Childrens names - a means of identity or class/culture asperations?

mike65

The latest list of popular names was released today and the recent trends still seem to be holding - that is too say strong representation of old world romantic novelist girls names and "solid" non nonsense boys names.

http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/births_d_m/current/babynames.pdf


1. Jack
2. Sean
3. Daniel
4. James
5. Conor
6. Ryan
7. Adam
8. Alex
9. Luke
10. Dylan


1. Sophie
2. Emily
3. Emma
4. Sarah
5. Lucy
6. Ava
7. Grace
8. Chloe
9. Katie
10. Aoife

What sways your choices? Paying tribute to family members? Film/music stars or the moment, fictional heros/heroins, political/national heroes, upward mobility?

Two names that stick out like a sore thumb on the CSO list is Zuzanna which I think should be spelt with one n and is Czech and Maja which seems to have wide use esp Nordic/Slavic populations.

lolli

353 were born with the same name as my daughter last year

Saoirse was a name both myself and my partner loved and actually the only name we could agree on.

Victor Meldrew

Family Names. Our boys are named after my father and my wife's grandfather, with due consideration to whether we consider the names to be nice.

Some awful handles being doled out there on that report...

pickarooney

First names we liked and middle names after grandparents (which we also liked, in fairness).

implausible

mike65 wrote: »

Two names that stick out like a sore thumb on the CSO list is Zuzanna which I think should be spelt with one n and is Czech and Maja which seems to have wide use esp Nordic/Slavic populations.

Your phrasing is.....interesting. I presume you just mean that they are unusual. I thought Zuzanna was Polish, due to the amount of native Polish people living here. The spelling that the CSO have is the one that I'm familiar with, I doubt they got it wrong or the 96 sets of parents who chose it:rolleyes:

Victor Meldrew wrote: »

Some awful handles being doled out there on that report...

You've lost me there Victor

To answer the question, I chose an Irish name that I liked, went well with his surname and happened to be the Irish for my husband's late grandfather's name. It really ticked all the boxes!

lolli

mike65 wrote: »

Two names that stick out like a sore thumb on the CSO list is Zuzanna which I think should be spelt with one n and is Czech and Maja which seems to have wide use esp Nordic/Slavic populations.

I knew a girl from Czech and it was spelt Zuzanna.

bulmersgal

My babies name (Elisha) isn't on it, thats why i chose it as i love it being somewhat unusual.

barbiegirl

Family names, they are what they are. Though versions we like and meanings that mean something to us :-)

Victor Meldrew

deemark wrote: »

You've lost me there Victor

"Handle" = CB radio Slang for name.

On the CSO list there were some, ahem, "surprisingly" popular names. The sort of names your kids will remember when they are picking your nursing home...

ash23

I had another name picked out for my girl but when she was born the name didn't suit her. Another popped into my head, one I had never even considered, and I just couldn't stop thinking of it for her so went with it. Suits her perfectly I think. It's not on the top 100 though. She's the only one in her school.

Her middle name was just a name I liked that went well with her first name and surname.

cynder

My boys are in the top 30, Benjamin and Ryan, however Samantha has been in the top 20 in america since the 70s and the uk its in the top 50.

I didnt choose them because they were popular, i like the names. The middle names are all close relatives.

Imhof Tank

mike65 wrote: »

The What sways your choices? Paying tribute to family members? Film/music stars or the moment, fictional heros/heroins, political/national heroes, upward mobility?

.

Simple check for that - compare the cso list with the list the Irish Times publishes each year of most popular names as per its birth announcements columns for the year.

implausible

Victor Meldrew wrote: »

"Handle" = CB radio Slang for name.

On the CSO list there were some, ahem, "surprisingly" popular names. The sort of names your kids will remember when they are picking your nursing home...

*facepalm! I really should've known that!

Some are very 'of their time' alright. Amazing how some names just become popular all of a sudden. I have three Shannons in 3rd year and 1st year is full of Chloes. I have no idea where the recent Ava/Eva/Éabha craze came from either.

Ayla

1st daughter's name = Lauren (my mom's first name ) + Marie (husband's mother's second name)

2nd daughter's name = Emily (name we liked) + Marguerite (my sister's/aunt's/grandmother's name)

Honestly, whether or not a name was popular never really came into the equation when we picked names. Funny, though, that if we had ever had a boy his name would've been Sean Daniel...guess that ranks pretty high on the cso list.

Grawns

When I found out the name I had picked was suddenly very popular I went right off it.
I still like the name Aoife but they are 10 a penny these days and as another poster mentioned - the same with eabha, ava, eve, evie aoibhenn etc.

ChloeElla

My dad chose my name based on what he liked. I actually had never met another Chloe until I started secondary school, and now everyone seems to be called it, it's still number 8 in the CSO chart. I'm a few years older than all of my sisters, and chose all their names (my poor mum hasn't picked anyone's name!) and chose Carrie, Jade & Nadine - not completely unusual, but none of them are in the top 100 either, I think they're pretty & I'd prefer to have a more unusual name.

