Outnumbered - why is Karen named, "Karen"

[SheilaBirling]

Why does the character of Karen have this name? Her brothers and Jake and Ben, so shouldn't she be called something like Grace/Georgia/Lucy etc etc?

Ooh I think that episode must have been before I was a fervent mumsnetter myself... what happened? Was mumsnet helpful to her? Or mean?!

I know that not everyone likes yoo-neek names. I don't like them either!! I don't think Pete and Sue would like them. I just didn't think that the name Karen would be something that they would have chosen.

Pete and Sue are presented as quite an ordinary couple whose taste is quite middle class and Bodenish. The names Ben and Jake fit with that image whereas Karen doesn't. I would have expected them to pick a name like Lucy, Olivia or Kate - popular but tasteful.

Yes Karen is Danish. I have Danish relatives

The house would have been well within their financial reach in the mid nineties, assuming they bought somewhere a bit up-and-coming. Two young twenty something graduates with a bit of savings could happily afford a terraced house in zone 3/4.

Oh I always wondered that too! I'm Australian - I thought maybe Karen was having a comeback in the UK! Glad to read the explanation. Feel like watching Outnumbered now....

Useless fact:

Tyger Dew-Honey who plays Jakes is the son of porn stars Ben Dover Linzi Drew

*Tyger Drew-Honey

I'm totes middle class by the way, as is my good friend, Karen 2. I'm not saying it's a posh name but it sits fine with classic boys names of the era (Michael, David, Peter etc).

Yes, Karen would have made (demographic) sense for Pete’s wife rather than his daughter. And Sue for his mother, not his wife

Favourite Karen Moment

Grandama: And always remember darling - a woman can be anything she wants to be.

Karen: A hexagon. I want to be a hexagon

Favourite Karen moment is definitely when they are stuck in the car and playing a game to see who can tell the biggest lie, ben has a go, Jake has a go, then Karen comes out with "I like aunty Angela" and sue starts talking quickly "that's a lovely thing to say, shall we carry on with the game now though..."

It's hard to pick though, she is one of my all-time favourite characters! She has some great moments with aunty Angela in particular

Episodes that come to mind are the (MN ) goat, her big day (bridesmaid), the airport episode

I love Karen - in the oldest episodes when she's at her youngest she reminds me of DD1 so much a lot of the time... although there are other times when I wonder if she's more DD2, and DD1's more Ben-like. They veer between the two essentially.

A relative (nearly 40) is a Karen - named after Karen Carpenter (and yes she has a brother Richard).

"Who's Ulrika" has to be one of my favourite Karen moments.

I'm a Karen, born early 70s.

I'm named after Karen Carpenter. Not that it adds anything to this thread

My favourite Karen moment is when she has the funeral

'may the force be with you, because you're worth it, amen and out.'

Go Karen, is what I say. I’d forgotten Aunt Angela and the funeral.

I’d never noticed it before but now you’ve pointed it out it’s actually really jarring, there’s no way she would have been called Karen, it would have been a middle name at best, she definitely would have been Olivia or Emily!

The only thing I couldn’t ever quite get past on that show was how they afforded such a large house in London with 3 kids on a teachers salary when we can only afford a house half the size in the midlands on 2 full time salaries with a large deposit.

I sort of agree about the Chiswick house, but I suppose they just scraped in before house prices shot up in the second half of the 90s.

“I’d rather have a moustache than a baby”
“In England we call them biscuits”

Yeah unrealistic lifestyle for a teacher and Sue wjo doesn't seem to do much of anything
DD looked VERY like Karen when she was 4 ish and DH so I am told looks like Hugh Dennis. The were stopped 3 times by people thinking they were the actors! Why he would be with his stage daughter in the north of Enland when not filming is beyond me.
I like Ben best - Karen is too rude and brattish

Can't believe no one has mentioned Will and Grace's Karen who is the epitome of all Karens

@LarkDescending Chiswick has always been expensive. I have older siblings who were looking in the area at different times in the 90s and early 00s. There were some cheaper up and coming areas nearby.

@BlueBug45 Yes I remember the expression of the Chiswick estate agent when I turned up as a hopeful prospective buyer in early 1998. One raised eyebrow said “not a chance”. She pointed me to Islington and all was well.

She did say I’d have been OK 5 years earlier though (and my contemporaries who did buy then are now very smug indeed).

I know I'm restoring an antique thread but I wasn't on MN when this came out I can remember reading it though.
TBH I used to wonder this way before the OP started this thread. The Outnumbered couple seem very middle class, North London etc and Karen as a name seems very surprising