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Hypothetically, if I were of childbearing age and had a daughter, and were considering these two names and which to put first, do I live in the US or some other English speaking country? If the US, it would be Penelope Jemima. If some other country, Jemima Penelope. I love Jemima, but yes, it's unusable here.

I prefer Jemima Penelope. They could also work well as a sibset.
I like Jemima over Penelope. Penelope I just don't care for that much. Over the past year I've come to really like Jemima--it's grown on me.

This message was edited 4/21/2015, 7:18 PM

Love both names and they combine well. But I'd prefer Jemima Polly.

I think the best combo is Jemima Penelope, but also they would be good as a sibset. Jemima is one of my favourite names, I also love Penelope.

Penelope is fairly popular now in the US, but Jemima isn't and is highly unlikely to become more than a Hollywood hipster statement. In the US, there is a very famous (and quite good) brand of pancake mix called Aunt Jemima, and while the logo of Aunt Jemima is updated and benign, the term Aunt Jemima as applied to a black woman is quite offensive, kind of on a par with Mammy.

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Jemima and Penelope both seem goofy and cartoonish to me, and together they are even more so.

Penelope Jemima sounds a lot better to me. I would never have thought of them as sisters, but they could actually work, yes.

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I quite like Penelope. It feels just off from a classic to me.

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Jemima is okay. I'm not sure it'll ever shake it's associations, though.

I think the flow would depend a lot on the ln.

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They'd be a lovely sibset! I like both about equally, though Jemima sounds fresher - but then, Penelope sounds more classic.

Penelope Jemima flows better, imo, but I prefer Jemima Penelope.
Penelope was a top 100 name in the 1940s here, so I associate it and Penny with a slightly bossy, head-of-committee type of retired lady. Associations aside, it's a decent name and it sounds fine with Jemima as a middle name or as part of a set. Jemima seems more youthful and bouncy; it's a family name for me and I like it a lot.

I LOVE the name Jemima, it's a fave of mine! Penelope is alright, though not something I would use. I think Jemima Penelope sounds better than Penelope Jemima, for obvious reasons. I don't mind the name for sisters, but I would still prefer Penelope for a mn.

I prefer Penelope Jemima, both for rhythm and because I think Penelope is so much better than Jemima. The rhythm of Jemima Penelope is slappy. I would never have thought of them as sister names, but I guess they could be.

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Jemima is just so nms. Even if I dissolve the association with Aunt Jemima frozen French toast (my breakfast and snack literally thousands of times in my youth), it's still in a league with Jedidiah and Enoch. The odd pronunciation in English is weird and ungirlish to me - it sounds like "yer MY ma" in a way. Sorry - I don't even want to like it, because I have Gemma.

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I feel like Penelope is a good ol' quirkily Greek classic name, happy sounding and very complete. And she gets to be either Penny or Nel so she doesn't have to suffer from her name ending in uppy. It's not a favorite but I think it's likeable.