Was Emily a posh name before it became popular in the 90s/00s?

[hcarter8]

My work colleague (who is much older than me) and I were discussing names and she said Emily was seen as an old fashioned posh name up in the 70s and 80s. I’m 31 so I knew 3 Emily’s but I was born just before Emily became a really popular name so most people with the name are about 10 years younger than me, I was kind of shocked to hear this as Emily was always sooo common and definitely didn’t scream upper class to me. She also said Olivia and Charlotte were extremely posh back then.
is that true? I genuinely had a hard time believing it

I’m in my 50’s and I agree with your work friend.

There’s a relative on my paternal side of the family who’s name was Emily…..she died in 1928 and most definitely did not come from the high classes of society 🤷🏻‍♀️ She worked for a hat maker, plucking birds to obtain the feathers used in the hats!

Olivia definitely had an upper class feel to it until it started taking off in the late 90s/early 00s and suddenly became more mainstream.

I can't really say about the historical usage of Emily and Charlotte, as I'm an 80s baby so my experience of both has only ever been that they're very mainstream, used by all backgrounds.

Mid-50s.
i didn’t know any Emily’s growing up, encountered my first Olivia in 1990 (posh baby) and only knew one Charlotte- v well off.

No, just old fashioned.

My granny was an Emily born 1910. She felt it was a "housemaid's name" and betrayed her class. (She was in service herself before she got married)

DN now also called Emily!

Olivia and Charlotte were both definitely posh when I was growing up.

Are you using “common” to mean popular or in the sense my mum would have used it (“no better than she should be”).

If the first, yes, Emily and Charlotte were common, but they definitely weren’t the second.

I’m in my 60s and tend to agree with with your friend. I didn’t know anyone called Olivia in my childhood but the Charlottes and Emily I knew were fairly posh. I only remember one of each from my school/university days, so they definitely were not commonly used names.

Im an 80s baby in my 30s and Emily and Charlottes feature heavily in my FB friends list of people my age

I’m also an 80’s baby and had a couple of
Emily’s and Charlotte’s at my school. I don’t think they were considered posh - more like your standard, very traditional middle class girls names of which there are often a few about in each generation, despite not always being Top 100 popular (see also Catherine, Lucy, Alice, Anna, Emma, Lydia, Alexandra, Eleanor etc).

Olivia is a different kettle of fish - I do think it was seen as quite a literary/Shakespearean name (and thus posh to some) until it shot up in popularity in the 90’s. I didn’t know any Olivia’s at school.

Emily was an old lady name when I was at school. Emily and Charlotte were Bronte names so, possibly, cultured at some point. My reference point, though, was Emily Bishop in Coronation Street.

Olivia was seen as posh/middle class whilst Olive definitely wasn't (On The Buses). Not sure when Olivia started to gain traction but, presumably, Olivia Newton John had something to do with it. Grease was 1978 so wasn't immediately after that.

Emily and Charlotte were definitely the sort of names upper middle class girls were called in books I read as a child in the 1970s. Think Bronte family too.

I know a very posh Emily who is in her 70s - known as Emmo.

I thought amelia and arabella were quite posh until about 2008

Emilys feature heavily in my family history research (although not the direct line), all very much working class!

I’d agree with your granny. And, come to think of it, the housemaid in this house for the 1910 census was an Emily.

My mum was an Emily she hated it! She was 88 when she passed away 14 years ago

Actually thinking more about it Emilia is probably even more posh. Also Helena rather than Helen. Caroline seemed posher than Carolyn too.

I was born in the sixties. Yes Emily and similar names like Lucy, Charlotte, Olivia, Alice, Chloe, Isabel and Sophie were at the time seen as posh girl names, usually if you knew a girl with one of those names she went to private school.

Remember Bagpuss on TV in the 70s? (well, probably you don't..) 'There lived a little girl, and her name was Emily ...' I think it started becoming fashionable in the 1970s, slowly, and really got going in the 80s.

My classmates at state school had names like Claire, Sarah, Amanda, Louise, Karen, Tracey, Alison. And more traditionally, Jane, Anne, Catherine, Susan.

Yep. Charlotte was seen by my parents as quite an aspirational/ middle class name. Especially when it was shortened to Lottie. Similarly with Jeremy!

I'm in my 50s - agree with those saying these names were posh when i was growing up. Think it's also true that Emily was not a posh name for my grandparents' generation, and think it did have a slight old lady vibe alongside being posh when i was a kid.

In the 50s, 60s, 70s popular names were fairly modern. 50s the een names Maureen, Christine, Pauline. 60s Tracey, Sharon, Debra, Karen. 70s Jacqui, Sally, Lindsey.

Then the revival of old names started - Alice, Daisy, Emily, Amy, Hannah, Charlotte.

To my mother's generation born in the 30s they were the names of their parents or aunties.

As a 60s child I would probably have said Emily was posh as it was like Emily Brontë. I remember when I first heard the name Stella. I thought it was glamorous, my mum thought it was an elderly relative name. Charlotte was for her the name of an elderly aunt. Jennifer was a name to mock having been a character on a radio show. Caroline to me was glamorous and the name of a Monaco princess, to her a posh person who had to be named after an ancestor

I am a 70s Emily. I think DM was inspired by Bagpuss! I knew maybe one every few years at my school and a very posh one that went to boarding school. My DM said when she called me it, it was an old lady’s name.

Jennifer on the Archers?!

I’m in my forties and yes, Emily and Charlotte were very upper middle class before the 90s (my parents were middle-middle class and I’d say both names were a social rank above them then - more big houses in the Home Counties and ponies type of names. My parents’ friends’ kids had Seventies names like Sarah, Hannah, Claire, Rachel, Helen and so on. I could only dream of being called Emily, Charlotte, or similar names!

Annabel is another name mentioned on this thread, and was Sloaney and upper-class old-fashioned - a rung above Emily and Charlotte even! And Amelia and Arabella were both very old-fashioned and definitely completely out of style (I only knew the name Amelia via Enid Blyton’s Amelia Jane books).

One name that was ranked with Emily and Charlotte as posh/upper middle/upper class in the 70s and 80s was Chloe! Nowadays it’s not at all posh thanks to a sudden surge in popularity in the 90s (esp on EastEnders), but before then it was definitely super-posh. Similarly Phoebe and Isabella.

My nannas middle name was Emily and they had been a well to do family in the late 1890s early 1900s.
My daughter is Emily, she was born 1999 I didn’t know any others and I named her after the little girl from bagpuss.