So today, I’m partaking in a little experimentation, because it’s always fun to change around formats and try new ones, this is an example of the latter. A word of warning: it was a mostly spur of the moment decision to record this video.
Some more about the names covered:
Dolores – 2010 E&W ranking: #3156
A Spanish name taken from the title of the Virgin Mary, it means sorrows. Has been widely used in the English speaking world since the 19th century.
Ralph – 2010 E&W ranking: #258
Of Old Norse origins meaning wolf counsel.
I did check up on this, ‘ralf’ is the American pronunciations, whilst ‘rayf’ is the traditional way to say it in England, although nowadays the name is usually said ‘ralf’.
Imogen – 2010 E&W ranking: #26
A name created by William Shakespeare for his play, Cymbeline, although the name was originally meant to be Innogen. Likely to derive from the Old Irish ingen, which means daughter, girl, maiden.
Bernard – 2010 E&W ranking: #1082
Of Old English origins, meaning hardy bear.
Anthony – 2010 E&W ranking: #148
From the Latin name Antonius, which is likely to be connected to the Latin word ante, which means before. The spelling with the h was likely to be influenced by the Greek word anthos, which means a flower.
Molly – 2010 E&W ranking: #42
An old nickname of Mary, which has evolved to become a name in its own right.
Marley – 2010 E&W ranking: #593
Originally an English surname, meaning pleasent wood, although I have seen it linked to the meaning of weasel.
Harry – 2010 E&W ranking: #3
An old nickname of Henry, which has evolved to become a name in its own right.
Irene
Of Greek origins, meaning peace.
I also looked this one up; this name was originally said with three syllables, but has since adopted a two syllable pronunciation used by most.
Alice – 2010 E&W ranking: #43
From the Old German name Adelheidis, meaning noble.
Lucy – 2010 E&W ranking: #21
Derives from the Latin, lux, meaning light.
Douxy – 2010 E&W ranking: n/a
Most likely from the French word doux, which means sweet.
Gabriel – 2010 E&W ranking: #78
From Hebrew, meaning strong man of God.
Benjamin – 2010 E&W ranking: #22
From Hebrew, meaning son of the south.
Oh, and the film review I mentioned about half way through can be found here.
A British politician by the name George Galloway hit the headlines a week or two ago for winning the Bradford West by-election and entering the House of Commons. It hit the news because it was an unexpected win in a Labour-party dominately seat. Of course, George Galloway was once an MP for the Labour party, holding Glasgow Hillhead and later Glasgow Kelvin in their name. However, he was expelled from the Labour party in 2003 following his public opposition to the war in Iraq. After this, he joined a small party called Respect and won the Bethnal Green and Bow seat in the 2005 General Election.
The above paragraph may mean nothing to you if you’re not familiar with the British Political System, but suffice to say, this man has been in Parliament since 1987, albeit not continuously. What you may understand more is this: George Galloway has three children, who are called:
Lucy (woo!), born early 80s
Zein, born 2007
Faris, born 2011
Is the time ripe to call out the name Zayn in whatever spelling he may be as a serious Top 100 contender for the coming years? I covered him back in August 2011, mentioning that he currently (i.e. 2010 data) has four variant spellings inside the Top 1000:
Zane – #283, with 161 births.
Zayn – #566, with 60 births.
Zain – #172, with 320 births.
Zaine – #942, with 30 births.
At the time, I did cover the name because a lad bearing the name Zayn was in the then-mostly-only-known-to-Brits band called One Direction. You may have heard of them, as they seem to have taken the world (moreover the US) by storm in the past few weeks – so much so that NameCandy felt the need to cover their names.
Zayn means grace or beauty and I think he’ll be one to look out for in terms of rising popularity.
I’ve spent all weekend handing out presents to excitable small children, and what has to be the biggest pack of Brownies I’ve ever come across in my life. This all adds up to the need for an extra special post to give me a chance to share with you as many names as my poor mind can remember.
That said, this post does comes with the warning that, whilst I know their rough ages due for present-selecting purposes, I can only hazard a guess at the spellings of their names. This is by no means a complete list, rather, a collection of the ones I remembered, and for the sake of simplicity, yes there were many multiples of many of these names, but I’ve forgone this since I can’t give exact numbers on how frequent each names was used, but, the ones I saw time and time again?
Alfie
Ben
Hayden
Henry
Lucy
Isabella
Joshua
Ruby
Before unleashing the lists on you, it is worth noting that the children could’ve easily been introducing themselves by their nickname, not their fullname.
