American names = bad?

Jewish and Irish people never needed to become white! They needed to 'melt' in to the pot, as prejudice was across the board.

In my opinion American people people weren't / aren't interested in a name that genuinely reflects their heritage. They might have had access to an old family album or something but the names they chose/choose show only how completely they have melted in to the pot!, by wanting something that is fashionable in their new country. Nothing wrong with that!

Assimilate to survive.

Being seen as an Irish Republican wouldn't necessarily lose you any friends in America (however it would in Britain). I don't think the 'it's politically inoffensive' rationale for choosing Shannon and names like that would matter.

Typo (or possibly autocorrect as I type the name Ailbhe from time to time) -- I meant Ailbe for a boy's name

Wrt 'Madison Wojciechowski' -- I think it's sad not to have ties to the place your ancestors may have come from and to choose a faddish name when there are plenty of other names that wouldn't be such clangers alongside your surname. Of course it's possible that Madison could have some family context too, but my guess would be that a name like that would be chosen for fashion reasons. By the same token I think it's a shame to lose track of your culture to such an extent that when you do go to reclaim it all you have is something from the movies or a map.

Maybe that's what makes the concept of 'American' names hard to accept -- that there is no clearly apparent context besides 'American' to the names that jump out. 'Colonials' or Europeans are not the only people to experience that reaction when faced with names like Trip/Trap/Trig/Truck/Addison/Madison/Kassidi, etc., except in America the names in question are not thought of as 'American names' when people look askance at them.

Bill and Hillary's first grandchild is:

Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky

I never knew that about Trey!

Trey Parker (South Park) is Randolph Severn Parker III

(& his current partner is called - um - Boogie )

The double name thing in the US South is not fashionable at present. But the surname for first name, for boys and girls, still is.

On numerous visits no one has ever commented negatively on her name being based on my misunderstanding of traditional Irish names.

Ah the beauty of anonymous internet forums where honesty prevails above good manners.

On an aside, when I was growing up and playing with dolls, we always chose 'fashionable' names for them such as Mandy, Nicole, Summer etc.(I don't mean to pinpoint certain names, they are the ones I remember when recalling over thirty years ago). When naming my own children these names wouldn't have entered my mind as I wanted names that couldn't be dated or pigeon holed. Perhaps this is the real issue with 'Americanised' names, they are often 'fashionable' and 'new'. That alone turns many off them? I can't say a double barrell first name without saying it in a Southern accent in my mind and it makes me smile. However, there are plenty of threads on this forum asking for opinions on Lexi Rose and Hannah May etc so culture intertwines, while some people (like myself) tend to find themselves hanging on to their own culture and identity when naming children. I don't think that is a particularly bad thing to do for any culture.

This has been a very interesting thread to have a read-through. As someone with very mixed heritage the naming of our child is going to take quite a bit of discussion. And I suspect closed ears to almost everyone else, whichever side / extreme of the oceans they live!

Saint Ailbhe was definitely male. Admittedly he's not precisely contemporary...

Mathanxiety why do you have Ailbhe in with boy's names?!!! just curious as i'm irish and have never ever heard of a boy called Ailbhe, it's definitely a girl's name is it not?

Trey is just Trey in some parts of the country, but I think in the south it is often used for a third.

Will Smith's son Trey is actually Willard Smith III.

Tetley!

Aye chuck, that's uh grett nemm.

I do like a cup of tea.

I only discovered recently that Trey is a nick name for the third generation with the same name, from the latin for third maybe??

PLEASE Americans correct me if I've got that wrong!

BotoxedFossil, when my DD said she liked Erin as a name allI could think of was seeing packets of soup in Liptons with that name.

An American friend called her son Randy, I can't see that going down too well here

Going back to the original post, and thinking why it could be that a lot of 'American' names are disliked here. I'm a Brit btw.

I generally dislike them, and I'm sure some of it simply IS cultural bias of some sort that I'm not even aware of, to do with what I maybe subconsciously see as 'nice and old-fashioned' or associate with famous figures, etc.

But if I think of the kind of American names I would automatically dislike - I'd say that my immediate feeling is that a lot of them simply sound very impersonal. I think to British ears a lot of the surname names, especially the girl ones, just don't sound very namey - they sound like companies perhaps, or products - which isn't the sort of warm, personal association you want for a name. I think we like our names to be NAMES and nothing else. If I heard of an American female teen names Tetley, for example, I wouldn't bat an eyelid, and I'd think it was awful.

Then there are the short, mainly male ones - Cody, Trey etc. Again, my immediate feeling is that they are cold. And I do think that that must simply be down to unfamiliarity - a single syllable needs context, perhaps, to make it a name instead of just a single sound. Because of course, Max sounds fine to me :)

All very interesting.

Irish-American is a rather distinct culture from Irish, and in that context it would make sense that there are Irish-American names that are distinct from Irish names.

