What to do when your surname is horrible?!!

[WatchingWaiting]

Ok, me and DH have a horrible surname. Its a well known travelling-Irish-Gypsy surname. In our area, its the sort of surname that immediately leads to raised eyebrows and judgement. (Just imagine having the surname 'Kray' if you lived in the East End in the 50's, and you can imagine my pain!! )

I can forsee some problems our child will have with school applications, applying for jobs in the future etc, so in order to minimise this, I want a very 'posh' sounding first name to counter-act our surname!

So, we are so far thinking of the following names as possibilities:

Girls:
Cordelia / Tabitha / Felicity / Harriet

Boys:
Sebastian / Oscar / Benedict / William.

Do they sound a bit too poncey, especially since we are a working class family?

I want it to be as clear as possible that we're not pikeys, but I don't want to sound snobbish and up-myself!! Advice or name suggestions greatly appreciated!

How do people these really old threads? lauraward?

I agree that there aren't any 'traveller sur names' which don't belong to settled people too. You can never assume that a travelling sur name belongs to only a traveller. A very posh man in my office when I lived in the uk had the sur name Ward!! I've had over the years good friends with the sur names McDonagh and Nevin. They never had any issue with people assuming x,y or z.

Ps, by the way, I have nothing but respect for travellers who manage to get through the education system and apply for jobs, competing with 'settled people'. I think I would make a point of interviewing anybody I thought might have come from a travelling family.

oh! didn't notice it was so old.