Claud from the Renault Mégane advert, from carpages.co.uk
I’ve spent all day running up an down a Great Central Railway train giving out gifts with Santa Claus. That means I have now seen a small sample of what names the kind people of the East Midlands are giving to their offspring. Something someone mentioned to me was that they named their 10 week old daughter Nina because there are too many Clover adverts on the TV at the moment – something I never noticed myself. Clover is a brand of margarine here in the UK, and the recent We All Love Clover ad campaign was ripped to shreds by my peers for featuring people getting rather emotional about some margarine:
Their current advertising campaign is about the greatness of being in the middle. Despite this mother’s concerns, I still maintain Clover is a fantastic choice nevertheless. It’s also worth noting that the name of another brand of margarine here is called Flora.
So, we may hate them, but there’s always that occasional gem you need to look out for when it comes the adverts. Whilst the Clover advert doesn’t feature a named character, the product bears a name that a child could. It’s a thin line really between over and under exposure names get from companies desperate to flog their goods.
Therefore, it seems apt to look at a few adverts that have which all heavily feature a named character. Clearly, if Cadbury had named it’s characters, it would’ve easily taken a place on the list for its drumming gorilla and eyebrows adverts:
From the BT adverts we have Adam and Jane, alongside Jane’s children from a previous relationship, Joe and Lucy, and their new baby, Alfie. The main characters are acted out by a Kris and an Esther. The adverts have been following them now for several years, charting the development of their relationship and their use of BT services at the same time.
Whilst you may think that both name are reasonably well used, Jane has fallen down in recent years, now sitting below the 1000 mark:
Adam: #39, 2088 births
Jane: #1040, 32 births
Adam is the Hebrew word for man, whilst Jane ultimately comes from the same sources as John, meaning Yahweh is gracious. I still doubt that the BT adverts really have any effect over whether we use the names Adam and Jane any more or less - but the writers appeared to have picked up on current name trends by using Alfie for the newborn.
Comparethemeerkat.com has never been more popular. Fronted by the rather batty meerkat, Alexandr Orlov, he urges you to go the comparethemarket for cheap car insurance, not comparethemeerkat. Here in England&Wales, you’re more likely to meet an Alexander than a Alexandr:
Alexandr: #4678, 3 births
Alexander: #21, 3025 births
Really, using Alexandr may mean you get simples shouted at your little one, but there are two facts to consider:
The majority of Alexandr’s (with whatever variation) tend to shorten their name.
Alexandr could easily be mistaken for Alexander – it’s your choice to correct them.
We’ve all been told, knock off Nigel buys knock off DVDs. This one, out of all of these, is probably well remembered given that it came in the form of a catchy song. We all love a catchy tune to hum, and that may be a hinderance to the name Nigel. That, and the fact that most see Nigel as a middle-aged name. Currently in England&Wales, the name is at:
Nigel: #1344, 18 births
The name Nigel is commonly associated with the Latin word niger, meaning black. It has also been linked with the name Neil, which either means champion or cloud.
I love David Mitchell, who voiced the rather cynical drug awareness advert for Frank: Pablo the Drug Mule dog. Particularly well-known amongst the younger generation, since David Mitchell’s core fan base is as such.
Pablo: #792, 32 births
Pablo is the Spanish form of Paul – which comes from Latin and can either mean small or humble.
This acts as an additional name. In the shortened adverts which were the core ones shown his name is not given, but if you catch the long version, you do find out his name. It follows the pursuits of a frenchman, Claud, as he goes to Gisburn in Lancashire to discover why there is a correlation between fertility and the presence of Renault Méganes in a town. The really long version is quite amusing because of the stick the people of Gisburn give Claud.
‘Money can’t buy you happiness’…’but lack of money certainly causes misery’
Claude: #2629, 7 births (Claud does not rank)
This advert is certainly the least well known of the five, and I’m sure many of you have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s totally fine, even I’m not sure what I’m saying some of the time. My problem with Claud comes from his meaning: he’s a derivation of the Latin name Claudius which means crippled.
Contestant from Junior Bake Off, Stanley, from eadt.co.uk
You’d think I’d be a pro at this blogging malarkey nowadays, but I somehow managed to leave for work last night without clicking the publish button. Since I didn’t actually get back until past midnight, I decided to be lazy and go to bed rather than provide you with your daily fix. Patience is a virtue, as my father would always annoying remind me, so hopefully I still have some readers out there
Either way, onto the post. I caught another glimpse of Junior Bake Off this week, the kid-orientated version of BBC’s smash hit The Great British Bake Off. The one I watched a few minutes of the other day featured four young ‘uns named Jacob, Katie, Conal and Coco-Nina. Some other notable names from the series include:
Aasiya
Amari (m)
Galway
Hari
Joy
Kai
Marie
Saffron
Sangita
Stanley
Sylvia
Zyta
Speaking of television, there was a girl named Charis this week on Pointless who pronounced the first syllable of her name like one would say the first syllable of Karen. There was also a Lauren and Lauren III pairing who were both male, which reminds me that Laurence is a female name in France. On the subject of the French, Bree stole my heart with her list of French word names earlier on this week.
