[video] Holly Willoughby loses her cool with Katie Hopkins

[Arthur]

Maybe it's me, but double-barreled surnames also sound extremely pretentious. Why can't parents just choose one?

 

any child named 'Jack' was almost invariably trouble

Liam's and Josh's are too usually.

 

I think we should all do like the Egyptians - have a 'Childhood name' then an 'Adult Name' - the childhood name is picked for us but we get to pick our own Adult names.

Eric Schmidt suggested that too (although for different reasons than the Egyptians).

 

Young will have to change names to escape 'cyber past' warns Google's Eric Schmidt

[AMLinington]

Maybe it's me, but double-barreled surnames also sound extremely pretentious. Why can't parents just choose one?

 

 

Liam's and Josh's are too usually.

 

 

Agreed. Calum and Connor seem to be troublemakers too

[witch]

So in saying that, and condemning everyone called Calum, Jack, and Connor, you have revealed yourself to be as prejudiced as that awful woman.

You just said:

"Calum and Connor seem to be troublemakers too" (and @Arthur -you are as bad)

That is EXACTLY what that woman said about Tyler etc.

 

Calum is a perfectly reasonable Scottish name, Connor is Irish and Jack is a derivative of John, one of the oldest names around. There are many children with these names who are perfectly decent and well behaved in my experience of 12 years in school (I don't think you have that much experience do you @AMLightfoot) as well as having friends with children with these names.

 

As a parent, I take note of a child's name and yes, it does reveal something about the parents. But I would never judge a child on that. My children played with children from a wide variety of backgrounds - some poor, some feckless, some rich etc. Some were nice, some were nasty.

As for odd names, the spelling thing is irritating, yes, but it is just because everyone wants to stand out these days.

Weird names? Maybe those name are actually just foreign, and names YOU actually haven't heard of. It doesn't make them strange, just unusual.

Edited July 5, 2013 by witch

[featured_spectre]

Phil Schofields face throughout is a picture!

[LiamH]

Maybe it's me, but double-barreled surnames also sound extremely pretentious. Why can't parents just choose one?

 

 

Liam's and Josh's are too usually.

 

 

Eric Schmidt suggested that too (although for different reasons than the Egyptians).

 

Young will have to change names to escape 'cyber past' warns Google's Eric Schmidt

 

OI! Its those Arthur's that are always up to no good, throwing swords in lakes polluting the waterways and such.

[Rawns]

Seems her website has now been hacked! I won;t post a screenie due to swears, but still quite amusing.

[DrCheese]

aw it's down now (can't access the site)

[LiamH]

check her twitter feed....

[AMLinington]

So in saying that, and condemning everyone called Calum, Jack, and Connor, you have revealed yourself to be as prejudiced as that awful woman.

You just said:

"Calum and Connor seem to be troublemakers too" (and @Arthur -you are as bad)

That is EXACTLY what that woman said about Tyler etc.

 

Calum is a perfectly reasonable Scottish name, Connor is Irish and Jack is a derivative of John, one of the oldest names around. There are many children with these names who are perfectly decent and well behaved in my experience of 12 years in school (I don't think you have that much experience do you @AMLightfoot) as well as having friends with children with these names.

 

As a parent, I take note of a child's name and yes, it does reveal something about the parents. But I would never judge a child on that. My children played with children from a wide variety of backgrounds - some poor, some feckless, some rich etc. Some were nice, some were nasty.

As for odd names, the spelling thing is irritating, yes, but it is just because everyone wants to stand out these days.

Weird names? Maybe those name are actually just foreign, and names YOU actually haven't heard of. It doesn't make them strange, just unusual.

 

I don't think it is fair to say that I am as prejudiced as that woman - I haven't stated that I would censor who my child plays with by name - I am MORE likely to censor who my child plays with by whether or not the child possesses basic manners. A child that doesn't think, doesn't use please or thank you is not a child I want mine associated with, regardless of whether that child is Jack Bloggs or Arthur Connington-Smythe the 3rd. It seems to me that I hit a nerve with either Calum or Conner as the previous comment about Josh or Liam didn't get a similar response.

