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Help[Opinions] Re: Margaret
in reply to a message by elysa
First off: Why? Why on earth would
OK, I'll ignore the inherent and imo severe problems misspelled names have for a moment, and will focus solely on how an eight-letter Margaret might look visually.
Margarett would work OK, I think. It does look pseudo-Hungarian to me, as in Bernadett and Nikolett, so I think association with those legit names makes Margarett look better to me. It still looks a little physically unbalanced to me though.
On the other hand, I suppose Marggaret would make the most phonetic sense, since the G sound is a little duplicated in the first and second syllables (at least how I say it). Still looks wrong to me though.
Maargaret and Margaaret just look grossly wrong and unacceptably physically unbalanced to me. Margareet changes the pronunciation, so that's out too.
EDIT: Oh, I see that this might be for a character. My tolerance for bad character names is a lot higher than it is for bad real person names. So the idea of an eight-lettered Margaret on a character isn't so much of a, er, bad thing to me as it would be if you were considering it for a real child. :-D
But I second Chrisell in that almost nobody will notice of Margaret's the odd seven-lettered name out. If they do, they'll probably think it's just coincidence that all your other characters have eight-lettered names. But they will notice the misspelling of Margaret, and I agree that then it does seem a little gimmicky to me. Moreover, unless you have a work in a good narrative reason, I think it would probably be very distracting and puzzling to me as a reader to see Margaret misspelled when no other names in the story are.
OK, I'll ignore the inherent and imo severe problems misspelled names have for a moment, and will focus solely on how an eight-letter Margaret might look visually.
Margarett would work OK, I think. It does look pseudo-Hungarian to me, as in Bernadett and Nikolett, so I think association with those legit names makes Margarett look better to me. It still looks a little physically unbalanced to me though.
On the other hand, I suppose Marggaret would make the most phonetic sense, since the G sound is a little duplicated in the first and second syllables (at least how I say it). Still looks wrong to me though.
Maargaret and Margaaret just look grossly wrong and unacceptably physically unbalanced to me. Margareet changes the pronunciation, so that's out too.
EDIT: Oh, I see that this might be for a character. My tolerance for bad character names is a lot higher than it is for bad real person names. So the idea of an eight-lettered Margaret on a character isn't so much of a, er, bad thing to me as it would be if you were considering it for a real child. :-D
But I second Chrisell in that almost nobody will notice of Margaret's the odd seven-lettered name out. If they do, they'll probably think it's just coincidence that all your other characters have eight-lettered names. But they will notice the misspelling of Margaret, and I agree that then it does seem a little gimmicky to me. Moreover, unless you have a work in a good narrative reason, I think it would probably be very distracting and puzzling to me as a reader to see Margaret misspelled when no other names in the story are.
This message was edited 7/3/2007, 10:39 PM
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