It’s slightly late, but Kate Silverton welcomed a daughter she named Clemency Florence Rose recently. David Cameron famously welcomed Florence Rose Endellion earlier last year, so Florence Rose is clearly a combination to keep an eye on. I’m still not entirely sure which name I prefer out of the two, given that I love both. There are plenty of -ce names out there right now, such as Alice and Beatrice, which are enjoying plenty of popularity.
My favourite outraged Daily Mail article of late has been about a couple’s messy divorce. A couple with four daughters named Arabella, Kitty, Lucy and Georgia. They also have a son with the delightfully complicated Ruaraidh.
11/11/11 UPDATE
There’s a girl on the news called Birdy. How apt given ‘yesterdays’ post!
The Team GB Sailing Team for 2012, from dailymail.co.uk
A few days ago the Team GB sailing team was announced for the 2012 London Olympics. I’ll admit that I’m a rower, not a sailor – I was one of the many Brits who had never heard of the Yngling class of sailing until we won a gold medal in it at Beijing. For the 2010 Olympics, it’s being replaced by the Elliott 6m. Other names of sailing classes?
We have the Finn class which has been dominated by Ben Ainslie in the past few years. By coincidence, he’s been covered in much detail over at My Advice this week. A quick selection of the names of other classes in the world of sailing gives us: Tempest, Soling, Dragon, Firefly, Corsair and Buzz. If any sailors read this post, and are offended that I’ve missed out their class, I’ll repeat that I’m no expert in sailing, so feel free to add your own list in the comments section and put me to shame.
Sticking firmly to the sailing theme, the names of the sailers which have been selected are quite interesting – the stand out one for me being Saskia Clark. The other selected few were, in alphabetical order:
Andrew Simpson
Annie Lush
Ben Ainslie
Bryony Shaw
Hannah Mills
Iain Percy
Kate MacGregor
Lucy MacGregor
Nick Dempsey
I’ve been hoarding Metro newspapers for the past fortnight of so, not just because I’ve yet to have time to the sudokus, but because I keep forgetting I’m holding them until it’s too late and I’m off the bus. Something I’ve been wanting to mention for awhile, though, is the name of one of the characters on it’s cartoon page: Nemi.
I have been reading the articles in the Metro though, and there was a new story in the Metro this week about a family who built their own ‘hobbit house’ in four months for a couple of grand. The creative parents behind the project, Simon and Jasmine Dale, have two young children: Cosmo and Elsie.
I casually mentioned Warby Parker as an inspiration behind a Names of the Week post from the start of the month, and this week Kristen over at Marginamia went one step further, bringing you the names of the entire collection.
Dancing with the Stars kicked off in the States this week, whilst we’re still waiting for Strictly Come Dancing to begin here in the UK. Not that I watch it, since dancing is for girls Either way, a quick rundown of some of the notable names of professionals who’ve taken part in the series at some stage or another:
Aliona Vilani
Anton du Beke
Artem Chigvintsev
Erin Boag
Flavia Cacace
Izabela Hannah
Jared Murillo
Katya Virshilas
Lilia Kopylova
Ola Jordan
Pasha Kovalev
Ice Hockey is more of my thing, even though I don’t own a season ticket as my Uncle does. I tagged along with him to the Panthers game last night, so now seems an apt time to mention that we have a player named Guillaume. I love the name Guillaume, sometimes more than William, sometimes less (Guillaume is the French form of William). For the confused, it’s gee-OM.
Let’s end on a cheery note by mentioning Nook’s list of names meaning wealth, good fortune, success of happiness – inspired by a look into the rune name Feoh. Tomiko? Aston? Love.
Let’s number-crunch. Courtesy of my sister, I got my hands on the class lists for her year (grade) at school. The names totalled around 150, and when we factor in the sixth form class list, who are two years older, we have a reasonably sized data covering popular baby names for catholics (catholic school) in England in the early 1990s:
The prevalence of Irish names is not taken as uncommon in a catholic school.
Jack was outnumbered by several names: Joseph, James and Thomas. He began his stay at the top of the UK Top 100 list at the end of the decade. Two of the Jacks had the same surname.
Both of the Ashley’s, born when America embraced the name as a female one, were male.
The Eugenie’s were born just after Princess Eugenie, and the Beatrice/trixes born after Princess Eugenie’s sister: Princess Beatrice.
Non of the Lucy’s were a Lucille, Lucienne etc. They were all just Lucy.
The Emma’s outnumbered the Emily.
From personal knowledge:
-None of the Philippa’s in the list shortens their name to Pippa.
-All of the Eleanor’s were nicknamed Ellie.
* In the interests of not boring you all to death with an endless list of data, any name on the class lists which appeared once, without a similar name has been omitted from the data. This accounts for around 30 names out of the roughly estimated 240 names.
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