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the etymology and history of first names
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Subject: Zoe Camille
Author: queenv   (guest, 98.84.204.185)
Date: May 10, 2012 at 12:51:43 PM
Reply to: Your Mom's name by Bear
My mother's name was Zoe. She was born in 1928, when Zoe was a highly unusual name. I would wonder why in the heck my grandparents came up with the name Zoe in 1928, if it weren't for the fact that Zoe was my grandmother's middle name, so it's evident that that was where it came from. Now why in the heck my great-grandparents came up with Zoe as a middle name in 1906, I don't know!

My mother hated her name and she also hated her middle name, Camille. I should mention that in our family we pronounced Zoe to rhyme with "toe", without the final E sound. But I don't think that pronouncing it with the final E sound would have made my mother like it any more.

For a long time, perhaps influenced by my mother's hatred of her name, and perhaps by the unusual rhymes-with-toe pronunciation (but I have a hard time thinking of it any other way because that's how Mom pronounced it), I didn't like the name and would not have advised anyone to use it. Nor would I have used it as a first name myself, though I did give my daughter the middle name Zoe to honor my mother. Within the past fifteen years or so, though, I have come to like it, but I like it much better with the final E pronunciation. I like it that way, but still have a hard time thinking of it pronounced that way, if that makes sense, and when I think of my daughter's middle name, I always think of the rhymes-with-toe pronunciation. She just can't be Victoria Zo-ee because my mother wasn't Zo-ee. But now I'm not so sure that I'd advise anyone to use it because it's become popular and may become even more popular. And though I like it, I don't like it enough to use it, because there are other names I like more.

If my mother were alive, she'd be so surprised to see so many people liking her name and so many people liking her name much more than the now-dated names that she gave her daughters.

If I could rename my mother, I'd name her Mary. Yep, Mary. Because she hated having such an unusual name, I'd hope she'd be happy having a name that was very common for her generation.

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