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We have daughters named Ruby and Pearl, Gemma and Jewel, so why not this sparkling appellation?
Thanks to Marianne and Larkin for suggesting Garnet as our Baby Name of the Day.
Before you dismiss Garnet as another modern wacky noun name akin to Apple or Blue, check out the statistics. Garnet ranked in the US Top 1000 most years from 1884 through 1944, and I’ve stumbled across elaborations like Garnetta. Her best decades were from the 1900s and 1910s, so she’s on track for a 100-year revival.
Garnets have been prized since as early as 3000 BC. They don’t have to be red, but we associate them with the color. In fact, garnet comes from the French word grenat, referring to dark red, originally from the Latin granatum. There’s a decent case that the color words relate to the pomegranate, the dark red fruit that figures in the myth of Persephone.
This lends some ancient and elemental heft to Garnet. She’s less showy than Diamond or Emerald, more mineral than dazzling jewel. Garnet is the birthstone for the month of January, making her a subtle seasonal choice, too.
While Garnet’s gemstone status pushes this one into the feminine category today, that wasn’t always the case. Garnet – and Garnett and Garnette - also have a history as surnames, either for jewelers, or possibly for makers of hinges. The cross-garnet hinge looks like the letter T, and was around well into the American colonial period and beyond.
Lastly, I’ve found a few attempts to connect Garnet to Guarin, an Old French name meaning protector, derived from the Germanic warin – guard. It feels like a stretch, but it isn’t completely implausible.
With the surname connection, it should come as no surprise that Garnet has a history of use for men. Like many unisex names, it was used in the same era it was popular for girls. Garnet ranked in the US Top 1000 for boys a handful of times between 1882 and 1924.
A few notable Garnets include:
- British Army Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley, known for his service in Africa in the 1870s and 1880s. Such was his reputation for efficiency and order that “everything’s all Sir Garnet” became a phrase meaning that all was in order. Wolsley was parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan with their catchy tune about the “very model of a modern Major-General.”
- World War I flying ace Garnet Malley, later an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek.
Today Garnet’s feel is almost at home with boys’ names like Garrett, Everett, Emmett and Bennett. But with ends-in-et is big for girls, too, with choices like Juliet, Scarlett and Violet in vogue. Factor in Garnet’s gemstone and color connections, and this one starts to feel slightly better suited for Team Pink.
But mostly Garnet is a 21st century rarity. In 2010 just five girls received the name, along with seven boys called Garnett. That’s impressively unusual, and suggests that you could use it for either gender. I love Isadora’s description: It’s also unisex in the best possible way. I wouldn’t think, “Oh, they must have wanted a boy,” if parents gave this name to their daughter. And I wouldn’t worry about a son getting picked on.
Overall, Garnet is colorful, unusual, and has more history than you might expect from a nature name.
Thanks for profiling this name. Very interesting! It has all the ingredients of a name I would like, but I can’t help thinking about how it rhymes with “darn it”.
Darn it!
I first came across this name in a book where Garnet was the identical twin sister of Ruby, so the name seems quite feminine to me and potentially a good proportion of the females in my generation in the UK since it was a Jacqueline Wilson book which were and still are extremely popular in the under 10 market. I could see why Garnet could work for a lad, though – certainly as a quirkly middle name choice.
Love it! It’s a little crazy, but people could get used to it! And it doesn’t have the GWTW problem or Scarlet letter problem.
I see it as a girl’s name. And I don’t mean to offend any Scarletts with my comments, those were just my ambivalences when my husband wanted Scarlett for our 2nd. (We went with Gemma.)
Altho Persephone has her own issues as a protagonist.
I’m with Lou. My first association was reading Jacqueline Wilson’s “Double Act” at the age of ten, starring twin sisters named Ruby and Garnet. It is still hugely popular book with young girls today.
I can see it used on both boys and girls.
Garnet on a boy has the nn possibility of Gary. On a girl, Net or Netta. I don’t usually like word names, but this one is growing on me. Plus, I love garnets.
I love Garnet. Garnet and Beryl (so underutilized!) are my favorite gemstone names, followed by Ruby, Amber, and Pearl. Opal I’d love to love (since i love the stone) but it sounds too much like “dopey” for me.
How weird is it that Ruby is a “classy” gemstone name, but Sapphire, which is the same gem, sounds “stripperish?”
Ooh, Beryl is lovely. I agree it’s under used and aviatrix Beryl Markham would make a daring namesake. If only we could keep people from pronouncing it like barrel.
I don’t think of Sapphire as stripperish, rather it make me think of the Angry Black Woman trope.
I do much prefer Garnet for a girl, because it does make me think of the Jewel and I think Jewel names should be feminine. Though this is my birthstone, it is my favorite jewel name, but I do kind of like it in a guilty pleasure sort of way.
The dean of my college within the university I attended is Dr. Garnett, so Garnet reads surnamey and male to me. Plus I keep wanting to pronounce it like Gar-nette. No thanks, I’ll stick with Pearl
I don’t think of Garnet and Garnett the same name. Garnet feels feminine and I pronounce it GARN-it. Garnett makes me think of basketball player Kevin Garnett (gar-NET)and it feels masculine.
I just vaguely remembered a civil war era romance novel from Scholastic with an antagonist called Garnet. I never caught the Garnet/Scarlett connection before, but that was a brilliant choice by the author.
Anyways back in the 80′s, I wasn’t familiar with the birthstone, I just liked that it seemed like a feminine form of Gary (my brother’s name.) I still like it and I’s consider it a contender for a middle name.
We considered Garnet as a second name for our daughter who was born at the beginning of this month, but my husband couldn’t shake the image of the male Garnet he grew up with. That Garnet would have been born in the mid-seventies. (We ended up going with Scarlet.)
I love Garnet, but only for a boy. For me, it sounds too similar to male names like Gary, Gareth, Garrick, Garrett etc to sound really feminine. But if you like non-feminine sounding names for girls, this would be a winner.