It seems that others here think this is a great idea, but I'm piping up in defense of the future little boy and saying, yes, please do try to talk her out of it!!
It's one thing to use boy-to-girl-to-boy names like
Morgan,
Courtney and
Ashley on boys, but a name like
Evelyn is too far gone to the pink side to be used by a modern boy. His life would be constant schoolyard torment and his terrible "I-hate-my parents" teenage years will only we worsened by giving him the name
Evelyn.
Yes,
Evelyn Waugh was a man. But times have changed and
Evelyn is just not seen as a masculine name any more - just like
Tiffany and
Kimberly were apparently once boy's names, I wouldn't recommend trying that these days.
Why doesn't she try choosing the name of a favourite character from a Waugh novel? There are lots of ways to honour a writer without using their first name.
Evelyn is just way WAY too feminine to be paired up with
Charlotte and
Austen. Everyone will assume that
Evelyn is a girl before they even meet him. And there's no way to de-girlify it.
Eve?
Evie?
Lynn? All girl's names!
He's got nowhere manly to turn. Surely her husband isn't going along with this either.
Ask her how she would have felt as a little girl with a name like
Walter, because that's what she'd be doing to her son.
Sorry, Mr. Waugh :(