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Ugly and dated. Really don’t see the charm.

Sounds too much like ethanol

double post

This message was edited 8/8/2022, 4:34 AM

It's too old and not an attractive name.

I've always thought this sounded spectacularly un-name-like. It's extremely dated, and frankly rather ugly.

I actually like it.

Although it's very dated, it doesn't deserve that much hate. It can fit in with Agnes, Elsie, Minnie, Ida et al. You can get Etta and Ella as nicknames.

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Ethel Claire
Ethel Flora
Ethel Lenore
Ethel Penelope
Ethel Victoria

Grew up knowing an Ethel, homeliest woman, but also the kindest I've ever known, so have soft spot for this name. Would, however, probably use it for a cat before a human.

As a name, I try not to think about it.

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As a character in vintage BBC radio comedy 'The Glums', it's the name of a young woman, trying hard to be polite and respectable at all times, who is engaged to an entirely unintelligent man named Ron with a comical, beer-drinking father and a mother who never appears, but shouts from upstairs now and then. Spectacularly politically incorrect, but very funny. Ron calls her Eth.

It's the kind of name that if someone used it today, you'd suspect them of deliberately picking the ugliest, most disliked name going just to be "quirky." Even if it wasn't so sharply dated and so little used in the last hundred years, it would still be awful to me because it just sounds ugly.

I never liked it, and it reminds me of a weird character from Riverdale. Anyways, the sound is okay as is the look but it’s just not doing it for me. Too old-fashioned.

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Ethel Gertrude
Ethel Imogen
Ethel Leonie
Ethel Anaïs

I love Ethel! It's prim but not unapproachable.

I WOULD like it, except I was obsessed with the Worst Witch when I was little…But it IS a great name.