 

I lived next door to a nice couple when I was growing up who had a child called Calum. He was a horrible little so-and-so. The parents were lovely and the father often spent time with his son and I regularly heard him correct Calum in various matters of basic etiquette but nevertheless this little boy was obnoxious, rude, spiteful and deceitful. I very much doubt it had anything to do with his name and is probably more likely that he was somewhere higher up on some behavioural spectrum somewhere. But when I was teaching I ran into another Calum who was very similar in behaviour. I also ran into a Connor who was cheeky and rude and, funnily enough, best friends with a kid called Tyler who was very bright but wilfully arrogant and deliberately difficult.

 

For what its worth, I don't believe for a second that something as trivial as a few syllables and letters can define a personality, but there seems to be correlations all over the place between various types of behaviour and names. I am inclined to think this is regional - so in one area the 'troublemakers' might be called 'Jack', in another 'Liam'. Perhaps this is more about demographics than the name itself. Let us assume, for arguments sake that the name ABCD is really popular in, say, Wales. This means that proportionally MORE children in Wales will be called ABCD than in, say, Scotland, where the name WXYZ is more popular. This inevitably means that a greater proportion of children, who may be troublemakers because of parental attitudes, undiagnosed learning difficulties etc etc etc will be called ABCD in Wales or WXYZ in Scotland, which leads to a REGIONAL observation that the name ABCD or WXYZ belongs to 'troublemakers', which in turn feeds its decline as a popular name in that area. However in Scotland, ABCD is less popular, so less children are called it, so it is not or rarely associated with 'difficult' children. So someone from Wales might say 'Oh, all the ABCDs I've encountered have been real troublemakers' and someone in Scotland might say 'That's RUBBISH, I've never met an ABCD who is anything but kind and sweet and polite - no, you need to look out for the WXYZs - they're the problem!'

 

THAT is the point I was trying to make - so @witch, clearly regionally the name 'Jack' is very very popular (along with variants like Jackson) around here, which means that proportionally the number of kids called Jack is higher, so the likelihood of 'Jack' being a troublemaker is higher. I don't think names define personality, I think it is the other way around - the popularity of a name and the personalities of people called by that name define the 'reputation'. Perhaps that is why companies with well known names are proud of their 'Name' being synonymous with their values - because the reputation assigned to a name is important.

 

I also think that kids with difficult or complicated names suffer as a result and it can affect them into adulthood - even my name is very traditional and I HATE it. I HATE being called 'Alex' and I hate that people assume automatically that I'm male by virtue of being referred to as 'Alex'. It has plagued me my entire life. When I speak to someone on the phone I have to specify that my name ends with DRA not DER as I've lost count of the number of letters I've received addressed to Ms Alexander Lightfoot. ARGH It makes my blood boil. I've grown up having to defend my name and get people to spell it or pronounce it right so I am very very very short tempered with anyone who botches it. It isn't their fault but when you can't even go through a single day without someone messing up your name it becomes very grating and has an effect on you as a person.

 

I HATE it when people from companies phone me (the bank, the electric company, the council etc) and assume they can call me 'Alex' or 'Alexander'. A typical conversation goes something like this:

 

Me: "Hello?"

Them: "Is that Alexander Lightfoot?"

Me: "No, it's AlexanDRA Lightfoot. Who is this please?"

Them: "It's Clare from Orange. Can I call you Alexander?"

Me: "No, you may not. You may refer to me as Miss Lightfoot until you can learn the difference between the Masculine AlexanDER and the feminine AlexanDRA. Or you can fetch me a manager."

Them: "Okay Miss Lightfoot, I'm calling about XYZ."

 

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I don't WANT to be rude but this happens almost every single time with everything and I lost patience YEARS ago.

 

Is it obvious that I'm bitter about my name at all? LOL

[witch]

....THAT is the point I was trying to make - so @witch, clearly regionally the name 'Jack' is very very popular (along with variants like Jackson) around here, which means that proportionally the number of kids called Jack is higher, so the likelihood of 'Jack' being a troublemaker is higher. I don't think names define personality, I think it is the other way around - the popularity of a name and the personalities of people called by that name define the 'reputation'.

