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... because usually when people say "real" they mean names that have been used under certain conditions ... but really the definition of those conditions is kind of vague, and we can't know that the names really arose all that differently than how Krin is arising for you right now. I assumed you'd know what I was getting at, since people are often hostile to names that aren't "real" ("real" meaning familiar & in use for so long that nobody can say precisely how it was coined but can only give a scholarly looking etymology instead). I myself am not hostile to names that aren't "real." I'm a postmodern girl that way, or whatever.

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They say "all names are made up at some point," and that's actually true.... Although it's probably also true that the way we make them up today really is different than the way they were made up in the past. IMO that doesn't make our inventions less real as names. Once it indicates a person, it's a name; I don't see how a name could get more "real" than that. But I also understand why even people who invent names want their names to be "real," in the sense that they relate specifically with the surrounding, established culture - you obviously value understanding your place in history enough to want your favorite name to be connected to the world with an etymology. It's not that I don't think that's cool -- I totally do. I just meant that it seems contrived to me, and isn't really necessary. If I were you and named my daughter Krin, I'd tell her her name was invented, and that it happened to be the same as the Greek root for 'lily' -- but not that it meant lily. It's hairsplitting, I guess.

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Wow, sorry I am so long winded. As Isla says, it's all an opinion, and we all know what those are worth.