The wrong era names....gaargh

Thye other annoyance is that Scottish characters all have to be called clichéd Scottish names like Angus, Hamish, Morag, Flora etc. There are undoubtedly plenty of those in Scotland, but it's so lazy to assume no one in Scotland is called Karen or Sarah or Olivia or Eva.

I’m 43 and went to school with 2 Andreas and either 2 or 3 Janets.

I read a Jane Fallon book set now with a young woman in her early twenties called Sharon. So lazy. She was a salt of the earth working class type which is all very well, she would not have been called Sharon.

Not everyone names their children from the current top 100!

I know 2 Andreas who are currently in their 30's. I don't think Andrea is that unusual at all. Janet is stretching it a little bit but still not "out there".

@whosaidtha I have a 1950s version of Robin Hood which my father had as a boy, and one of the female characters is called Dame Tiphanië. It took me ages to work out the pronunciation 🤣

Isn't there a thing called the Tiffany problem. In that Tiffany is a 10th century name. But if I wrote a book set in 1066 with a lead female character called Tiffany people would be complaining how unrealistic it was.

Although her father is French and mother Italian so not the same.

The (real life) sisters Grace and Tilly born in the 80s is a different kettle of fish to characters called Grace and Tilly who would surely have been born in, at least the seventies?

The odd one works - in that I know a teenage Laura and a teenage Clare, but both are named after departed relatives /friends of parents who would have been 40-somethings.

several in the same book is annoying.

and yes, the other way annoys me too - middle aged Paris is a good example, another was a 50-something Elsie - Elsie is either born pre-WWII or is under 10.

Andrea Spendolini-Sirieix is a very successful 19 year old British diver.

@LividHot Wendy Torrance, Rachel Creed (Pet Sematary), Donna Trenton (Cujo) admittedly 70s/80s ones, but surely a woman working outside the home wouldn't have been unusual even if she had children. I just re-read Dr Sleep which was published in 2013 and I couldn't find a mention of what Lucy Stone does for a living. Joanna Noonan from Bag of Bones spends her time sitting on charity boards despite a college degree.

I really noticed the names thing when I read The Outsider (2018) where a character has two teenage daughters. Annoyingly I can't remember what they were called but it was enough to send me down an internet rabbit hole of American baby girls names from 2004 to 2006! In the TV miniseries they were renamed Maya and Jessa which seemed much more appropriate.

I think the occasional out-of-generation name is fine because some families like to name babies after older family members, but it's off-putting if most of the characters are 'wrongly' named.

@Kilopascal Yes that's the one! It was a good book but the girls names annoyed me more than they should!

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep? Or maybe vice versa?

I think the girls were meant to be born in late 60s Lancashire, so they'd have to be very early adopters. I'd expect one of them to be Ann, Cathy, Helen, Sarah, Sue or Julie.

God yes. I can’t think of them off the top of my head but YES.

(And all their husbands in blue chambray work shirts).

The odd anachronistic one is fine - there are always a few named for a grandmother or neighbour or someone. But I agree, if they're all out of time, it does jar, and a group of names does tend to suggest a particular time far more than one by itself.

I know one Andrea who’s around 40.
And a quick look at the Darkgreener baby name site shows that there’s been some baby Andrea’s and baby Janet’s each year since 1996. Although they’re way, way, way down the list when it comes to the most popular baby names.

But I’d agree that the vast majority of Andrea’s and Janet’s out there are older women.

I can cope with the occasional anachronistic name in novels, but when there’s a novel full of them it can be a bit much.

I'm in my early 40s and went to school with many Andreas. No Janet though.

Stephen King does this a lot, all his teenage and twentysomething characters are stuck in 1962 name-wise. Plus 90% of the adult female characters are housewives who got married after college

I will have to look for that thread!

There is an AIBU post about this ~"Female character names in fiction - unrealistic " about cutesy names and the most popular names that were actually around at the time, exactly like you say.

I know a 20 year old Andrea.

This really irritates me. The Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison, which was written and set in the late 90s/early 00s, has teenage girls called Jackie, Pamela and Alison. The author was a teenager in the 60s and clearly used the names of her classmates! You also get a lot of chick lit type books featuring 30-40 something women called things like Evie/Edie/Lily when these names are more likely to be found on small girls. 40something women in real life are called things like Sarah, Becky, Emma, Jenny etc. Of course it’s entirely possible I’m taking all this too seriously.

I'm an Andrea that's 40. I know a few others of a similar age but not any younger.

Omg I get this all the time, wrong names drive me crazy - I don’t know why I get so worked up! We started the Harry Potter books on audible from the beginning again recently. Dudley’s friends are called something like Gordon, Piers and Malcolm 😂 The Weasleys and their different accents in the films sets my teeth on edge, too.

That thing with Lily Allen set in Margate (underwhelming) the sisters were called something like Mel, Trisha and Claire and it really jarred for me. I’m sure there’s worse out there, but these ones really irritated me, especially as I didn’t enjoy it but watched it anyway. Don’t get me started on the wildly different accents. Torture!