Name Poll: Fern

[Anonymous]

Ehhhh. It’s meh. Very trendy and kind of hippie, like Juniper, River, Birch.

[Anonymous]

I love Charlotte’s Web and I’m fond of distinctive names, but Fern leaves me cold. Would another floral name suit you, OP? How about Dahlia? OTOH, Fern could be the new Hazel.

[Anonymous]

Out standing in a field chewing on a stalk of wheat

[Anonymous]

I’m a fan of old-fashioned names, but melodically, Fern is a bit unlovely. It doesn’t roll off the tongue nicely, it gets buried in the “r” and runs up hard against the stop of the “n”.

As a point in its favor, the single vowel means it would yell nicely out the back door on a summer evening: “Feeerrr-errrn! Time to come in!” If you pair it with a middle name that balances your last name well, you can use the full name with authority whenever she’s in serious trouble.

But for me, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a fan of old-fashioned names, but melodically, Fern is a bit unlovely. It doesn’t roll off the tongue nicely, it gets buried in the “r” and runs up hard against the stop of the “n”.

As a point in its favor, the single vowel means it would yell nicely out the back door on a summer evening: “Feeerrr-errrn! Time to come in!” If you pair it with a middle name that balances your last name well, you can use the full name with authority whenever she’s in serious trouble.

But for me, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue.

+1 I was tooling around on Nymblr a couple of days ago and Fern kept coming up based on my inputs. This was my takeaway too. I like old-fashioned, and I like nature-inspired, but phonetically Fern just doesn't do it for me. I think it is a good middle name option, though.

[Anonymous]

I like Larla.

[Anonymous]

Like it to love it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fern was on our top 3 names list -- I love it but my DH overruled based on how it sounded with his last name.

Gully?

[Anonymous]

Love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like it as a nickname for Fernanda

+1

[Anonymous]

Fern is my dog 😁 She’s a lazy bum so I call her my house plant.

[Anonymous]

I did not discern the return of Fern.

[Anonymous]

I like it. But then, Charlotte’s Web has always been one of my favorite books, and I lean kind of crunchy. I’m also hoping you have a three syllable last name. I prefer Fern Witherspoon to, say, Fern Green.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I lived in Australia and it’s popular there so it kind of grew on me

I love it but I think it sounds better with an Australian accent. A lot of Americans will find it weird and will pronounce it in the flattest tone possible (like the second syllable of Laverne) and it won't sound pretty.

This is true of so many names that are popular in England, Scotland, Ireland, or Australia. My family English and I have lots of family in the UK, and we considered a ton of names that we just knew that it would annoy us to hear them pronounced with an American accent. We weren't even considering the hard to pronounce options, but there are just a lot of names that sound best in their home country. We wound up using a Greek name that is relatively popular in the UK but also familiar in the US. It just travels better. But if we were living in the UK we might have gone with something more like Fern.

[Anonymous]

Any fans of The Amazing Race here? A Fern is a helpful local who guides a hopeless team through a leg, much to the chagrin of other racers and viewers alike who just want that team eliminated. Also, it's a dusty houseplant. Also, in my part of the country, it would be pronounced Fuuuuuuuuurn and sound like a cow mooing or something.