Names that used to be 'posh/unusual' but are now quite 'normal'

[shoobidoo]

A few years ago names like Jemima, Ottilie, Clementine, Arabella, Rupert, Quentin, Sebastian and Hugo would have been described as 'posh' and unusable. Now these names seem more 'common' and I certainly know some very un-posh people with these names . I remember reading a chapter in Freakomonics about how names move 'down the ranks'.
What other names would you have discounted a few years ago that you'd now consider?

We're a fairly posh family. Recent names are Elsie and Daisy. Because all the old posh names have been grabbed into chav land.

Wow, Elsie has no posh connotations for me, at all.

Elsie Tanner didn't help the cause, I suppose.

I really don't see Elsie and Daisy as 'posh'.

Elsie and Daisy are bit "serving wench", aren't they?

Incidentally Elsie is my front runner for a future DD. :o

Englishmummyinwales - you're right, the daughter was Flora, not Freya. Doh!

Incidentally, how can you be fairly posh?!

Either you're posh or you're not. Posh to me = upper class, i.e. the aristocracy, titled, landed gentry.

Perhaps this is where all the discrepancies are coming in - if some people are simply using 'posh' to mean middle class.

Aiden , Alexander and Tristan used to be posh and now its the new Tom , Dick and Harry .... And things like Araminta,Sloane,Blair,Fleur always sounded posh to me when I was growing up but now they've all gone very down market . I think in the 70's having a french name must have been considered posh and then went down market in the 80's , as we now have a slew of posh 40 year olds named carole , camille , clementine etc and a load of 20+ year olds named chantelle , monique, angelique etc. I was reading a book set in the late 1800's and the woman wanted to name her baby Laura but was told it 'would give the child ideas above her station' lol so I guess Laura was posh back then ! One name that has always sounded posh to me is Octavia , wonder if it will ever catch on with the masses

I had Araminta mooted by DH as it was too posh.

and the poster that thinks that only the aristocracy are posh doesn't know some of the terrifying middle class peeps i know. There's the middle class and then there are the middle class.

Here Octavia is very down market...probably due to its popularity with African-Americans, sadly.

Annabel, Francesca, Isabella.....all V V V common now!

Octavia is a terrible name anyway , always makes me think of a Miss Havisham type person

Are you Scottish, 1944 girl? Isabella was very common(and not at all posh) in Scotland; it was MILs name, though shortened to Isa. It was practically unknown in England - except amongst the really posh.

yes, I suppose you are right. When they become aspirational names, I suppose they fall out of favour with the upper classes and they look for names elsewhere and so it goes on.

When I was growing up, I think flowery names for boys would have struck me as posh because they were probably the only ones who might have got away with them. Posh girls names were things like Henrietta. You could just tell that a Henrietta did not have working class parents.

Well presumably the Royal Family are at the top of the posh tree and their most recent choices are Beatrice, Eugenie, Louise and James.

Eugenie doesn't seem to have caught on

Zara, Ava, Charlotte,

Even the royals have gone chav with Savannah . Technically not royalty though .... Henrietta does sound very posh ! weirdly Harriet doesn't?

I dont think the choices of the genuinely posh (aristocracy) change that much. It's the upper middle classes which find new names, which then filter down, and finally become "pariah" names until they swing back around.

I know of 3 Mungos. This would have been absolutely unheard of, except for maybe a pet, in my childhood.

Mungo ??? If that's cool and posh please let me be common lol

Dominic, Guy and Oliver are posh. Elsie is comong back but not posh.

When I was a lass I would have thought of names like Olivia, Isabelle, William, Henry as very posh indeed. Now there's gazillions of them, I just kind of think of them more as populist choices. I don't think any of the names I thought of as posh have necessarily plummeted.

Unusual (but not posh) names would have been things like Jade and Jack. They have definitely plummeted IMO.

cheerfulyank i know a couple of girls in the states called Alston and Sommerville, named after their mothers maiden names.

I also new a girl out there called Margeret-Elizabeth and we had to call her that, she didnt like nn, and I think that is really snobbish.

Reese Witherspoon is another US person with a surname as first name - in her case I think her family can trace roots back to the Founding Fathers so presumably the names carry a lot of traditional meaning.

I remember reading an interview where she said she'd had a lot of pressure to change her name (but it was the surname rather than first name they objected to - see also Benedict Cumberbatch).

When my sister named her ds Quentin 8 years ago, I was a bit but now I'm used to it and actually think it's very cool. Also, Hugo and Rupert would have raised a few eyebrows only a few years ago, but I think they sound more acceptable now. I guess the more we hear a name (epsecially amongst 'normal' people), the more it loses any 'posh' associations.

Also agree about Archibald and Alfred having gone very downmarket with Archie and Alfie...