Thought I'd share a sighting: a girl at a birthday party I went to, called
Maximilienne. Apparently she's 'less than a quarter' French, speaks GCSE French according to her and her parents found the name in a name book and liked it. I know all this because my friend thought she was French and I tried out my bad French to a blank look... woo, the random conversations being a language geek gets you. I've never met an actual French person called
Maximilienne and I guess being in England she gets called
Maximilian a
lot but it goes along with my previous find of Pantelejmona as an unusual female-version sighting. And I kind of find it pretty, in a weird way. She went by '
Milly' and kind of '
Max', but while
Max is very butch for a girl's name, I thought
Maximilienne was an interesting new long version of the nickname
Milly. What do you think?
Anyway, this got me thinking in my ridiculous multidirectional convoluted way of mine...
1)
Maximilienne. What do you think of it? What do you think of
Milly as nickname? And combos...?
I think it needs a short but feminine middle name, and thought
Maximilienne Rose was pretty, but
Rose is such a filler, so what about...?
Maximilienne ViolaMaximilienne SylvieMaximilienne Soraya (wow, woo for random namebank combos. I like its weirdness, but it doesn't flow well)
Maximilienne Rosalie (not much better in filler-ness than
Rose)
Maximilienne LyraMaximilienne LaureMaximilienne IrisMaximilienne Coralie
...Oh, I fail. Any ideas?
2) Interesting French female names with a male parallel, origin or a similar male name suddenly interested me... what do you think of...?
Albertine*
Andrée
Augustine* - perfectly feasible, but I first came across
Augustine as a man's name, so I can't really shake that idea.
Axelle Benjamine* - is it odd that if I could use it, I'd be tempted?
ClaudetteCyrielle - I've met a
Cyrielle. Pronounced close enough to the English word 'cereal' that it was a mindboggling challenge not to call her Cereal.
Dominique - not really unusual...
DonatienneDoriane* -
Dorian's always going to be male to me, but I like the name and it's an appealing idea...
Emmanuelle - I'd love this name if I hadn't learnt about it's adult film connotations
Fabienne*
Faustine* -
LOVE!
FernandeGilbertine -
Gilbert is so clunky that this is almost intriguing
Josèphe
Julienne* - I think I might prefer this to Julia/Julie/Juliana etc
Léonide
Léopoldine* - ditto goes for
Leopold... wow
Lucienne*
Ludivine*
MarinePerrine Raphaëlle
Rolande* - I have a thing for the name
Roland, sorry
Romaine* - I've met several.
Sébastienne
Sévérine
Victoire /
Victorine* - neither are directly linked to
Victor, in fact,
Victoire isn't even a female version of a male name, but I've been thinking about adding a good friend/family-friend called
Viktor to my name honouring list for various reasons, but hate both the name
Viktor and
Victoria. So this is a tempting option.
Victorine is charming.
Zéphyrine* - Apparently a female version of a male name. It feels otherwise. Met in real life too.
Like any? Hate any? Know anyone called them?
I guess I found that in cases such as
Gilbertine and
Rolande, they're such underused, untrendy and very, in my mind, masculine names that simply adding -e, -tine etc isn't enough to make them seem feasible as female names in England, for example, even nowadays, but it was still interesting.
Soooo...Have you seen any interesting (not necessarily) French female versions of fusty, unusual or just inherently in your eyes male feeling names?