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[Opinions] Re: Stasys
Ah, okay. It makes sense now. Knowing the origin and culture of the name definitely helps. Without context, and yes, with English bias, it struck me as "stasis" (as in, frozen/stagnant) with a "unique" spelling. I'm assuming the "a" is a short sound like "apple"? Not like "say" which is what I assumed. Sta-sis (phonetic spelling) is a great name, all the more so if it's familiar in your region. I'm South African. My twins are Coetsee (koot-see-uh) for my son and Estelle Wivina (vee-vee-nah) for my daughter. I'm not doing any opinion polls here. I Googled Wivina once (imo, a simple, say-it-like-you-write-it name) and the hue and cry over the "weirdness" of it was astonishing. I can't imagine what the American response to Coetsee would be (and I don't want to be enlightened, please don't share negative comments) but my son will not be growing up in the US or even in an English community. It's a well-known surname in my culture and honours my family's legacy. It will be unusual as a first name, but not unfamiliar where he will actually grow up. Stanislav is beautiful, but knowing the true origin of Stasys, I think it's fantastic 10/10

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Well I do not live in Lithuania but it is very much closer to my country (I am from Ukraine) than South Africa. It is pronounced stuh-syees or stah-syees. I don't have kids yet but I plan to have them and I will give them Ukrainian names, English speakers might find it weird but they can deal with it, because my children will be growing up here and not the anglosphere.
Learning about names from different cultures gave me the courage to go with less globalised names. When I was younger, my top picks were "Andrea" for a girl and "Etienne" for a boy (which, incidentally, I was also told "sounds feminine" by English speakers) largely because I figured they would be familiar across borders. Now I don't care so much. There's something to be said for "rooted" names that tell a story about the bearer's origins instead of copying the anglicized top 100.