This was one of those delicious mornings when I allowed myself to dip into the recent British baby names in the London Telegraph birth announcements. As usual, they didn't disappoint (can you tell that my speech has suddenly acquired a British cadence?) and I managed to pick up on some actual trends.
The first is that, now that Americans have started following the British lead and using two middle names, the Brits have to do us one better by using three. Four first names total, ala Charlie Gaspar Geoffrey Langton: that's one major new trend.
But in another way, British parents have started imitating Americans by starting to use surnames and word names as middle names: besides Langton, there's a Macmillan, a Melrose, and a Tiger here.
Several names seem to be getting very fashionable in the U.K. that are still rarely used in the U.S.: Martha, Nancy, India, Alice, and Agatha for girls; Edmund, Otto, Hector, Ralph, and Benedict for boys. I guess we know why they use Benedict and we don't. But can someone British please explain to me your fondness for Alfie and Archie?
There also seems to be a trend toward having several charmingly-named children of one sex, followed by a charmingly-named child of the other sex, creating a family out of a storybook. I mean, when I read about little Hector, George, Inigo, and Alfred welcoming sister Poppy, or imagined Lettice, Beatrice, and Agatha gathered around the cradle of baby brother Atticus, I nearly abandoned this blog to rush off and write a series of adventure tales starring these lovely siblings.
Here, the baby naming news from England:
Girls
Boys
Twins
Follow Pamela Redmond Satran on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nameberry
Philip N. Cohen: The Fall of 'Mary'
Julia Moulden: Name Meaning: Do We Become Our Monikers?
Physical and mental torture
My husband was christened "Henry", called "Harry", of course. He explained that in Cowcaddens they'd've killed him if he'd gone by Henry.
Only one time was he "Henry", and that was when I ran his obituary in the Glasgow Herald. Big mistake. Nobody caught on that he had snuffed it, since no one knew he was Henry.
He would have loved the irony, but, alas, he wis deid.
At least the trend has moved away from Senga (Agnes backwards... though a backwards Agnes doesn't seem like an improvement). My family reunion would be a nightmare, someone calling Mary would have to sift through about 18 women ranging in age from 8 months to 90 to find the right Mary. Lizzie and Maggie would be about the same. We have so many Johns and Jimmy's (and a Jimmy-John) that it's impossible to know who's being gossiped about.
Our family went through a trend of "traditional" Scottish names for a while so a lot of my cousin's kids are Angus, Liam, Euan, Caleb, Fiona, Heather (most popular dog name in my family as well).
In Texas we have all of these names in spades. You just have to translate them from English to Spanish. For example:
Boys:
Edmund= Edgardo
Otto= Omar
Hector= Hector
Ralph= Raul
Edmond= Eduardo
And believe me there is no shortage of these names being used here.
The Telegraph is an entirely different animal. Not representative of British naming trends whatsoever. Your average Brit is not using, to use more examples frequently found in that paper, Jemima, Rupert, Cedric, Ottilie, Beatrix & Georgina. They're just not. I can see Beatrix "fitering down" ( hate that term), yet I hold no hope for Cedric.
As for Badger and Digby, man the fail boat!!