| > In the book of names I have the definition is "sweet one"
> It is also the feminine form of Charles.
No offense, Cheryl, but what dictionary were you using? -- it
sounds woefully bad. I have never heard of Cheryl as meaning
either "sweet one" or being the feminine of Charles. In fact,
your dictionary can't be correct -- because Charles means "man,"
either Cheryl can't mean "sweet one" or it's not the feminine
of Charles.
Minor digression ... Name dictionaries are notorious for
being pretty shoddy examples of scholarship. I think this is
probably because their main audience was never scholars. There
are, however, some very good ones out there. My personal
favorite is Dunkling and Gosling, The New American Dictionary
of First Names, Signet, 1985.
Back to the topic ... According to Dunkling and Gosling, Cheryl
may very well not have a meaning. It seems to be one of those
names that basically just "sounds nice." They speculate that
it is a coinage and was originally influenced most strongly by
Cherry and Beryl (the "ch" sound was originally pronounced like
in "church"). It first appeared in the 20s. To prove that the
name was basically just for the "nice sound," Dunkling and Gosling
cite the myriad ways that Cheryl was spelled: Cheryll, Cheryle,
Cherryl, Cherril, Cherryle, Cherryll, Cherrill. The "ch" sound
switched to an "sh" one when the French Cherie became popular
in English-speaking countries. This is also when variants using
the "sh" spelling started to appear.
> Growing up I have known only 3 Cheryl's and they have all been in
> the last 15 years....My school day's were free of another Cheryl.
Dunkling and Gosling say that the name was extremely popular
and "reached a peak in the late 60s." They go on to say that
it has "faded drastically" -- probably because of overuse.
-- Cliff
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| re: .4
Cliff,
Thanx for clearing that up for me. It wasn't a dictionary that
I got the meaning from, it was from a Baby name book that someone
gave me a couple months ago. I can't remember the name of the book
right now.
Sorry for putting a false statement in notes. I guess the book
i was looking at is wrong.
Cheryl
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