The wrong era names....gaargh

[Mortgageportgage]

I'm reading a book set in the present time. The young teenagers are called Andrea and Janet. It's so confusing as I keep thinking these are the mothers not the daughters. I'm 40 and don't know a Janet or Andrea my age, let alone 25 years younger. Why do authors do this?

That amused me @GrouchyKiwi. So I googled the name and Wayne apparently was a corruption of wagon driver or wagon maker. It was a surname originally and (presumably) attached to someone who worked in that line. See also Cooper - barrel maker - morphing to surname - to common first name. As are tons of others as I expect everyone is aware of.

NB most of my google results were American .

Anyway that doesn't give us a year for Wayne starting as a first name.

You might find this an interesting listen:

https://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/tiffany#:~:text=The%20name%20Tiffany%20has%20been,believe%20the%20name%20is%20old.

As a PP said, the name Tiffany is actually very old, but we think if it as an 80s name.

I can't stand names that are both surname and occupation eg:

Parker
Cooper
Carter
Sailor
Hatcher

and so on.

I would think this is a post 2000 naming convention, mostly, anyway. Though Booker and Fletcher have been around much longer.

To clarify my above post, I meant I don't like the use of these as first names.

My sister is Andrea born in 60s. We all have anglicized greek names as half cypriot

Yes! I read the book thinking 'Conal. CONAL!', each time I saw Connell! (Would it have been a publisher choice I wonder?)

My friend's sister has a son called Connell, spelled like that - I had no idea it was wrong. They're not Irish, come from York.

I’m 41 and I’ve never met a Janet or an Andrea my own age.

I find this unusual - surprised to see it's the situation for so many.

I know quite a number of Andrea's in their 40s, and several children.

I know a few Janet's too - 50s, early 40s, and one child in my DS class.

I think in Ireland we tend to have a great variety of names, and less as signifiers of eras/class (tho they are some). My DC have all Irish names. Other people wouldn't call their DC Irish names if you paid them - it can be a really polarising thing!

I also have an Irish name, growing up in the 80s with lots of Laura's, Michelle's, Rebecca's and so on, I hated it. Happy with it now tho!

My friend's sister has a son called Connell, spelled like that - I had no idea it was wrong. They're not Irish, come from York.

I don't think it's wrong then, just a choice.

I'd never heard of a 'Connell' in Ireland before Normal People tho. Conal is popular but can be pronounced like Connell or Cone-al, depending on where you're from.

There's a bit in An Audience with Billy Connolly where he talks about the habit of a certain type of Scottish people doing this.

Connell and Carrick aren't 'wrong', they are perfectly valid choices. I don't really think that any name is wrong, and it's natural for a culture to develop independently of the origin country when people emigrate. What bothers me is when an author thinks that they are picking a common name for a country because they have heard it being used by second or third generation emigrants from that country and they don't check. It's just a bit jarring to read and often indicates that the book will be annoyingly filled with cultural misconceptions gleaned from Hollywood and tourist adverts.

Sometimes naming styles comes back from emigrants, particularly Ryan. There are tons of American and Canadian Ryans (it's the most common Irish surname so it's often used as a first name to honour the mother's family name there) but when I was young it would have been highly unusual to be named that in Ireland. Now, while it's still not common, it wouldn't be comment worthy.

If Tiffany was used in the 10th century, you might get away with using the name for a 10th century character. But you’d need to briefly explain where the name came from in the narration or dialogue.

There's a Tiffany in The Nonesuch by Georgette Heyer (written in 1962 and set in 1816/17, but also scrupulously well-researched). In her case it's short for Theophania and would be a perfectly acceptable shortening at the time.

I was coming on to say this about Stephen King. Drives me crazy. I would have thought he'd have a level of editorial assistance that would catch this for him.

I'm 52 and had an Andrea and a Janet in my year at secondary school. I have teenagers and don't know any teenaged ones. I think of Janet as a little girl though like in the Janet and John books that were popular in the 70s! I like it

@KatherineSwynford1403 I think it was Sarah which jarred a bit for me. I’m in my forties and had several classmates called Sarah but I don’t know of anyone under thirty with that name.

@Pallisers . I know, right? He’s somewhat redeemed himself with Holly Gibney, but of the women in his books who do have jobs almost all of them are low paid stereotypical female roles (library assistant, kindergarten teacher etc). Bev Marsh got to be a fashion designer because she could draw, but why not be an architect like Ben Hanscom?

I am way too invested in this 🤣

I’m not sure how well this will stand up as an example of surnames being used as first names, but consider Jane Austen’s name choice for Mr Darcy.

Mr Darcy’s first name is Fitzgerald, and we’re told in the novel that this was his mother’s surname. So that would suggest that it wasn’t totally unknown for a child in Regency England to be given a first name that was more usually a surname.

I am and Andrea in my 40s, my Granny was Janet.

Anomalies happen! I was a rare Susan growing up in the 90s. I had a friend named Anne which was also uncommon for our generation.

Conversely, my great-grandma was called Chloe, which was very jarring.

I thought it was Fitzwilliam?

Harry Potter is supposed to have been born in 1981 though. Piers has always been a more rare name but according to the ONS Malcolm and Gordon were both still in the top 100 going into the mid 1970s so very normal names for 11 year olds in the early 90s. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/articles/babynamessince1904howhasyoursperformed/2016-09-02

I agree with @PriamFarrl , most people aren't as good as guessing name ages as they think because it's based on their own narrow experience and there are usually outliers in each direction. e.g I think of names like Phoebe, Ezra, Noah, Deborah, Joel, Lois, Tabitha as pretty modern but of course they are all biblical so very old.

Agree it's more annoying/likely to be due to a lack of research when it's a group of names rather than just 1 character.

The thing is, not every parent in a given generation used common names at the time.
There have always been parents who gave their kids unusual names, possibly deliberately so they would stand out.
I have ancestors born in the 1760s who were christened Chater (male) and Burnetta (female) and another christened Temple (male) in the 1880s. If they turned up in a novel of their period, you’d no doubt think they were silly or anachronistic!

The Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison, which was written and set in the late 90s/early 00s, has teenage girls called Jackie, Pamela and Alison

I was a teen in the '90s and knew two Jackies, a Pamela and at least one Alison.

If it was Uncle Arlo and Granny Harper in an American novel then that would be correct as they are old names.
It's only within the last decade or so that they've gained popularity as children's names in the UK.