhope thanks for your input. So in the US [name]Mary[/name] is said the same as marry? I would never have dreamed of that, it is said here in Australia and Great [name]Britain[/name] as [name]Mare[/name] (like the horse) and ee on the end. I am astounded that the American ear doesn’t hear the difference between berry and barry. And how could anyone think [name]Beryl[/name] was burl, that is ridiculous.
again thanks it is hard sometimes for this Aussie to understand the difference in accents.
rollo
[name]How[/name] do you pronounce [name]Mare[/name]? Like share or bar? I’m from the midwestern United States and I say [name]Mare[/name] like it rhymes with share, so mare with ee at the end sounds the same as marry (and merry and [name]Mary[/name]) to me. And yes, barry, bury, and berry all sound the same to me. I think when I say them, they might seem slightly different. Though it could be a regional dialect.
I hope I can offer a bit of insight:
It’s not necessarily that Americans can’t hear the difference when it’s produced by a speaker of accent who has it (although it may be hard to hear because our ear or more rightly our brain doesn’t have the experience listening for the contrast).
It’s that we don’t produce it.
R’s have weird effects on vowels in some accents, I think especially for those of us with heavily rhotic r’s (i.e., the US, where [name]Oliver[/name] and [name]Noah[/name] have very distinct endings - different thing going on in the middle of words, but it’s related).
marry v [name]Mary[/name]: same for me. I can produce them though if I’m faking an accent. Here’s how to think about it, for an American:
say the word mat
take away the t (you have something like maaah, m followed by short a sound with no consonant following, which is very weird in English, but you can do it).
add ree
ma (short a) ree
It is clearly different (to me) than [name]Mary[/name] said with the first syllable like mare.
But with these heavy, long American r’s, it’s a lot of work to retain that clear short a sound
so the vowel+r in merry, marry, and [name]Marry[/name] all turns into the “air” sound.
Same thing for barrel vs [name]Beryl[/name]. The heavy r takes a lot of time to say, the time we would need to drop our jaws to say the distinction between the a and the e.
There are some regional exceptions of course even in the US. I had an American friend [name]Carrie[/name] who was very insistent on Caah - ree (short a sound like it cat, followed by ree) - if you speak an accent where that doesn’t exist, you’re not being mean or trying to say it wrong, it just is physically hard for you to train yourself to use this vowel + r combo that is literally not in your language : D.
Some people named [name]Laura[/name] and the like experience this, too, people turn it into [name]Lara[/name], or [name]Dawn[/name], in some places it’s distinct from [name]Don[/name], in some, it’s not.
I’m not sure why some regions dropped the berry v bury distinction. I mean, I don’t have the distinction, but my husband does (sounds like burr-y, like if a coat were full of burrs, or something). Probably just randomness in that case : D.
My Grandmothers name is [name]Beryl[/name]. I never considered it when I had my little girl. With my Grandmothers personality, there’s only room for one in our family!
Not all Americans say merry/marry/[name]Mary[/name] the same. I don’t, and nobody from where I grew up ([name]East[/name] coast) does. That’s a Midwestern thing. We used to give my friends from Ohio crap about it all the time, growing up. 
Some Americans also say [name]Harry[/name] and Hairy the same, which is probably why [name]Harry[/name] in the US will never be as popular as it is in Australia or the UK. But on the [name]East[/name] Coast (Mid-Atlantic, god only knows what people from [name]Boston[/name] or down south do) we can hear a difference.
[name]Barry[/name]/bury/berry - I used to know a girl who said them all the same, and pen/pin the same, but she was from Minnesota or something. I used to joke the Midwest has only one indeterminate vowel.
She, of course, used to make fun of my [name]Philadelphia[/name] pronunciations of words like coffee, and water.
[name]Don[/name]'t blame all Americans for the Midwest! lol