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Sounds very Midwestern to me. Marlene is much prettier.

This message was edited 9/13/2013, 3:23 PM

I'm very interested to hear that you like it. I've been contemplating it for years, not because it's a name that fits in with my naming style or because I find the sound particularly nice, but because it's my grandmother's name.

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I used to really hate it. It's sounded frumpy and old fashioned to me when I was growing up, and not in the classic/retro sort of way. However, once I got a little older, I started to realize the name is so synonymous of my grandmother to me that I can't help but find it endearing. The meaning of the name is sweet, and my grandmother is a beautiful, remarkable woman.

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I do prefer Darlene in the middle, though.

It's my aunt's name, but I've never really cared for it. It's dated and the sounds aren't all that appealing to me.

I think of "Roseanne" :P

It's darling.

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I personally don't like the een ending very much. I prefer names with stress on the first syllable.

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But my image of Darlene comes from a sweet, bright and educated, very diminutive, curly-haired, very softspoken Catholic woman, who was the mother of a childhood friend of mine. I always thought it was a lovely name, it's just such a dated style. There was an Arlene among my friends' moms, as well, so these names seemed really "normal" to me (white middle class). Charlene was another. That was the name of a friend's aunt - same demo, Bay Area white middle class - and my friend used it as her daughter's middle name in the 00s.

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So I'm not really feeling the "downmarket" *ahem* image of Darlene, although I appreciate that trendy styles tend to end up that way. And I can hear how the sound is sort of twangy and reminds of Darling in a cloying way.

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This message was edited 9/9/2013, 11:09 AM

I think it's downmarket and downbeat. A sixty-year-old woman who has never gotten over the fact that she was third-runner-up in a Miss Okra pageant at 16 and still thinks it counts for more than it does. Too much makeup, too-tight clothes, frizzy outdated hair...

Isn't it the 1930s equivalent of Honey Boo-Boo?

It's 100% "Roseanne" for me. I dislike it anyway--that 'dar' sound matched with the country 'leen' sound just puts me off.

So country

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And not in a good way. It reminds me of the small-town, narrow minded alcoholics who come into Fargo and start fights.

I can't help it, it has such a downmarket image for me. I can't help but think of the character in "Roseanne", but I think that it would have a downmarket image without that. In fact, that's probably why the producers or writers or whomever makes these decisions chose the name for the character to begin with.

I'm usually all for bringing names back from the past. But Darlene has always made me think "darling" so it sounds too cutesy for me. Sorry.