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I love it! It's gorgeous. I can see it working on a woman of all ages and it has an ethereal type of beauty. It definitely gives me that fairytale vibe.

While pregnant with my youngest, I took my older two children to see the movie, Anastasia, which really influenced me to the point where I briefly considered the name for my youngest. Anastasia is a beautiful, ethereal, a tad larger than life, and complex name. I love it. What made me dismiss the name as a potential name for my dd is that complexity and the various pronunciations. Ultimately, I just felt that it wasn't a good fit for my family.

Its ok, just a little much. Not a fan of the last part of it...It's crazy how popular it got in the past year, maybe because of the rise of frilly princess names?

I love the name Anastasia! It's so gorgeous and elegant. I like that it is unexpected and yet familiar. It sounds a bit exotic without sounding weird. It also has so much history behind it. I happen to love that it is a saint's name and that it comes with a bunch of cool nicknames (i.e. Anya, Ana, Annie, Tasia, Nat, Stacy, and so on).

Anastasia sounds like an old love song full of memory and longing. I love the meaning 'resurrection' and always picture a phoenix rising from the ashes. Some days I love it enough to use it, but at other times, the fate of Anastasia Romanov and her entire family seems too sad of an association.

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Whether you love it or hate it, apparently people care about it in some way. I would rather have a name that provoked a little feeling than nothing at all as long as the reactions weren't extreme or tied to a single unpleasant person (Adolph,Osama, Delilah), but some people prefer to have a name that nobody particularly likes or dislikes.

I slightly dislike it. I don't want to make you hate it, though. I'd instinctively pronounce it AN-ə-STAYZ-yə.

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Here's all my vague associations...

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1. The "stasi" reminds me of "stasis", probably because I'm already associating it with flat characters (the animated Anastasia and Anastasia Steele).

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2. It reminds me of kids being killed by terrorists.

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3. The 'stayz' sound reminds me of "blaze", "craze", "Purple Haze", and Dazed and Confused.

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4. The 'nast' reminds me of "nasty" (which has mixed connotations to me) and canasta (a card game that my grandparents loved).

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5. The 'tasi' reminds me of "fantasy", probably because I'm already thinking of it in conjunction with "princess".

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6. My overall impression of it is mixed/contradictory: on one hand, it comes across as delicate, refined, and maybe repressed; on the other, I sorta get a "kicking ass and taking names" vibe from it.

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I think it has a lot of potential, regardless of pronunciation. If I met an Anastasia IRL (I haven't yet, as far as I know), she'd be my #1 association with it. Plus if someone named Anastasia decides it's too much, there's a perfectly ordinary built-in NN she could use instead (Ana), so I wouldn't say it's too "out there" or risky or anything.

I posted a while ago about Anastasia, basically saying the same thing: some days I think it's absolutely gorgeous, while others I find it... too much.

Its okay. A bit long, but thats not that bad. And not a fan of the nicknames.

I like it, but only pronounced the Russian / Ukrainian way (ah-nah-STAH-see-ah). I realize this is pretentious in English and so really wouldn’t recommend it as a name here. The English pronunciation seems slurred and cutesy to me, so I really dislike it.

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Nicknames that could work (with either pronunciation):

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Ana
Stasya
Stacie

When I was a kid I really loved the Anastasia Krupnik series by Lois Lowry. It was the first time I'd encountered the name, I think. The name isn't awful but I can't really ever warm to it for a few reasons:

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1. The pronunciation. I know in Russian, etc, it's Ah-Nah-Stah-Zee-Ah, which sounds just unbearably pompous and pretentious in American English, like saying vahz for vase.

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2. The usual pronunciation, Anna-STAY-Zha, isn't particularly attractive either, and reminds me of anesthesia.

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3. It's kind of a mouthful, but knocking it down to Anna or Stacy just seems pointless; if you want to use Anna or Stacy that bad, just use those and leave Anastasia out of it.