#It's totally “Sonja” but I'll leave that one for another day...

[thecurioustale]

Cream Puff Lightning

Which is your favorite version of Clare, Claire, and Clair?

Mine is Clair, which is by far the least common of the three as a female name (in the US anyway; in other places it's sometimes different). (And it's also rare as a male name nowadays.)

Regardless of spelling, it's a name that I like for multiple reasons: etymologically (it means "clear" or "bright"); by association with éclairs (one of the objectively best pastries); by association with Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII; and because it has a good mouthfeel when spoken aloud. My preference for the "Clair" spelling is therefore mainly visual. It also seems more rarified and dignified than the other two spellings, which I can only attribute to purely subjective reasons. ("Clare" reminds me of Clara Cow and Doc's bae from Back to the Future III, while "Claire" is the name you pick when you're too much of a coward to pick one of the other two.)

(And here's some trivia for you: Lightning's original placeholder name in development was Éclair Farron, and, although I did accidentally play FFXIII with a stretched horizonal screen setting that caused all the characters to look fatter, Lightning was so named by the FF dev team not because she was intended to be pudgy and full of custard but because éclairs are associated in French with lightning (it's what the word éclair literally means)—so it's actually a very clever placeholder name and I'm glad they mostly kept it, though less so that they moved the "e" to the end of the name rather than jettisoning it entirely if they were going to not make her be a pastry anymore.)

Which is your favorite version of Sonia, Sonya, and Sonja?