To think this class-obsessed country uses DC's names to change theirs?

[GinDaddy]

I live in the South of England, I'm heading towards middle age, so this gives you some context before my OP, which is..

AIBU to think people are giving their DCs "posh" or "aspirational" names as status signifiers? (Which ironically immediately marks them out to me as such?)

I realise there's always been fashionable and unfashionable names since time immemorial. But what I'm talking about is the slew of names which I would previously only expect to hear on Made In Chelsea or Guy Pelly's guest list at Boujis.

Arabella. Annabelle. Isabelle. Amelia. Jasper. Oscar. Oliver (to be inevitably commuted immediately to Ollie in faux-braying tones). Hugo. Theo. Leo. Harry (not even bothering to use the proper Harold, just going straight to the diminutive because well, it sounds right).

It's just a bit odd really. People can and will call their child what they like, but why are so many folk (and it's always the same folk, the ones who are project managers, who love myWaitrose and head tilting, whose teeth chatter when grandparents offer DC a Kinder Surprise) enamoured with these names?

Can someone actually explain this to me? No one has ownership of names, but I cannot believe that some people aren't using this as some sort of social signifier. 15 years ago not everyone was called Ollie or Theo. I didn't know a load of Arabellas or Amelias, I knew a few but that was commensurate with the environment.

AIBU to think the popularity of these names comes from their associate social status?

I know you think you’re being really funny and sharp but all I can wonder is if you’d like some vinegar with all those chips?

Surely you could correct assume that back in the 1500s and 1600s there were many, many working class Elizabeths (Lizzies) and Henrys (Harrys).

Were the parents guilty of the same (naming after a monarch no less!)?

Most people tend to pick names they’ve heard and are somewhat familiar with. Popular names are naturally going to occur in popular culture (whether that’s the Queen or England or a Made in Chelsea star). It has always been like and it will continue to be like that. It’s nothing to do with class.

My child was named after my late dad (who was named after his dad, and he after his dad - and so on).

Most of those names (Isabelle, Amelia, Oliver, Theo, Harry - which is more usually short for Henry than Harold by the way) are more typically the names of the children of hairdressers and postmen than aspirational Waitrose shoppers. They're pretty ordinary, top 10, working/lower middle class names.

Annabelle, Hugo and Jasper are maybe a bit more aspirational posh but will also probably be bog standard in 10 years time.

10 years ago (2005) Harry and Oliver were both in the top 10 baby names and Amelia was #14 for girls. Leo, Isabelle and Oscar were all also top 100 names, so I don’t think trends have changed as drastically as you think.

source

because like German SUVs and F&B painted furniture, it's all aspirational

Aspirational to whom exactly?

Loving the reference to Guy Pelly's guest list . I have been on his mother's guest lists!

DS is 25: his classmates featured: Oscar, Theo, Caspar, William, Ben, Guy, Ollie, Freddie - nothing new whatsoever. DD is 21 and at one stage had 3 Imogens, an Antonia, an Amelia, a Cecily, a Christabel and an Arabella in her class.

I thought the uc names now were more Isolde, Xanthe, Horatio and Gawain tbh.

You can’t really reserve certain names to those who are rich and from the upper classes.

It's not a class thing. Unless the names are deemed 'low brow' (see: not acceptably 'English middle class'), in which case there's plenty of threads laughing at the silly stupid/poor/foreign people giving their kids names that means they'll never be judges or doctors.

AIBU to think the popularity of these names comes from their associate social status
Yes you are being very unreasonable - the names you have used as examples are just normal names to me. If you'd listed names like Tarquin on Persephone then maybe you might have the beginnings of a vague point. I do think people such as you that do seem to obsessed with class are those that are ashamed of their own and are perhaps projecting their own feelings onto situations. It seems to me that you are suggesting that people should name their children to signify their 'class' so it doesn't confuse you :)

There are names start out as being used almost exclusively by posh people, but some of them work their way down the social scale and some then become top ten names, used by everyone, even people who could never be accused of social climbing.

BTW, Harry is a diminutive of Henry, not Harold, and was also a very popular name from the 1870s to the 1920s

@OhTheRoses If you are in poverty like us, you don't tend to know what UC names are currently in vogue.

@user1473878824

Your laboured chip on shoulder reference is unnecessary. I am exactly where I want to be in life, I hold no envy towards anyone.

Others have agreed me with on this thread so I can't be literally raving to myself here, it's not a completely tangential thought.

Well you do now karencantobe

OP I think you are right, and this has been well analysed.
Names have a big impact on people, this is also well-researched. So hardly surprising that a lot of people do choose aspirational names. As more choose them, they become lower status, and new names become UC.
But lots of people seem to deny what is obvious and very well-researched.

so @GinDaddy, I still dont get what is wrong with being aspriational and hoping your kids do better than we did? (and hopefully giving them the name that will suit them)

15 years ago not everyone was called Ollie or Theo. I didn't know a load of Arabellas or Amelias, I knew a few but that was commensurate with the environment.

Because names go in and out of fashion? 40 years ago there were loads of baby Karens and now there are none; it's fashion, not a conspiracy!

@turnthebiglightoff

Why is this considered "goady" when it's hardly a topic of great emotion, more a discussion on social signifiers?

Someone else posted a link to research done on this, that I wasn't aware of. So I'm clearly not thinking in a vacuum.

Did you recognise yourself in my OP? Here have a in return, on me.

Freakonomics covers this op

If people who are 'not posh' are choosing 'posh' names to be aspirational, logically the preponderance of such names will shift to belonging to the 'not posh' sector and thus the names will lose their 'posh' association.

I really dislike the name Arabella

We choose aspirational names, our DCs are teenagers. 1 people always talk about as a very posh name. The other name which we saw at the time as very unusual, has become common amongst ordinary people.
We like both names, but also did not want to put any barriers in their way to others judging them. I have seen it happen too many times, however much denied it is.

@thebabessavedme

Nothing wrong with it as a general principle.

I'm not talking about that though.

I equally don't like SUVs, and will never personally own one. I've shared my views on that too.

It's a forum of debate.

@TheMemoryLingers That is exactly what happens.

YABU. Massively so. It's not funny; how you've worded your OP smacks of insecurity or unkindness, and either way it doesn't reflect well on you.

I used names I loved that meant something for both DC; they've got old-fashioned names rather than modern ones simply because those are the ones that suited them when they were born. Nothing more, nothing less. People don't change class because of the names they use for their children; you are what you are. However, berating others for using specific types of names is quite classless, tbh.