That may well be the point you were trying to make, but what you said was that children with a certain name are likely to cause trouble

I can see what you were getting at now, but that sort of bald statement is just the sort of thing that fuels prejudice. That woman was probably trying to make a similar point but it is the shorthand statement that is the problem

 

(BTW, I have friends with children named both Josh and Liam and know many others who are not troublesome at all.)

 

*I asked a friend who has your name and she said she rarely has any issues with the male/female thing. It is quite a common name round here though.

As for difficult name - my son is proud of his odd name and enjoyed being the only one in the whole school. It did tend to mean that people remembered him though

Edited July 8, 2013 by witch

[X-13]

I HATE it when people from companies phone me (the bank, the electric company, the council etc) and assume they can call me 'Alex' or 'Alexander'.

 

To save any future troubles... I shall simply call you "Chad - Buster of Chops".

[LosOjos]

Maybe it's me, but double-barreled surnames also sound extremely pretentious. Why can't parents just choose one?

 

 

Liam's and Josh's are too usually.

 

Not only is my name Josh, I grew up with a double barrelled surname.

 

I'm not going to get all uppity about it, my general outlook on life is that if people want to be so shallow as to cast judgement on a group of people based on something so trivial as a name then I don't want to associate with those people so why should I care what they think? What I will say is that quite often the double barrelled surname comes from the fact that the child's main parent has remarried and finds themselves in the awkward situation of

a) not wanting to upset the other parent by changing the child's surname

b) doesn't want the child to feel disconnected from the family because they have a different surname

this was the situation that resulted in me having a double barrelled surname and which resulted in more than my fair share of arguments with snooty teachers who refused to call me by anything but my mother & step-dad's surname. Perhaps I'd have fit right in to your box of troublesome Joshs, or perhaps it was those teachers at fault for refusing to recognise my actual name because of some personal belief they had no right to impose on me. It's all perspective.

[witch]

@AMLightfoot It is legal to call yourself anything you like (first name) so you can change your name if you really hate it without doing the whole deed poll thing.

[hardtailstar]

Not only is my name Josh, I grew up with a double barrelled surname.

 

I'm not going to get all uppity about it, my general outlook on life is that if people want to be so shallow as to cast judgement on a group of people based on something so trivial as a name then I don't want to associate with those people so why should I care what they think? What I will say is that quite often the double barrelled surname comes from the fact that the child's main parent has remarried and finds themselves in the awkward situation of

a) not wanting to upset the other parent by changing the child's surname

b) doesn't want the child to feel disconnected from the family because they have a different surname

this was the situation that resulted in me having a double barrelled surname and which resulted in more than my fair share of arguments with snooty teachers who refused to call me by anything but my mother & step-dad's surname. Perhaps I'd have fit right in to your box of troublesome Joshs, or perhaps it was those teachers at fault for refusing to recognise my actual name because of some personal belief they had no right to impose on me. It's all perspective.

 

Going along with the double barrelled names.

 

My brother and his wife joined names because her family was all females so the name would have stopped when they all married etc.

 

They joined names to continue the family name.

[AMLinington]

That may well be the point you were trying to make, but what you said was that children with a certain name are likely to cause trouble

I can see what you were getting at now, but that sort of bald statement is just the sort of thing that fuels prejudice. That woman was probably trying to make a similar point but it is the shorthand statement that is the problem

 

(BTW, I have friends with children named both Josh and Liam and know many others who are not troublesome at all.)

 

*I asked a friend who has your name and she said she rarely has any issues with the male/female thing. It is quite a common name round here though.

As for difficult name - my son is proud of his odd name and enjoyed being the only one in the whole school. It did tend to mean that people remembered him though

 

Well it is not very common around here - I've only ever met another Alexandra once - names like Sarah and Emma are more popular here. Rebecca and Nicola are also popular. I feel kinda guilty hating my name. I don't hate the NAME per se, but the daily difficulty I have with getting people to spell it or pronounce it correctly. I HATE that people shorten it to 'Alex' automatically and I hate that it's stuck. There are LOADS of lovely feminine short forms of Alexandra and I've tried to get people to use all of them and failed. I've tried 'Alexa' and 'Xandra', I've tried Lexie and Lexa - my sister uses a variant of 'Lex' or 'Lexie' and I actually quite like it - Lexie/Lexa is pretty and I don't give a fig about the spelling lol. I think if I'm going to change people now, 2 weeks shy of the big 3-0 I will have the greatest success with a variant on the Lex/Lexie/Lexa as this is close enough to 'Alex' to be simple enough to push but yet clearly female (although Lex is a bit ambiguous).

