I prefer
Riley. I don't think there's anything wrong with Ryleigh, though. It looks fine. It's no Khaytelynne.
I think people should choose whatever names they like. I'm pretty open when it comes to the boys names on girls thing. Names change over time and so do the genders of names.
Julian and
Christian used to be girls names and I can still see them on girls.
Ashley is common for girls yet I can still see it on a boy. I feel people should respect other peoples tastes a bit more. There's nothing wrong with a girl names
Casey or
Riley, in my opinion. Those names work on girls and apparently quite a few people think so. I like them for both genders.
Well,
Rylee is about to enter the top 100 and
Rylie isn't that far behind so I think in a few years it'll be one of those names where no one will know how to spell it anymore and all spellings will be accepted equally (think
Kaylee or
Kaylynn). So a Ryleigh wouldn't have more problems than a
Riley. It could make her life easier because Ryleigh does indeed LOOK or feminine written down. Of course it can't sound more feminine because it sounds exactly the same as
Riley.
Personally if I'd give my daughter a unisex name I wouldn't change the spelling to make it more feminine. I kind of like
Casey and
Finley for girls. However instead of spelling them
Kacie and Finleigh I'd rather have their middle names listed everywhere (e.g.
Casey Sophia and
Finley Grace).
So I don't have anything against girly spellings as long as they don't make the child's life unnecessarily difficult.
Kelleigh for example I wouldn't use and I wouldn't like to see it used simply because
Kelly is by far the most common spelling so people would always misspell it. Same with Emmah, Annah, Sharlott, Djulia or Morgynn because in these cases there's a standard spelling which is way more common so people would always assume an EM-ma was spelled
Emma and not Emmah. But in the case of names like
Caitlin,
Riley,
Kaylynn or
Hayley it simply doesn't matter because there are so many common spellings that people won't assume, they'll just ask how it's spelled anyway. So a
Caitlin would have the same problems as a Khaytelynn.
Personally I like the look of the -eigh ending in
Kayleigh but no other name I can think of right now. I also like the -ee ending for
Kaylee. In most cases I prefer the -ey ending:
Hayley,
Riley, Casey...and I also like
Kayley.
Oh and as far as I know
Riley is more common for girls now anyway so she won't have any problems.
And sorry but I dislike the "why didn't she choose a feminine name" argument. I think people should be allowed to choose whatever names they like. Just my opinion, though ;)