question- what are "posh" names?

[thecaroline]

I'm not from the UK, so I was wondering what everyone means when they say a name is "posh." Like, upperclass, but which names in particular? Names like Arabella, Charles, etc.?

I think Ptolemy is the poshest name ever but I can't help lovin it

I find most of those 'posh' names as not posh at all. James, Charles etc are classics and used by all, shortened too, to Charlie and Jamie. I think posh names are ones drawn from 'smart' sources (Persephony, Ariadne, etc), but yeah Humphrey is posh, and names like Cordelia, Camilla etc

thanks to this thread, I've started reading Watching the English by Kate Fox. Whoa I am blown away by all of these class rules!

I'm going to feel awkward every time I say "pardon" from now on!

I've never heard these names at the local primary school.
Joycelyn, Gaylord, Atticus, Rudolph, Audley, Lindsey, Massimo, Cosimo, Giro

Clementine, Daphne, Ffion, Cosima,

I wonder if Wills and Kate will name there new baby Sharon if it's a girl or Wayne if it's a boy? But maybes they aren't 'posh' enough.

Pierre.

I remember a "Xanthe" on Brat Camp (some of those "campers" were posh teenagers; can't remember if Xanthe was).

As for Peregrine - does anyone remember the "Peregrine Piecrust" stories? "Soon everyone in Peregrine's street was talking about him and the noise he made - the people four doors away could hear him, and "For Sale" signs shot up all along the street."

Pierre is a very very common name in France and I can't see anything 'posh' about it at all. I think the opposite, if anything.

Pierre is just Peter, though. Xanthe is quite popular around here. I agree with PP that soi-disant "posh" people are more likely to use classic names, like Sarah, Anna, Alice, Lucinda Timothy rather than newer names.

caroline is a real posh name! my sisters friend name is caroline and i can clearly testify that she's the definition of posh!

So many names on this thread seem quite normal now e.g. Caroline, Martha, Sebastian, Quentin, Hugo. I know lots of 'common' people with these names..? Maybe names change their associations over time?

Having a chuckle at this thread as my DS was almost called Tristan until my mother declared that I was still a working class lassie fae parkhead (poor area of Glasgow) and my fancy degree and job didn't change that... I called DS a nice Irish/Gaelic name instead lmao

I knew twins called Septimus and Octavia, they were actually DCs number 7 and number 8 , it's like their parents gave up with names and switched to numbers. Seriously posh family though.

Octavia
Hermione
Ophelia
Clementine/Clemmie
Arabella
Henrietta
Annunciata/Annie
Marina
Rowena
Lucinda
Lavinia
Hugo
Hugh
Atticus
Rupert

These are the names of some very posh people I know - I actually really like most of them!

Also - if you look at the telegraph birth announcements it's an endless list of Cosima, Beatrice/Beatrix and Florence

Really posh families usually use quite simple old names, like Sarah, Anna, Katherine, Elizabeth, Mary etc.

My DP went to boarding school and he isn’t called any of these names, nor are his friends! They all have very normal 90s names like Joshua, Harry and Benjamin... The poshest was probably Sebastian.

Laughing at Caroline being a posh name. It’s my DM’s name and she is about the furthest from posh you could get...

I don't think I've seen Jago mentioned yet.

This thread is from 4 years ago.

I went to a "posh" private school and my classmates were Lucinda/Lucy (maybe 4-5 in my year), Camilla, Oonagh, Alice (again, a few of these), Celia, Nathalie, Isabel, Cosima, Beatrice, Emma (two of these in my form), Kate, Lily, Alana, Mimi.

This was late 90's, early 2000's.