Demise of the ‘chav’ name?

[stilllill]

I’ve lived on the same council estate for years. When I was younger every girl was Keeley, Courtney, Charmaine, Chantelle, etc.
Boys were Tyler, Liam, Scott, Riley, Bailey, etc.
Knew 3+ of each in school, and these names generally made our class very obvious.

Now I’ve noticed that the children on my estate have completely different names.

Girls:
Iris, Francesca, Esme, Belle and Elizabeth

Boys:
Roy, Jasper, Anthony, Isaac, Jacob

I think these are really timeless, classic names!

I know MN is very middle class, but anyone else noticed this change?

So are these “chav names” limited to white British children or are you just projecting your Anglo-centric standards onto children whose backgrounds you may know little about?

I can assure you it's entirely white British children that we're talking about here. You'd be hard pushed to find Turkish parents calling their child Silli-mae.

Agree with this. I tell my dc that to describe something as chavvy is a behaviour and not a comment on choices of name, apparel and so on. The only thing I describe as chavvy just now is vaping.

Name stuff is very interesting. I would have said Chantelle is one of those names until I read she's some euro princess - Marie Chantal I think.

Princess Marie-Chantal is foreign, so the hyphenated name isn't 'chavvy' . She grew up in the UK, I think, but her parents are not originally british.

Chantelle seems like the name of a reality show participant.

Definitely hyphenated names associated with a certain socio-economic background and that applies in the USA!

I plan to give my child a name that really means something to me and my DH and the journey we've been on together. We've been TTC over 5 years now and just about to go for 1st DE FET in December. All hopes now pinned on this as only got 1 embryo from 7 eggs! A lot of time to ponder names and what they mean to us.

I wish you luck in your journey.

I think the OP meant for the thread to be light hearted. Us folk actually from council estates don’t get so hung up on things and “chav” is more of a cultural thing than just being born working class; lots of my family aren’t chavvy at all, a few are! My mates from back home, have boys with the ie / y sound - Reggie, Bobby, Lenny, Teddy, Lockie, Albie etc and also deffo the surname trend - Cooper, Jackson, Porter, Parker for girls it’s that old woman trend or an ie / y ending - Elise, Lily, Gracie, Lacey and Luna / Lola. I live in Spain now and the Spanish MC don’t touch Luna or Lola 😂 it’s all Alba and Clara.

@AllProperTeaIsTheft i don’t think it’s that “posh” people ditch things because poor people take them up, it’s just that certain groups of affluent people are early adopters of trends. Then this slowly gets noticed and taken up by the slower adopting masses as the trend sets in. Then the early adopters see something else that they simply must have and the cycle continues.

Although I love Freakonomics @MrsTerryPratchett wasn’t that part more about the “power” of a name and whether a Braxon-ray would be more successful moving through life as a “James”, if all other factors controlled?

I think what’s probably happening, rather than “posh” names trickling down per se, it’s just that we have much more expanded/overlapping bubbles due to rampant social media use. 15 years ago a woman naming her baby might just look to the people around her.

These days she has access to many different examples from lots of social groups and is likely being influenced by much more than regional name trends, so ends up going for something with broader appeal?

The chavvy kids round here all have names like Aaron, Jayden, Lexi-Mae, Casey-Leigh, Jenson, Kieran, Callum, Chantelle etc., Probably some nonstandard spelling cause a lot of em round here the parents didn't go to school

Now I'm curious to know what names are..

The 'chav' names from problem families on the nearby estate here are names like. In order of most popular:

Girls

Beau, Lola, Nova, Lyla

Boys

Finn, Mason, Brodie

I'm not going to out myself but similar style/age/class/tradition names to my kids would be James, Alexander, Hannah, Eleanor.

Clearly my username is a pisstake....

So using the freakenomics guide what are the current upper class names that will trickle down the classes?

I live near a council estate and my son attends the local school. There are so many Esme's plus a couple of Renesme's (which I believe is from twilight) and a load of Lola-mae's too.

no working class generally work. chavs don't do that. they use the dole money for their fake tan and eyelashes and spend their days in asda in their robe and hair rollers

People are actually using Renesmee? 😱

I’ve only ever seen that written down and in my head it’s always pronounced ‘REEN-smee’ to rhyme with ‘teen glee’.

Yes. Just to clarify I'm not judging children on their names, it's just an observation about a trend in names. I don't think there's anything chavvy about Esme at all.

These threads always go the same way.

A poster uses ‘chav’ and a Senior Common Room-style barney breaks out about class, the wickedness of Britain, how we should never judge or “sneer”, etc etc. 🙄

Which overlooks the reality that everyone judges, including - in fact especially - neighbouring towns and counties judging each other.

FWIW, I think the very posh get judged much more than chavs and ‘gammons’ do. And quite right too.