But having said that, I've been running through the names of all the Irish-Americans I know, and other than one Brianna, they're all either 'traditional' Irish names (Grace, Patrick, Micheal, etc.) or not connected to one culture in particular.

I have a Megan, who's American born and 1/4 Irish, but I didn't name her thinking it was Irish. The intent was to have Megan on her birth certificate and to call her Peggy, but she turned out to be more of a Megan than a Peggy and her mitochondrial DNA is Welsh, so it works.
I've had a few people, some of them quite smug, 'inform' me that Megan is not an Irish name, and I generally just laugh at their judgy pants.

On the other hand, I grew up with a name that's considered fairly traditional in the UK, Ireland and the US, although it's originally Greek, with a Polish/Jewish last name and nobody has ever suggested to me that this is in any way 'sad' or wrong. Because that would be really weird.

Yes of course you are quite right, I am taking it personally

My dds name though seems to be quite out of step with the names chosen where I live.

No others at school, large 3 form entry primary, or the numerous after school clubs she attends.

I think that I may be sensitive on this matter due to having a very derided name myself.

Think white stilettos/Essex

I think you're taking it personally.

There's always a zeitgeist out there. That's why a lot of people all believed that their number one baby name choice was their decision and were then shocked that their best friend from school/sister/cousin had the same idea.

A lot of people just choose a name that they like the sound of. I believe that. But then, why do names ending in -en all sound so appealing for a decade? why did frilly names sound so appealing for a decade? are stronger names beginning to sound more appealing now?

I just liked the sound of my children's names too but now a decade+ on I can see that I chose names that were quite typical of their decade. Not the actual names, but the sound. Soft, with Ls in them ending in 'a'. I can see now that will be a typical sound of their decade.

My daughter is called one of these 'American/ Irish' names.

I am English, with an Irish father and an English mother with Irish parents.

I named my child a name that I like, I didn't think that my parents or my very large extended family in Ireland would be upset at my picking a faux Irish name.

On numerous visits no one has ever commented negatively on her name being based on my misunderstanding of traditional Irish names.

I find all this cultural snobbishness very sad.

I mean pre-aer lingus jumpinng on a flight. When I say the people who never needed to contemplate emigration I'm going back decades before the 70s ehre. I mean emigrated by boat. Their children returned with their children on a plane, for the summer.

They aren't just Irish though - I see the use of a name like Shannon as a deliberate reference to location whilst trying to avoid political connotations of picking a name that was too obviously on one side or the other of political debates. After a while that meaning drifts away and they just become popular Irish-American names.

I think this is a reason why surname and place name names are popular amongst expats, they say something about who you were and who you are whilst not being particularly offensive (to most!)

I agree Mathanxiety, it's a little sad that people who believe they are honouring their ancestry have unwittingly bought in to a hollywood notion of their ancestry instead.

Ireland didn't start to use names like Tara, Shannon or Erin until they were known to be (Irish) -American though films and TV shows. Then they came back to Ireland with an American vibe.

The type of Irish people who never needed to contemplate emigration wouldn't have found those names appealing.

Irish People who did use names like Shannon, Tara, Erin or Paige, perhaps they were chasing something out of their reach too. I can see how O'American or McAmerican names could to some Irish people conjure up 1970s memories of family reunions, mummy getting excited to see her sister, airports - like a portal to another universe when you're a child, cousins you don't know who seem much more grown up and glamorous than you do...........some thing bigger than this village.... It doesn't have that effect on me though but I can see how it might suggest that to some people, unwittingly.

Belinda is a very pretty name. My Australian friend has a sister called Belinda. I've never met one in Ireland. I love it. Strange how it's so popular there but not used at all here.

Math anxiety - your "Madison Wojciechowski" example is snobbish. Surnames carry for generations, so why would it be sad for an American child to given a normal, easily understood name that makes sense in their relative cultural environment, instead of Agnieska, if they have no ties to Poland?

It is really all context though. There are a lot of UK names that didn't exist in Australia growing up - it's only over here I've come across Eleanors, Elizabeths, Olivias etc. Certain names baffle me especially the twee flower names (Poppy etc) whereas Erin is extremely common. I went to a very middle class school and there was a surfeit of Emma, Sara/h, Lauren, Jacqueline, Belinda, Claire, Courtney, Melissa/Larissa, Alana/Alannah.

Certain names are very Australian - I find if I come across a Belinda, Lauren or Hayley in London, she is probably Kiwi or Aussie. Especially Belindas!

It's rather snobbish/colonial to think that Tara/Erin/Kelly and other Location names are weak names clutching to tenuous Irish roots. Erin is a pretty name, it's widely used, so in the Australian (& American) context, it's as acceptable as Elizabeth would be here. Conversely, if you were called Poppy or Daisy or similar in 1990's Australia, people would assume your parents were bogan and/or a bit simple or wanting a "uneek" name whereas here it's a preferred name for the middle classes.