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[Opinions] Homer
Does anybody have an opinion on the name Homer outside of Homer Simpson? I'll admit, I'm finding it hard to separate the two; I'm not familiar with the mythological Homer the same way I am with, say, Jason and the Argonauts, and Homer isn't exactly a common name in the UK. In fact, I've never seen the name in any context other than Homer Simpson (and the mythological Homer).Does Homer sound dated?Does Homer sound rough, boring, unintelligent or do you have an opinion outside of these (probably) stereotypical attributes?I'm a fan of the soft sound, but that's about it. I don't actually like the name. Like Simon and Dexter, I find Homer to be a name I might like in an alternate universe. I also find it more interesting than boring due to its incredibly rare status, unlike Dave and Robert, but not quite so interesting that it would be elevated into the "kinda like-ish sorta maybe" category. Thoughts?
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I adore Homer! I majored in Latin & Greek in college and have never watched The Simpsons, so the ancient poet is my primary association. I think of a person who seems roguish but is quite sensitive and intelligent (not that a rogue can't be intelligent or sensitive).
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Fine for a pigeon.Where I live, I've never seen or heard of it used as a name. Homer, the reputed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, may well never have existed, but whoever did the deed deserves plenty of credit. Homer Simpson, though, not so much!
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It's very dated in the US. It was moderately popular in the early part of the 1900s, but fell way off very fast.
It sounds very old-man and very hillbilly.The only place I like Homer is when it's in baseball: a homer is a home run.
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Can you go into detail about what makes a name sound hillbilly?
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It's blind like Cecil / Cecilia and epic like Ulysses or Journey. It's a short H name that has an *er sound ending like Hunter, Harper, Hester, Hector.Realistically, sounds most like someone born in the late 1800s to me (dated like a hand-colored photograph); my great grandmother might have had an uncle Homer.
Contemporaries: Galen, Eldred, Elmer, Casper, Garfield, Grover, Enoch, Henry, Howard, Cecil, Waldo...Napoleon, Garfield, Jemima, Kermit, and Homer could have been a real life sibset with parents Ulysses and Beulah, haha.
Or less comically: Galen, Silas, Jesse, Violet, and Homer could have been, with parents Florence and Edward.Some possible word associations: 'home, homey, homely, homeboy, homo' plus Homeric is an adj.I like it more when I see it next to Elmer / Omer / Omar (all of which I'd rather use), the same way I started liking Casper more when I thought of it as part of a group (Cassius, Cassian, Kaspar, Jasper). For a long time, Casper was just 'the friendly ghost' to me, but now I like it somewhat. I think Homer is revivable, but I wouldn't want to be one of the first to use it, because the Simpsons connection does bug me.

This message was edited 1/26/2020, 4:10 PM

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Homer was a kid in the 1950's, lived somewhere in rural USA, and played baseball. Nice kid, kind of quiet.
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I live in the US and I don’t know of anyone named Homer other than the two you mentioned. I guess if I were to try to separate it from Simpson and The Odysseus it sounds like an old man from the 1950’s.
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