About Abby Sandel

Whether you're naming a baby, or just all about names, you've come to the right place! Appellation Mountain is a haven for lovers of obscure gems and enduring classics alike.

You May Also Like:

What do you think?

20 Comments

  1. I love Honoria! It’s on my girls short list. I love the old fashioned-ness of it, the uniqueness and the fact that it’s the name of my English great great grandmother. The family tree is a great place to find old, interesting names.

  2. I love the names Honour and Honorah..definitely considering these names for a girl.
    Honoria is very pretty (pronounced Awe-nor-ee-ah like Gloria) but would hate for my child to be teased about gonorrhea.. you know what kids can be like…cruel sometimes! so why give them bait?

  3. I think Honoria is quite lovely. I also really like the other Honor names such as Honorine and Honora.

  4. I love Honor, Annora, and Honoria. We are planning to use some very important names to honor some equally important people with our kids, and I always thought one of these in the middle would be great. I’m loving Kester (for a Kristopher) Annora at the moment.

  5. I liked Honor very much (first heard on Gilmore Girls) but now it’s been celebrity tainted and Honoria isn’t quite my taste. Alaric and the Visigoths is totally the name of my future all-girl garage band.

  6. I love Honor, Annora and Lenore and will most likely name a daughter some version of the name someday. However, Honoria is just too frilly and fussy, that extra syllable is too much.

  7. I actually like Honour (would spell it like this because we have ‘u’ in some words. i.e colour vs color) & did before ALba used it, as I was actually writing a story a couple months prior to the birth of her daughter where one of the characters was named Honour. I really like Honour. Honour to me is girly, so I’d use it on a girl in a heartbeat. I actually have Honour Melanie on my list

    The ”ah NOR ee ah” pronunciation is odd to me. I never thought of an STD when I saw it,oddly enough. I say it more as ”on AWR ee AH”, so there is a slight accent difference.

    Honora/Honoria isn’t very feminine to me at all. It’s a rather heavy sounding name.The name sounds like it’s from the 18th century to me in a bad way. It’s not the worst name in the world, I just find it a heavy name that’s not very flattering or appealing. Overall, I don’t like it personally, though someone else can use it.Maybe it doesn’t appeal to me because of where I live or my generation. I don’t know, I just find it very heavy

    1. I wouldn’t have thought to pronounce this to rhyme with gonnorrhea, but to rhyme with Gloria: ah NOR ee uh.

      1. I think it is an accent thing, which is why I don’t say ‘ah’. I’ve noticed this sometimes when I compare myself to Americans.I think a possible way that some might say it is ‘hon AWR ee aah’ or ‘hah NORE ee ah”. At least, if I play with the name, that’s what I get .Either way, the name just really doesn’t appeal to me

  8. OK, so I’m that person who, upon seeing the name and mentally saying it, thought YIKES – STD! Could not stop thinking it. Needless to say, I’m far more supportive of Honora than Honoria. Honora is still only OK for me… it waaaay beats the STD version and I think I’d prefer Honor on a boy, so Honora wins… it’s just not exciting me.

  9. I first heard the name as Major Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers) unseen sister on M*A*S*H. (Yes, I’m a dork.) I thought it was pretty then, I still like it now. I prefer straight Honor the best, but I also like Honora and Honoria. The only problem, as Abby pointed out, is the pronunciation issue. With my luck, my future husband will hate all three so it won’t be and issue. 🙂

  10. The first time I heard Honora was in the Anita Shreve novel, Sea Glass. (I suggest you read this book, as well as Fortune’s Rocks, both of which take place in the same house in different times.) It’s such a pretty name. However, I definitely prefer the less frilly, still sweet, Nora. 🙂

    1. I loved Fortune’s Rocks and had NO idea there was another novel set there … am off to read it immediately!

      1. The house first showed up in The Pilot’s Wife. Have you read that one? That was my first Shreve novel. I think of the three connected novels, I like Fortune’s Rocks the best.

      2. By the way, Abby, do you have a Kindle? There’s no better way to get that immediate satisfaction of buying/reading a new book.