View Message

[Opinions] Desiree
What are your thoughts regarding the name, Desiree? Any impressions or associations you might have with it? What about alternative spellings? Desirae or Desaray for instances?Just simply curious.
Archived Thread - replies disabled
vote up1

Replies

Middle America. White, and likely born in the 80s. Not much money. Trailer parks, blue jeans, cigarettes, sweet personalities. I have a cousin named Desiree who often went by Desi. I haven’t seen her in years, but she was lovely.
vote up1
I actually kind of like it. I would never use it because it’s the name of my dad’s cousin (I’m not close to her, but still). The original spelling is always best.
vote up1
I really like it. I think it has a great meaning. Very sweet.
A little too sweet for my own taste, but it might not be in some situations.
I don't like alternate spellings of it. But I usually assume they're done to prevent pronunciation errors, and to distance the name from the connotations of the word "desire." It's unfortunate that people are so well trained, to interpret the names of women in the most sexualizing way available to the imagination, scanning for suggestions of "looseness." But it happens, it even happens to me sometimes. It happens often enough that I'd hesitate to use the name, even if I otherwise desired to use it. When I meet a Desiree, though, I certainly don't make any assumptions about her occupation or her sexual morality based on her name.

This message was edited 3/28/2019, 10:03 AM

vote up1
I’m not sure it’s about sexualizing women and their names. Maybe there’s a little of that, but there’s more to it. I think if you were doing free word association with a lot of people, many if not most would respond with something sexual if you gave them “Desire”. Maybe that’s a cultural thing, but there’s just so much sexual context built into that word. And if it were just a name with the meaning being “desire”, it wouldn’t be so bad, but this is literally just the word, sitting out there in the open. My Nana’s neighbours named their dog “Dildo”. I don’t think I was sexualizing dogs when I shuddered looking at that name written on the doghouse.
vote up1
Well... yeah, the word desire is loaded like that, in English at least. I was observing that when English-speaking people see Désirée and it's a woman, I think they're *more* likely to think "oh tacky stripperish name" because of the sexual connotation of "desire," than they are to think of something along those lines, when they see a person is named Désiré and is a man. This includes myself. But I think you're totally right, that it's not like I made it sound - it doesn't mean people are scanning women for looseness, or over-sexualizing them. It's more complicated and less blameful than that.
vote up1
Ah, gotcha : )
vote up1
It has an obviously sexy vibe to me that makes me feel it's not a good choice. I think it's pretty, though.
vote up1
Even as a kid it sounded kind of low-class and strippery to me. The Desirees I’ve known over the years have not changed my opinion.Alternative spellings make it look even more trashy and illiterate.

This message was edited 3/28/2019, 5:48 AM

vote up1
It's always sounded vaguely stripper-ish to me. Probably because it's close to "desire" and somewhat similar to "destiny". Any alternative spellings move it a little further away from the "desire" association, but they look made up.
vote up1
Hi !!!I prefer Désirée with obviously a French pronounciation.Desiree is tricky: it seems that it needs -REE while isn't the case.Desirae is quirky. It looks pretty but it is not intuitive at all in my opinion. Desiray is worse than it.
It seems a combo of Daisy and Ray rather than a variant of Desiree.I just prefer Désirée
vote up1
My sister had a friend who had a cousin named Desiree, and I met her when I was a kid. My savagely childish opinion was that her name was tawdry sounding.As an adult, I just think it sounds nice. And sort of dated, like Renee or Destiny.
vote up1