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I am a TOTAL L.M. Montgomery buff!!!!
I always loved the sound of the Avonlea, although it took me a while to figure out the right way to pronounce it. :) I had never thought of it as a person name, but it's very pretty and I don't see why you couldn't use it.I can think of jillions and jillions of L.M. Montgomery names of all kinds. I could never list them all! Some of the most unusual ones that I can remember off-hand are...Kilmeny
Valancy
Marigold
Una
Ilse
Philippa
Jonas
Perry
Marilla
Rilla (nn for Marilla)
Jem (nn for James)
Hilary (male, nn Jingle)
I might point out that her most well-known character, Anne, had a passion for names and always wished her name was Cordelia b/c she thought Anne was so plain. The character Anne wrote a story as a young woman and named her main characters Averil, Perceval Dalrymple, and Maurice Lennox. When Anne Shirley grew up and married Gilbert Blythe, they named their children: Joyce, James (nn Jem), Walter, Anne (nn Nan), Diana, Shirley, and Marilla (nn Rilla).
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And don't forget...that Anne's name was actually Ann, but she added an e 'to make it look prettier!'
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Um, no . . .That's not correct at all. Anne's name was spelled with an 'e', but she was frustrated by people who left the 'e' off the end and spelled it Ann instead.Spelling was much more fluid in Victorian times, and whether it was Anne or Ann, Katherine or Catherine etc didn't matter in the same way that it does now. Anne's fussing over the spelling would have been uncommon at that point.

This message was edited 2/8/2007, 3:34 AM

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Ah that's right- haven't read it since I was 11, but the name nerd in me still remembered that Anne didn't like the Ann spelling!
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can't resist adding a few more...Royal (nn Roy)
Charlotta
Moody Spurgeon McPhersonok, I have to stop thinking about this. I could go on and on forever...
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Thanks so much! I'm sure DH won't go for it, but it's worth a try!
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