Cat Melodeon

We picked a fairly standard first name for our son (regularly top 10) and a more unusual second name. We ended up calling him by his second name as the first one is so common in our family it was getting confusing. For the next one (due Nov) we've already chosen a very old-fashioned name if it's a girl (after my mum and my husband's gran) and another simple name if it's a boy.

there is definitely something to the class aspirations of a name. The middle classes try to pick unique or classic names for their children but as soon as the names begin to gain popularity they move on to something else. It seems to take about 10 years for a name to go from niche to mainstream. If anyone has read the book Freakonomics, there's a whole chapter dedicated to the subject. According to them:

...once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amy and Heather started out as high-end names, as did Stephanie and Brittany. For every high end baby named Stephanie or Brittany, another five lower income girls received those names within 10 years... but as a high end name is adopted en masse, high end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it is considered so common that even lower end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper end parents have broken in...

So basically by the time a name reaches the top 10, it has already lost it's cache. This is based on US trends, and I think it's maybe truer for girls' names than boys' names as certain boys names seem to remain popular no matter what the fashion (Sean, James, Daniel). These are also names that have been used for many years in Ireland so family tradition probably plays a part. Not so much on the girls' side though - very few Marys or Bridgets or Peggys these days.

angelfire9

Apparently there were only 183 Aislings in the entire country last year, our babs being one of them
Her name just came out of the blue, we wanted something Irish and we both liked it
Our eldest is called after my Granny and both girls have their middle names from their grandparents (our parents)

stovelid

Just made up some unpronounceable Irish names to emphasize that we don't care to paddle in the tepid pools of bourgeois mediocrity, you know?

Looked at the full list and neither of our sons' names are there. They're definitely not strange or obscure names though.

implausible

^^^^

Is that a question or a statement?

nesf

Both of our kids are named after family but with names we liked or that tradition dictated, translated into Irish making them uncommon.

Moonbeam

I was 11(1st year in Irish college) and 13 when I fell in love with my girls names and luckily himself likes them too:)
Caoimhe is a quite common now which nearly made us discount it but it is such a gorgeous name:)

Grawns

Cat Melodeon wrote: »

These are also names that have been used for many years in Ireland so family tradition probably plays a part. Not so much on the girls' side though - very few Marys or Bridgets or Peggys these days.

I have a Bridget - no family connection. We're bringing it back into fashion. Mind you it's very popular in My big fat Gypsy wedding :eek:

metrovelvet

I always thought I'd give a Jack or Jill or John or Jane kind of name because living in a city where so many people speak english as a second language, having to spell out a lot of syllables over and over and over again to administrator after administrator is very irritating.

However, I have cursed my son with this problem two fold.

Cat Melodeon

Grawns wrote: »

I have a Bridget - no family connection. We're bringing it back into fashion. Mind you it's very popular in My big fat Gypsy wedding :eek:

I was actually thinking of you when I typed that Grawns, you're definitely swimming against the tide with Bridget but I bet any money it will be coming back into fashion again in about ten years time! I know 2 younger Bridgets, one is an absolute dote, the other is one of the most gorgeous and independent women I know. Good name!

magrat

Well my son's name has always been in the top five and my elder daughters name I notice has been within the top 40 for the past few years. Yet my youngest one's name does not appear within the top 100 - which does not supprise me as she is the only one in her school, and has always been despite just finishing 5th class this year!

When it came to picking out names, I had decided on my son being Liam, but thanks to being stoned out of my head on pethidine, he has a different name - my second choice. And seeing as how everyone 'knew' him by that name I kept it. I still like it, even if he feels its overused!!

With my first daughter, we went for a name we felt worked with his, and its also a version of my grandmothers name, with her second name a version of my husbands grandmothers name, and her third name her grandmothers name!

By the time we were lucky enought to have our third child, our second daughter, our older two were in school, with both of them having other children in their classes with the same names. So with that in mind we went for a less common name.

All of them have Irish names.

yungwan

I just choose my son's name because I liked it.

No family history or anything.

It is quite a modern name, but not in top 10. (Its not even close to the top 100 either!)

But a names popularity really doesn't matter to me. I have 2 girls names in mind if I ever have a girl but I have no boys ones....

In fact alot of the top 10 names are way overused imo.

One in particular its sooo overused its not even nice anymore! - but I wont name it or I might get linched!!

Ickle Magoo

pickarooney wrote: »

First names we liked and middle names after grandparents (which we also liked, in fairness).

Pretty much the same - one has a middle name after a grandparent and the other an aunt. One has a first name that was a pet name of a great aunt and the other, not sure where that came from. It wasn't on either of our "lists" but he came early and didn't seem to suit any of those names that had been short-listed.

They aren't obscure names - but I guess they aren't that common, either.

yoda2001

I think it is also important to take the surname into account. I have come across a teenage Errol Flynn and Jacqueline Kennedy in Kerry. Tyrone Power and Samantha Fox were other kids for whom I had pity.

cynder

yoda2001 wrote: »

I think it is also important to take the surname into account. I have come across a teenage Errol Flynn and Jacqueline Kennedy in Kerry. Tyrone Power and Samantha Fox were other kids for whom I had pity.

My great grandmother was Elizabeth Taylor, i've always wanted to bring back Taylor into my family but Taylor ******* just wouldnt go together.

cynder

I think tv has a lot to play in name choosing, I also think that's why the name NOAH has become popular again (thanks to home and away), also Shauna became very popular (also home and away) and Alana/Alanah (the girl from tomorrow)