Are there any names you would like, or even love, if it weren't for a terrible nickname putting you off?
For me, the queen of this category is Gabrielle. It's chic, sophisticated, refined without being too soft / delicate.
French. It's almost perfect - it definitely fits with my aesthetic, at least. There's just one glaring problem: Gabby / Gabi. That gets a big fat no from me. Even if the epithet (gabby) isn't commonly used anymore, the sound to my ears is whiny, petulant, and just overall unattractive. And the really sad part is that Gabby feels
inevitable because every single Gabrielle / Gabriella / Gabriela (the last one being the most common in my experience, particularly among Latinos) I've ever met has gone by Gabby / Gabi. None of them used their full name (likely because they thought it would sound pretentious). None even used Bree, which I find far more preferable (even though "brie" is a cheese, I know). So that takes Gabrielle off the table for me.
(Funnily enough, I'm quite fond of the "modern" creation Briella because it specifically avoids Gabby - and it's one of the few cases where I prefer the -ella option to the -elle one.)
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