Hermione

[jerseygrits.livejournal.com]

[Poll #1654760]

Comments

[felicitea.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate HP, I marked it as a minus because people will think of it automatically. If I decided I wanted to use it, the connection wouldn't stop me.

[a-tergo-lupi.livejournal.com]

As far as the final question, I really feel that it doesn't much matter at all. But I picked plus to throw the results :p

[a-tergo-lupi.livejournal.com]

Right, and I didn't pick the final answer cause I would consider using the name.

[birdsonthewire.livejournal.com]

Oh man I hit don't like it but I meant to hit like it, stupid phone!

[sarahrose.livejournal.com]

I loooove HP and Hermione is my favorite character, but that is one heavily-associated name. I don't think I could do it.

[sal_amanda]

I think Harry Potter has increased the name's usability because I don't think most people (at least in the U.S.) would have a clue how to pronounce it otherwise.

[jerseygrits.livejournal.com]

Yeah, at first I was writing a novel for the last question and I tried to pare it down to a few concise options. I guess "neutral" was one I could have included. :)

[jerseygrits.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree with this. It wouldn't really be familiar in a broad sense without the HP association, but it's such a strong one that I think it definitely takes away from the usability, so those two forces are probably counteracting each other somewhat. Out of all the HP names, I think Hermione would be one of the best candidates for being used more, but it's still not even in the top 1,000 in the U.S., which is a bit surprising to me. All of this just makes for an interesting story to me - one of the reasons I decided to do a poll and see what others thought. :)

[theljfromheck.livejournal.com]

I really love it, I would possibly use it but I have a Harvey and will probably avoid other H names and then I have a Luna which is often considered another HP name.

[bandnerd88.livejournal.com]

There were only 47 Hermione's last year, which surprised me, honestly. I would've expected more. (Though, in the year before HP was released in the US, there were less than five, so if you're looking at it from that perspective it's definitely been used more often!)

I remember, when my sixth grade teacher started reading the book out loud to us, she pronounced Hermione "herm-ee-own" for a while. Then a friend of hers eventually corrected her. Haha. :)

[harinakshi.livejournal.com]

I like Harry Potter and my own daughter's name comes from an unfortunatly popular book, but despite my like of the book, and even the character, and not caring about novel connotations, I really dislike the name. To me, it's just plain UGLY and I certainly couldn't see looking at my beautiful baby and picking that name.

[retrodancekitty.livejournal.com]

My biggest peeve about it is that no one, for the love of God, can seem to produce a consolidate pronunciation of this name, even IN the movie.

[krosp.livejournal.com]

I don't think many other Harry Potter names would be a problem, but this is a name few people had heard of until Harry Potter so for me it is a deal breaker.

[pegasus2o5.livejournal.com]

This. It's gone from a bizarre, obscure, unpronounceable name to a name that might still be unusual, but is familiar and has positive associations with virtually everyone.

[becomingun.livejournal.com]

I'd use it because of the Shakespeare connotation!

[corielcries.livejournal.com]

I love Hermione and think its definitely usable. It was a name before HP, but everyone associates it with the character. I actually know a child named Hermione. She's about 7-8 now and it fits her well!

[lisasimpsonfan.livejournal.com]

Maybe in 10 years when the fandom has died down some I would like it better as a real person name. I love HP but I wouldn't want to saddle my child with a name so closely associated with a book/movie/song etc...

Manderley (nickname Manda) was on the short list of names for my daughter but didn't for the same reason.

[smirk-dog.livejournal.com]

I love it, and the HP is a plus. Call me what you will.

[jerseygrits.livejournal.com]

Yeah, strictly percentage-wise, that's obviously a big jump, but it's still not a very large absolute number. :)

Out of curiosity, how do you have access to the exact numbers of births below the top 1,000? Laura Wattenberg's the only other person I've seen quoting those statistics. :p

[bandnerd88.livejournal.com]

You can get them here: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html

[jerseygrits.livejournal.com]

Sweet, thanks! I didn't know they were available on the SSA site. :)

[bandnerd88.livejournal.com]

No problem! I think it's relatively new, as I only found them for the first time after they released last year's list.