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Help[Opinions] Re: Ivy
in reply to a message by erb816
I used to really like it, and it was on my favorites for years.
Then I moved into a house where there's ivy planted on the other side of our backyard fence, and I have to cut it back every year or it'll take over. And while I was pulling up these endlessly long, tangled vines that stuck to the ground, I found myself thinking of them as "creepy-ass vines." They're ... sort of icky! I started to question how much I liked Ivy as a name. And I got to thinking about the symbolism of names, which I care about.
Ivy is perennially green and picturesque on buildings, which is sorta nice. It's vaguely associated with revelry, and that's cool. But it's also one of the more humble plants there is. It doesn't stand up by itself, it creeps along the ground and glues itself to things, it binds things up and strangles them and contributes to decay, and it's kind of a weed (English Ivy is an invasive pest where I live, killing native trees).
And it sounds like I.V. That didn't formerly bother me, but once I noticed it, I couldn't stop noticing it, and now it's kind of ruining the name for me. I can't unhear "Ivy catheter, Ivy drugs." I think that's a minor issue, it wouldn't stop me from using the name. But ... the symbolism issue would possibly stop me, and when I add the I.V. association to it, I find the name seems unusable to me.
If I encounter it as the name of a little girl, I don't really think bad things about it ... I put it in a category with modern hippy-style plant-y names like Willow and Hazel and Juniper and Briar. Although with Ivy, and none of those others - if instead it had a namey origin like Amy has, and there were no creepy plant called that, and no sound-alike problem - I would very much like the sound of it.
I ran a poll a few days ago comparing Ivy with a few other long-I names https://www.behindthename.com/polls/316745 and of those, it's most liked.
I think Ivy will get more popular for a few years.
- mirfak
Then I moved into a house where there's ivy planted on the other side of our backyard fence, and I have to cut it back every year or it'll take over. And while I was pulling up these endlessly long, tangled vines that stuck to the ground, I found myself thinking of them as "creepy-ass vines." They're ... sort of icky! I started to question how much I liked Ivy as a name. And I got to thinking about the symbolism of names, which I care about.
Ivy is perennially green and picturesque on buildings, which is sorta nice. It's vaguely associated with revelry, and that's cool. But it's also one of the more humble plants there is. It doesn't stand up by itself, it creeps along the ground and glues itself to things, it binds things up and strangles them and contributes to decay, and it's kind of a weed (English Ivy is an invasive pest where I live, killing native trees).
And it sounds like I.V. That didn't formerly bother me, but once I noticed it, I couldn't stop noticing it, and now it's kind of ruining the name for me. I can't unhear "Ivy catheter, Ivy drugs." I think that's a minor issue, it wouldn't stop me from using the name. But ... the symbolism issue would possibly stop me, and when I add the I.V. association to it, I find the name seems unusable to me.
If I encounter it as the name of a little girl, I don't really think bad things about it ... I put it in a category with modern hippy-style plant-y names like Willow and Hazel and Juniper and Briar. Although with Ivy, and none of those others - if instead it had a namey origin like Amy has, and there were no creepy plant called that, and no sound-alike problem - I would very much like the sound of it.
I ran a poll a few days ago comparing Ivy with a few other long-I names https://www.behindthename.com/polls/316745 and of those, it's most liked.
I think Ivy will get more popular for a few years.
- mirfak
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