To think that Americans have weird first name preferences!

[Lycidas]

Why do so of their popular first names sound like surnames?

Chace
Trace
Brock
Blake
Penn
Tucker
McKenna

Etc

Of course there are the usual standard names too, but it’s odd that you just don’t see the above kinds of names in the UK.

Let's argue about the value of original spelling as opposed to phonetic spellings, shall we? That's what we do in the US.

Oh, I always thought Randy was short for Randolph

Nope - Randy is a name in its own right, for both boys and girls, though predominantly for boys, I believe.

I don't like Randy, but I like a lot of British unisex names eg Hilary, Lesley/ Leslie, Vivian/Vivien(ne), Shirley (which is almost exclusively a girl's name now, but started off as a boy's - the only "modern" male I can think of with the name was the late Shirley Crabtree).

I think some surnames for Christian names work well - and some are traditional - but I don't like all of them. And I don't like "made-up" names, and I especially don't like stupid spellings! (eg Krystoffer for Christopher). I'm not talking about immigrants, who may have a spelling in their mother tongue which differs from tradition British versions of names - I'm talking about "Oooh - let's make it a bit different" versions (a couple of which have been mentioned upthread), Like Kath and Kim thinking of names for Kim's baby . . .

@plightofthealbatross rude. I have a Freddie! Not awful at all to be fair.

I hate these threads. Many people lack imagination and don’t appear to realise that cultural norms differ around the world. Names are just a collection of letters which have faux meaning attached to them. You are not superior to the rest of the world because you called your children Freya and Oliver or some old fashioned English name like Enid or Betty.

To many people around the world and in the UK even, those names also sound stupid. Who’s to say the ‘safe MC sounding’ names you give your child won’t age well or become ‘common’ like ‘Sharon’ or ‘Tracey’ in future?

Sick of these threads which are usually just thinly disguised racism, classism and xenophobia.

RANDY DUCK - US basketball player, played in the UK for a few seasons. What were his parents thinking?

I have a DS with a surname as a first name. It is also used as a first name but only occasionally. We are in Scotland so no one bats and eyelid and given his lineage I suspect if he decides to be a high court judge, he'll be just fine.

I'm always bemused by the 'surname as first' snobbery given I can think of people with the surname James, Jack, John, Thomas, Philip. Add an 's' and I can think of Edwards, Williams, Andrews...

@Tellmetruth4
That's why my mum likes biblical names, she says they stand the test of time.

I'm not sure, I think Mary is quite dated.
I have 1 dc with a biblical name and 1 with a very 'trendy ' name, although she's 28 and it wasn't common at the time. Her middle name is biblical though.

A lot of Americans use surnames as first names which I find strange for example Taylor Swift who I know is named after James Taylor the singer.

@ThanksAllTheSame
Always amuses me when you get an Edward Edwards or a William Williams.
Is it so hard to think up an individual first name that a parent decides let's just use the surname as the first name, job done.

me too; there were only 9 people with my name born the year I was.

Well everyone has their preferences. I view most traditional English names as stuffy/snobby and lots of American names as a bit trashy. Especially double barrelled. But we are all different aren’t we!

I like the idea of giving the other parents surname to the child. It's a nice compromise in a way. My bf is English and he has his mother's maiden name as middle name. My surname does not work as a middle name but his would. Need to think about this.

it seems weird because we share a language with many americans. However, it's a country separated by thousands of miles and hundreds of years. The cultural melting pot is also different to the uk in many ways. It would be weirder if they hadn't evolved their own names and traditions by now, surely?

I first noticed it years ago with the first names of the young people playing the kids in the Cosby show.

Anyway, I've been here in the UK nearly 25 years and I have to say, you guys are catching up with us in the 'silly name' department

Ain't that the truth .

My surname works as a first name, I've seen it mentioned more than once on here in the baby name chat.

Ah, another example of the anti-Americanism that crops up regularly on MN as an apparently acceptable form of prejudice.

I personally don't like the surnames-as-first-names trend, particularly for girls, but it's evidently cultural in the US, and nobody made me sole arbiter of good taste anyway (which I realise although I am white, middle-class and English a lot of people who share these characteristics seem to think they have a divine right to that role).

(Sorry, punctuation missing after 'English' which makes what I wrote hard to read)

Have you seen the state of some U.K. names? Sick of the anti American threads on here. It wouldn’t be tolerated about any other country

Double barrelled names are ridiculous as well

My in-laws (Canadian) use family surnames as a middle name. They're of Scottish and Irish heritage and the family tradition goes back that far.

This thread is not going to go well, by the way. It’s very anti-USA, just for the sake of it.

I agree.

I didn’t intend for this thread to be anti-American.

So why call it "weird" and expect a different country to use the same naming traditions as the U.K.?

I've seen both my maiden name and my current surname crop up on baby name threads here.

I always find Americans have a fondness for names we consider nerdy: Brian*, Kevin, Trevor etc

(* and the awful Brianna for women)

And we probably have a fondness fo r names they find "wrong" for whatever reason.