At what point is it actually cruel to give your child an old woman/ man name

[Amandalockwood1007]

A lot of names are coming back from the 20s/30s and some of them are okay for 2022 like Alice, Elsie. But certain names sound so terrible to saddle a child with in this generation for example Edith, mary, iris, Maude etc. I just can’t help but feel awful for the children who will probably be bullied for having “old people names” when does it become mean to give a child a name with an time stamp on it from the 1800s🙄

@HunterGatherer

I think Gladys might be a step too far.

That name makes me think of gladys knight and the pips

Winifred and Fanny

Your “old woman” names are ones I really like and not even vaguely cruel.

My Grandparents and their siblings born in the late 1890s were:

Oliver
Amy
Nelly
Rose
Robert
Frank
Charlotte
Ivy
Florence
Joan
Violet
Bert
Wilfred

I love Violet - pretty name

How old are you? My mum's generation largely think like you. My generation don't.

@woodhill

I love Violet - pretty name

yes me too, but the Violet on Just William (I'll scweam and scweam until Im sick = played by Bonnie Langford) does still hang around in my head :)

@LublinToDublin

"Old lady names" for todays children would be things like Margaret Pamela and Barbara

The names you are referring to OP are older than that so are historic /vintage/classic.

Whether you like the names is a matter of taste but I can't see why the names you suggest would cause comment let alone bullying

or Chardonnay

Ten billion times better than Savannah or Chardonnay! Or surnames used as names like Taylor. There are some dreadful names around right now and these are delightful by comparison. I love Maude for example.

@MsTSwift

I feel sorry for the kids with really dull popular names. Sooo many of them - had that myself and didn’t want for my dc

I feel sorry for the kids with names the parents insist are ‘classic’ like mine, when actually they sound stale, frumpy & plain. As a young person you want to feel pretty, fun & fashionable, I used to hate telling boys my name.

PS Moon Unit Zappa is 54 and Dweezil is 52

I always roll my eyes at all the “American names = chav” comments on here. So ignorant and bigoted.

Anyway, I think Edith is dowdy too, OP. I feel the same way about Eleanor and Hazel (unpopular opinion, I know). However, I’d say that it’s not cruel to “saddle” a kid with an old name — old names evoke nostalgia for earlier periods like the Roaring Twenties and can have their own jazzy charms. I draw the line at Gertrude and Mildred, but even then, I think it’s extreme to suggest parents are being cruel. You could say parents are being cruel if they choose very feminine names for the daughters or very masculine names for their sons? Or argue that male names are girls and vice versa is cruel. The grey area between good and bad names is massive.

Cruelty in names really only exists (in my opinion) if you give them names that are overtly offensive and insulting to the wearer. Naming your kid Hitler or Virus is cruel, but naming my your kid Edith? Not cruel, just a difference of taste.

People who are old enough to think of Edith or Iris as "old lady names" are more than old enough to know not to tell a child that they have an old lady name. People who haven't yet learned this (i.e. other children) will just think of these names as names, and won't say anything. So the entire thing is a complete non-problem

I was born in 1965 and so me and my generation are all in our mid fifties now, some of my friends names are now probably considered old people names, even my own (not telling what it is though :)

In my class, there were Ollwyns, Candida (yes that was her name!) Jaqueline, Janet, Jane, Deirdre (she was considered to have an old persons name at the time), lots of Sarahs and Nicolas, A couple of Sharons, 2 Tinas and a Helen

@Mumoblue

I once knew a 13 year old Muriel, which is a name I’d always associated with old ladies. She wasn’t a big fan of her name.

I don’t think it’s cruel to give old fashioned names to kids (and a lot of them are back in style now) but it can be odd initially to meet a little one with a name that you associate with your granny.

Poor kid. It’s just a case of parents projecting what they want their kid to be, ie prim and ‘classy’. It’s quite cruel because I guarantee the parents would’ve hated to be a teenage Muriel at school themselves.

@Itsnotdeep

Edith, Iris and Maude are lovely names.

It's so subjective. I wouldn't want to "saddle" my dd with a name like Sophie that's ubiquitous and insipid (to my ear anyway) or an American name like Taylor. Luckily we're all different.

I agree they are lovely names and Mary

I went to school with a Martha and I felt sorry for her with how twee and old it was, now she's bang on trend! My young son goes to school with a Kevin which makes me smile!

@titchy

Thinking about it the current generation of babies will have grandparents in their 50s now - so old lady names will be Sarah and Debbie!

I am a debbie And agree ha

@M4857493

I went to school with a Martha and I felt sorry for her with how twee and old it was, now she's bang on trend! My young son goes to school with a Kevin which makes me smile!

This reminds me of a conversation me and my DSIS had with our DP when we were children, apparently if we had been boys, one of us would have been Kevin and the other Robert, for some reason we both used to say to the other one - you would have been Kevin and run off laughing (although I think I would have been Kevin and my DSIS Robert, but Robert didnt seem so bad to our child minds than being called Kevin)

I would much rather those names than Destiny, Tiegan, Jayden, and names deliberately misspelt, Ezmay, Sofee and so on.

For our firstborn, my favoured name was Jason. DH said " Nice name for a German Shepherd dog " which killed it stone dead.

@Jenasaurus

Just William

Remember it well

@AlexaShutUp

Babies Barbara, Denise, Kimberley and Sarah are in our nursery along with two little Margarets.

My DS (born in 1993) had a friend called Sybil which seemed too old for her but I think it was around the time of Moonlighting with Cybil Shepherd, but it made me think of Prunella Scales in Fawlty Towers. My sons friend spells it with and S not a C though

What do you think of Eric and Cyril for baby boys

Of you check births and deaths lists, the names in both tend to be the same.

@MsTSwift

I feel sorry for the kids with really dull popular names. Sooo many of them - had that myself and didn’t want for my dc

It goes both ways, I hated having a slightly more unusual name growing up and wished for a more common name like all my friends because they could get pencils, key rings etc with their name on and I couldn’t!