One of these?





Oh no, sorry, that's "De Lorean".

Loads of interesting names for the children at my school!  A fair number of girls named after models eg sisters called Jodie and Jordan, a Fallon, and plenty of made-up hyphenated names eg Kaylee-Jay, Toni-lea, kids named after gangsters (yes, really!) such as Cray (accidentally spelled with a C instead of K) and Ronnie. 

I was told that one girl (no longer at our school) was named Shakane after the chicane on the dangerous bend on a track in memory of her motorbiking uncle who was killed there just before she was born... 

A late entry:

Sir Henry Breisacher, much obliged.

Ooh yes, that was one of my favourite books. I think the children's father (was he a dustman?) insisted that the next daughter should be called "plain Kate". Kate was the clever one, who went to the grammar school and learnt Latin. Memorable illustrations, too.

Never mind 'working classes', I'm not sure the term 'common' is really that fashionable these days, Tony. But you're quite right - you can guess a 20-year-old's social background pretty easily if she's called Chantelle/Chanelle/etc. It's a kind of slightly misplaced aspirational instinct, I suppose: trying to free your kids from their working-class background by giving them a 'posh' name.

The Brazilian equivalent is to use what they imagine to be very 'English' names - Emerson, Jackson, Edson [a distortion of Edison I suppose], Milton, even Wellington (I've come across all of these as Christian names).

Another country I know about is Greece. An interesting difference there from Britain is that people are as a matter of course named after their grandparents (I'm not sure whether this is always the eldest child, or exactly how it works), which as I understand it means that names don't go out of fashion the way they do in Britain. I don't know whether there are certain names that would suggest you're higher- or lower-class, though I suppose if there are it musy be more difficult to 'escape' your class background.

France definitely has the generational thing with names (both specific names and also 'types' of name, as in Britain) - just look at all the French men in their 30s and 40s with double-barrelled Christian names: Pierre-Laurent, Jean-Marc, Jean-François, etc. ...

t-i-n in Greece the first girl is galled after her yia-yia (Grandma) on the father's side, the second girl after the yia-yia on the mother's side. First Sons are named after their  Grandpa on the father's side, second son after the mother's father.....I dont know what happens after they've had all these children !



I came on board to tell you all that after racking my brains ever since this thread began I've remembered the best ever name of a patient I once looked after:
                                           
                                        Erminilda Whitehead

What a fab name ! She was very old, and said she had been named after an actress.

One of the best names I've come across in teaching was a little boy called Eric Purple! And I once taught a little Japanese boy called Johnny Christmas. Presumably the Japanese family adopted their English names when they immigrated here as he'd not been in England for very long.

What kind of name would you adopt if you were changing yours? I'm just plain Jane so I'd choose a polysyllabic first name, such as Isabelle, Rebecca, Miranda or Amelia, followed by a more interesting surname than my current one. Hmm...much harder to choose....I think I'd have to be Purple.