On two names

[miss-tee.livejournal.com]

*note my boyfriend and I are not pregnant and are not going to be any time soon so this is for speculative purposes*


My boy and I were visiting his grandmother in Montreal for the last couple of days. While we were there she took out this old box of papers, a wedding certificate written on the fly before escaping Poland, passports etc. So she was reminiscing and she mentioned that when she was pregnant with Ben's Uncle she had wanted a girl and was going to name him Leah after her mother (instead she named Arje, Polish for Aryeh I think. But everyone calls him Libi which I guess is where the similarity to Leah comes in, since she pronounced Leah like "LIE-AH").
The point of bringing that up is that my boyfriend and I agree on very few girls names but Leah (pronounced Lay-uh) is one that we had decided we both liked previous to knowing about his great grandmother. Also we are big on the idea of naming our future children in honour of people who died in the Holocaust. So it may be our new top girls name.


Another person I want to honour is my grandmother. She is 87 now and quite frail and as much as it upsets me to think about it, I doubt she will still be living when I have children.
My grandmother's name is Elfriede (though she goes by Frieda now).
I think it is a really pretty name to look at but not a pretty name to say so I'm torn on whether or not to use it for a middle name (not necessarily with Leah).
So what do you think of the name Elfriede (pronounced el-FREE-deh or el-FREE-dah)?
Is it too old ladyish/German/strange/whatever to give a little girl?

Comments

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

well the bible doesnt really come with a soundtrack so we arent really sure of that either... i have heard the leah from the bible pronounced both ways.

[miss-tee.livejournal.com]

isn't the Hebrew language kind of the soundtrack to the Bible?

[ladyartemisa.livejournal.com]

yes but the spoken and the written hebrew language are both still up for debate because of the fact that the language made little to no use of vowels.

[miss-tee.livejournal.com]

The Masoretes added vowel markings in 600 A.D. If people have been using the same vowel sounds since 600 A.D. in Biblical Hebrew that's good enough for me.