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I adore Nigel! It's concurrently cute and curmudgeonly.

LOL @ Nigel the daddy-long-legs and his many reincarnations.:) As Mireio said, it is very out of style here - it may have had an upper-class vibe before the 1930s, but it hit its peak popularity in the 1960s & was out of the top 100 by the 80s, and all the Nigels I know are over 50. But I quite like it anyway, & wouldn't mind seeing it revived.

Any name that P.G. Wodehouse used or would have used gets an instant thumbs up from me. I love those musty, fusty, British aristocratic names. The more outlandish the better. Nigel is very usable. Don't get me wrong. I just put it in the same fun category. :0)

This message was edited 5/27/2014, 4:13 PM

Since this is the name of every British cartoon character ever, I personally don't care much for it.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this but in Australia, 'Nigel' is a slang term for 'loner'. It is definitely widely used, in the context of 'don't be a Nigel' or 'I'm such a Nigel' or 'I don't want to be a Nigel' or just as a mean name you call someone. I'm 99% sure this slang originated with the stereotype of someone called Nigel being dorky and awkward.

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Anyway, I cannot get past that association. I would say it is unusable in Australia but I always like to know if names I like mean something negative somewhere else because I would hate for my child to end up somewhere one day where their name would be received extremely negatively. For example, I quite like Pippa as a nn for Philipa but would never use it as it means something not so nice in Scandinavian countries, I believe.

I'm torn. On the one hand it does make me think of a stuffy old British man. And it sounds sort of like a brand name of some kind of personal care product. But it also has a really heroic, reliable sound to it. I mean, the sounds in the name. The -ige- part, I guess. I could definitely get used to it if I knew one, although I'd never choose it for a son of my own. Giving it to a baby now could seem a little wannabe-edgy, like Clive or Zora. Only mildly so, though, probably easily canceled out just by being real.

I don't see it as either edgy or aristocratic. To me a Nigel would be in his sixties, would still live with his elderly mother in a small British village, and would probably collect stamps and be into local politics. It's not used at all here in the UK anymore, and along with Brian and Colin it's one of those names that make people smirk or laugh when they hear it.

I once said here that Reginald is the most foppish name there is. Nigel is a close second. Your comment about your grandmother makes me think of something I saw on YouTube recently. It was outtakes from the now-defunct soap opera "As The World Turns." One actor stopped the scene by pointing out that the other actor had a fly on his sleeve. The second actor, the one with the fly on his sleeve, joked, "He's always there", and then, as the fly flew off after being flicked off the sleeve, the actor looked up and said, "See you later, Igor!" Moral of the story: When people give names to insects who are making a nuisance of themselves, they tend to choose the most comical name they can think of.

Had a good family friend named Nigel, so I have a good association with it. He wasn't British in the least...actually part Chinese.

Nigel has been a long-time love of mine as well. It's so studious and proper-yet-cheeky and warm and wooden, like a big old desk, and I like "Nige" as a pet form. I would also use it.

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Nigel & Giles were two names that "belonged" together in my mind for ages.

On the positive side: I always prefer a bit obscure to popular, even if I don't necessarily love the name. So Nigel would fit that bill. As in I'd certainly advocate for Nigel over Noah or the -aydens or Ethan or Joshua.

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As for edgy: That is not the vibe I get at all. Like I said, obscure maybe, but not really edgy. In fact, it feels kind of older-British-pretentious to me. Which always teeters on the edgy of snotty and whiny.

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I know my mom has said before that she likes Nigel. Not me though, sorry.

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Edgy? Hardly. Unusual for the time and place, yes, but not edgy. It's a stuffy, cartoonishly stuffy, stereotypical British aristocrat name that British aristocrats quit using a couple generations ago.