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How interesting - thank you! Must say, I'm surprised it caught on ... though not in a big way, seemingly. There've been some suggestions lately on Babycenter.com that Lorelei is being used now and then as a girl name in the States, mostly among people who don't know the legend.

Arline interests me greatly, too! In, especially rural, Afrikaans communities here in South Africa there is a strong tradition of naming children after the grandparents, often in sequence. So you will get cousins growing up on adjacent farms, all with the same names. Nicknames come in handy, also the name of the farm as a kind of additional human name. So it was that I was at school with three girls, cousins, all named Alice Marsephine. The Marsephine is a lasting mystery to me ... perhaps a long-ago Josephine had a fondness for marzipan! One of them was known as Marzie, one as Alice, and the remaining one had been Alice too until, as a very small child, she discovered that there were two of her and announced to the world that she was Arline. And so it was. She seems to have invented it independently ... I've more often seen it with an -e- spelling, like Marlene with the M missing.

All the best

• Lurlyn, etc - Anneza  Feb 10 2006, 3:46:43 AM
  • Re: Lurlyn, etc - Cleveland Kent Evans  Feb 10 2006, 9:45:48 AM
    • Lurlyn and Arline - Anneza  Feb 12 2006, 9:54:10 PM