To ask which names sound snobby in the English language?

[ConfusedWife1234]

I am just interested because I found the Chevy names thread interesting.

I have a friend called Annastasia, who is part Russian part Eastern German. She has been told her name sound snobby and wannabe in the US/UK, while in Russia it is very common and in what was Eastern Germany it is not to uncommon.

Anastasia is lovely! Tell her not to worry - who said such a rude thing?

Anastasia is beautiful

I suppose I would think of names like Portia and Rupert, but once I met a nice child with the name it would become a nice name :)

I meant to write Chevy not Chevy. Stupid autocorrect.

I think she does not really mind. She does not live in any of those countries.

I just think it is interesting how a name can associated with one thing in one culture and another thing in another culture.

So if in Great Britain there are chavy names (double barreled, see other thread) are there names that sound really snobby? Which ones?

If I had to name a snobby Englishman (or one with snobby parents) I would call him Benedict or Reginald but I am not a native speaker and my prejudices are untainted by reality. It is just what I learned by reading to many bad crime novels.

I don't think anyone in the uk would say Reginald is snobby. The krays have a lot to answer for.🤣

Anastasia has been referred to as 'snobby and wannabe'?

Only someone with a very limited world view could say something like that.

She has been told that in the UK the name is extremely rare and typically spelled different which makes it sound like her parents had been searching for a extremely rare name and then spelled it wrong.

My friend Wiktoria had a similar problem by the way. She went to the US and everybody spelled her name Victoria.

Now which names are considered snobby in the UK? Are there any? The chav names thread is much longer.

Reginald - snobby 😂. Reggie Kray or Reg Varney in on the buses. You're like my Canadian cousin who named her dog an upper class English name (in her opinion) - Trevor!

For me maybe Hugo, Rupert, Jonty, gervaise. But it depends on the person saying the name. Rupert Grint doesn't look or sound like a snobby Rupert for example.

Araminta
Arabella
Tabitha
Rupert
Hugo
Tarquin
Octavia
St John

That sort of thing.

I don't think they sound snobby personally though. DC2 is a girl and I really really want to call her Tabitha - DP just won't have a bloody bar of it, he says, "we're not having a fucking cat "

St John is a given name? Sounds like a surname... or is this using the mother surname as a given name cause the family wants to preserve it?

Tarquin, Tabitha, Tobias, Horatio. Lots of snobbish names out there. As I said on the "chavvy names" thread, you can usually guess a person's upbringing from their name.

St John is from the surname, yes. And pronounced Sinjin!

St John is a name I’ve heard given in Yorkshire a few times. Pronounced ‘Sinjun’. It’s old. Think of St John Rivers in Jane Eyre. I met a rugby player in Castleford called St John, he wasn’t posh 😂

Yes St John is a first name, usually pronounced "Sin-jun".

I guess we are weird in this country.

Ophelia and Allegra

I think a lot of the names which used to be considered upper class have now become far more normalised. i.e. those mentioned above like Hugo and Tarquin.

The royal family after all have very tarditional names, George, Henry, Edward, Andrew, Charles, William, Elizabeth, Anne etc.

Names are still a big class signifyer in this country unfortunately.

Perdita
Lavinia

In fact, pretty much any Jilly Cooper character, come to think of it...

Tabitha is a cat. I agree with your husband its me I catchy.

Cathy!!!!

Noooooo, don't say that!! 😭😭

I used to love Miranda too, but I must admit that I wouldn't call her that now that we have Miranda hart!

OP a lot of names are considered posh. For girls take Celia, Lucinda, Beatrix. For boys take Quentin, Hugo, Sixtus, Tristram. The last one is often used as shorthand by journalists for incompetent public school boys who still manage to get on and are mostly in the media.

However rather more names are considered very un-posh. Tends to be the Waynes, Kevins, Kenneth, Dwane etc. No particular reason apart from the bizarre UK social system. Naming a daughter Chardonnay or after a TV personality is considered odd and spelling a common name differently to make is seem special is odder still.

After all this Russian names in the UK - like Anastasia - are fairly frequent but more often Natasha, etc. Back in the 19C there were a lot more, mostly for girls, because boys names were just translated - peter for pyotr, gregory, ivan, etc. And there was a passion for the French names like Eugenie, Clothilde ....

I knew an Anastasia and she pronounced it awna-sta-see-ah....

I always though it was ana-stay-zee-ah

Pointlessly double barreled girls' names like 'Coco Lily' etc.

Kids were born in UK and I wanted Violet for the girl but DH said that was 'biker's moll name' from he part of Sweden he was from. Also liked Frida - he claimed every school dinner lady was called Frida. We have now moved to where he grew up and I have not met an adult woman with either name ........