How do you feel about your name, Linley?

“I absolutely detest my first name,” says Linley, a 31-year-old from West Virginia.

No one can ever spell my name correctly on the first go. I’ve been called everything from Liz to Lisa to Leslie to Linny. I get mail all the time for Mr. Linley, which is just annoying. I’ve also been put into boy’s gym classes (“Leslie” is a popular male name in my area) in high school, which was not only annoying but embarrassing.

Linley does like that her name was the result of a compromise between her parents, though:

I was adopted, and at the orphanage they were calling me “Beth”. Afraid that I would be “confused,” my parents kept the Beth as my middle name. My dad wanted Lynn for my name, and my mom wanted Ashley, so they combined the two to get “Linley.”

And she concedes that her name is “definitely different”:

The only other “Linley” names I have come across are surnames, not first names.

Indeed, the name Linley has never ranked as a popular baby name in the U.S. — for males or for females. As a habitational surname, it was derived from two Old English elements, the first of which meant either “flax” or “lime tree” (depending on the specific source) and the second of which meant “clearing, glade.”

Thanks, Linley!

4 thoughts on “How do you feel about your name, Linley?

  1. My name is Linley too. My parents named me after my mum’s friend. I just looked it up and every I site I look at says it is a boy’s name, which is odd because I and the other two people who I know with this name are female.

    I don’t think it is bad name, I do get called a lot of other names but lots of people get that.

  2. My name is Linley and I love it! It was my Grandmother’s maiden name. It’s spelt exactly how it sounds, I’ve never had anyone screw up the spelling (unless they forgot the ‘e’) and I go by Lynn around my family (:

  3. My sister’s name is Linley and I’ve always loved it. It’s definitely different, and people don’t always understand it at first, but it fits her really well, it’s unique and so is she! My mom said she heard it on a soap opera and that’s where she fell in love with it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.