Americans huh? What are they like?

[Clary]

(No offence intended to any sensible Americans posting on here)

Our local football magnate who is American took his kids to an Easter service and his pic is in the paper. His kids are called Brock (boy), MacCall, Avery and Quinn (all girls). These are not first names are they? And they all sound like boys? names to me too.

Oddly enough the dad is called (wait for it?) Andrew.

There is somebody on US babycenter with screen name "hoyt'smomma"!! So she's not ashamed of it either.

Names like Gavin and Kevin are the Bruno and Magnus of America.

All the names that I like such as Archie, Bruno, Jago, Magnus, Victor, Peter... well, we're on different pages to quote the apprentice again.

My oldest boy is named Wallace, totally my X's desicion BTW as I was gonna name a girl. Well I only knew of one other Wallace at the time and he was a lovely guy so went with it. Yeah of course son did get the Wallace & Gromit thing at school but can think of worse things so be associated with. I love the fact no-one else in the school is Wallace, makes things easy when calling the secretary

Hate to say this, but as an American, I don't visit this particular board much because I really don't like a lot of the names I read on here. But I wouldn't go so far as to say the parents that are naming their children Archie or Barnaby (names that would certainly evoke teasing on a playground in the US) are stupid for naming their children that.

To each his own I guess...

Yes, well, this is a British board, PrePG.

I'm American, too, but I can't stomach American parenting and baby boards.

Too much manufactured fluff. Like a lot of the names.

Shawn

Dear god

Imagine a girl named Shawn

my aunt had a lovely cocker spaniel called Shawn.

he was adorable!

he loved jumping into the swimming pool

I used to work with someone called Shawn Shaw. Everyone called her Shawn Sheep (not to her face, she was very senior)

Buddy

Newshmoo, that's what makes it so hilarious. Barnaby and Archie are at least proper names with a bit of history behind them.

But this thread wasn't about knocking all Americans. I have looked at the American stats and clearly most people still give their children normal names..

No no I really wasn't knocking Americans.

Except that when I read the names out to a colleague they said, oh, well, they're American.

I just thought they were really rather unusual and (for me worse) not clear if they were boys or girls.

As someone who has a name that can be a boy's name or a girl's name, I feel quite strongly about that.

There is a child at school whose name works better backwards (ie he is Brandon Andrew (not his actual name btw)) which has led to some confusion on more than one occasion. So I am not a big fan, personally, of surnames as first names. But I agree it's all a personal thing.

Brandon is a fairly common first name here. Totally normal.