To wonder whether, as per this claim, Annabel was really seen as a 'yuppie' name in the 80s?

[Giselle374]

I read Lady Colin Campbell's book a while ago about Harry & Meghan. A lot of the claims seemed ridiculous- they can certainly be criticised but the book went beyond reasonable. Anyway, one of the points I found odd was that Campbell claimed naming rules have always been very strict for royals, and mentioned an earlier name choice for Beatrice being vetoed.
I googled and found this choice was Annabel, which the Queen apparently vetoed for being 'too yuppie'. Was it really seen that way in the 80s or was this just some eccentricity of hers? I was born early 2000s and knew quite a few Annabels and Isabel/Isabellas, also one Arabella. It just seemed like a classic name, hardly one to complain about.
Not a traditional royal one : but then she was OK with Zara.

(Not the main point, but while I think they were wrong to choose Lilibet, I didn't agree with Campbell's argument that the Annabel veto meant the Queen remained just as strict in the 2010s. She clearly wasn't if she allowed Savannah, Sienna and Mia, all nice names but arguably more non traditional than Annabel)

And princes. The late Queen's uncle the Duke of Gloucester was Prince Henry.

Annabel absolutely was a yuppie name! My first time of coming across it was in Freaky Friday with Jodie Foster! Loved that film and thought the name was very cool and modern. No one in my school was called Annabel!

Cool and modern? Annabel?

Lady annabel goldsmith was about the same age as the queen i think. The club was named after her. I bet Margaret spent a lot of time there.

Annabel was a name for a pouty vogue model I'd say.

Annabel was absolutely a yuppie name

Nooo, Annabel’s were the daughters of the landed gentry - pony club, trust fund, some may have been ‘honourables’, had jobs that didn’t interfere with skiing or frequent trips home to the country pile. Conservative dad may have dabbled in local or even national politics. Yuppies were Young UPwardly mobile Professional go-getters working and playing hard in sectors like advertising, marketing, banking, law, finance, and other corporate type roles. They were go getters and flashed the cash drinking champagne and eating nouvelle cuisine in fashionable restaurants. They’d also have gone to Annabel’s and there may have been some overlap between the Sloanies and the Yuppies, but they were distinct groups. You could become a Yuppie regardless of your background, but you were born a Sloane Ranger 😁

Sloane name, not yuppie.

Yes, it definitely was. Source: I was there.

Basically like Matilda/Tilly now?

Annabel was definitely Sloane Ranger territory, which were women born in the late 50's and early 60's to upper class or aristocractic parents. There was no such thing as a Yuppie name as anyone could become one regardless of background. So you could have a Rupert yuppie and equally a Shane yuppie, although in my experience the latter would've been slightly more unusual.

Not many Annabelles or Arabella's in Grange H
ill

Not really. Tilly (Matilda) has become pretty overused and whilst it isn't chavvy by any means, it really could apply to any demographic these days. Annabel, Clementine, Jemima, Georgina, Phillipa (often shortened to Pippa) and of course Diana were classic Sloane names. Sloane women would invariably have been upper class or artistocratic and had been presented at Court as debutantes.

I didnt think yuppie meant chavvy. I thought upper middle class trendy.

@Giselle374 , 100% yuppie.

Yuppie doesn't mean chavvy at all. Yuppies were young people (usually men in their 20's) who were making a lot of money very quickly in the financial services sector in the 80's after Thatcher deregulated everything. They wore sharp suits, spent their lunchtimes in trendy wine bars and carried mobile phones and filofaxes. But they weren't necessarily upper middle class. Anyone could be a yuppie from any class as long as they had sharp minds and a killer instinct for ambition. I worked for stockbrokers in the 80's (so right in the epicentre of it) and a lot of the dealers and investment managers were from fairly ordinary backgrounds. Although you'd be unlikely to find very, very working class blokes in that environment.

Yuppy stood for young upwardly mobile professional. Plenty about in the 1980s but ironically Mrs Thatcher and her cronies put the brakes on social mobility and it's gone into reverse since.

A name like Henry is a classic and could be found in any social class. See also: James, Elizabeth, Robert, Anne, David, Mary, John, Victoria, Alexander, Alice, William, Katherine, Benjamin, Eleanor, Daniel, Margaret, George, Emma, Edward, lots of others.

Annabel is a really old Scottish name. However, it might have been deemed unsuitable in the early 80s because of ‘Annabel’s’ - the super exclusive nightclub named after Lady Annabel Goldsmith (née Vane-Tempest-Stewart, which probably clarifies that it’s a perfectly suitable name for a girl from a well to do background).

Annabella Drummond became Queen Annabella when Richard III became King of Scotland.

Diana was a yuppy. The girls tended to have ‘nice’ jobs like being a PA for an antiques dealer or working in a nursery. All jobs in Kensington and Chelsea.

Well Diana was actually a Sloane, which was a very different thing. Yuppies were sharp and ambitious young guys who worked in financial services (like insurance, mortgages and stockbroking). They made a lot of quick money (and did a lot of hard drinking!) and they could come from any sort of background. In fact many of them came from quite humble roots. Sloane rangers were young women from very upper class or artistocratic families who did the sort of (pretend) jobs you're talking about for a few years until they married a well connected millionaire, an aristocrat or royalty. Sloane Rangers would definitely not have appreciated being called yuppies.

As a 20-something in London in the 1980s, Annabel was for me the absolute Sloane girl's name, the female Rupert. A friend of mine called my daughter Annabel in a Christmas card years later (at that point, they had not net ). I can hardly describe my horror that I would name any daughter of mine Annabel because of the Sloane association. Too many girls' names beginning in 'A'.

Well, to be fair, the future queen's BIL was Made In Chelsea so that might be OK...

That's what I thought. Yuppies sound like a very different thing from what the Queen probably meant, ie. Sloanes .