 

To save any future troubles... I shall simply call you "Chad - Buster of Chops".

 

Although Chad implies male....

 

This thread has prompted me to push people to call me Lexa - it is a perfectly legitimate shortening of ALEXAndra.

[hardtailstar]

@AMLightfoot It is legal to call yourself anything you like (first name) so you can change your name if you really hate it without doing the whole deed poll thing.

 

I do this, My birth name is William but I dont like it that much, through primary school I was known as William and Bill, when I went to secondary school the two names merged and Ive been known as Billiam ever since.

 

Still get called Bill but mainly Billiam now.

 

I still answer to any variant of the names.

Edited July 8, 2013 by hardtailstar

[AMLinington]

Going along with the double barrelled names.

 

My brother and his wife joined names because her family was all females so the name would have stopped when they all married etc.

 

They joined names to continue the family name.

 

Interesting that you mention this as we've had this discussion ourselves as my Sister and I have no brothers and when my sister married my parents suggested calling herself Lightfoot-Davies. She hasn't because quite honestly it's far too complicated - double barrelling only really works when the names are short - like Smith-Evans or 'Taylor-Jones' otherwise the signature is too long to fit into government forms or text boxes with character limits LOL. Imagine the difficulties I'd have being Lightfoot-Linington - it is hard enough for me to get people to spell my first and surnames correctly without the added difficulty of the misspelling of LeBoyfriends surname (usually too many N's or M's instead). Too many syllables for me.

[X-13]

(although Lex is a bit ambiguous).

 

I hear Lex and all I think of is Lex Luthor; poster boy for male pattern baldness.

 

Although Chad implies male....

 

And Dani implies female.

 

Have a guess at how many [censored]s I give.

Edited July 8, 2013 by X-13

[AMLinington]

I hear Lex and all I think of is Lex Luthor; poster boy for male pattern baldness.

 

 

 

And Dani implies female.

 

Have a guess at how many [censored]s I give.

 

Does it? Written it is still ambiguous to me - isn't 'Dani' a better short form of Daniel than Danny? If I saw 'Dani' I'd not assume anything as that could be anything - Traditional African names in particular can be very difficult to make assumptions on as well as a lot of Asian names. I went to school with girls called Rajinder and Pushwinder and I've seen those used for both boys AND girls.

 

In this day and age of more ambiguous or unisex names it surprises me how many people still assume gender based on a name - It is impossible to tell gender from 'Alex' yet people still do. 'Alexis' is much more feminine but I can't get people to use more than 2 syllables. Chad seems to be more American in origin and I've only ever seen it used in men. What would it be short for in a woman? (If shortened at all).

[AMLinington]

LOL just found this:

 

EXCLUSIVE: Katie Hopkins: 'Obese people look lazy and are unemployable' | The Sun |Showbiz|TV

 

This woman is a piece of work. She is down the extreme end of the spectrum. I also don't think she fully understands how and why certain names in certain areas are more popular than others. She doesn't seem to understand demographic skews either...

 

I love Philip Schofield - he has a look of consternation throughout the whole interview and points out how wrong she is about things without sounding like he's arguing with her. He's a great presenter.

Edited July 8, 2013 by AMLinington

[X-13]

isn't 'Dani' a better short form of Daniel than Danny?

 

THAT'S WHAT I SAID! But, I still have people getting legit angry about it.

 

It's like I just punched a baby or something. [Not even joking on that comparison.]

 

I also argue that it doesn't even matter. It's just a collection of letters that someone has assigned meaning to. Abcde [Ab-Keh-Dee] is as legitimate a name as Brian.

 

Chad seems to be more American in origin and I've only ever seen it used in men. What would it be short for in a woman? (If shortened at all).

 

No long version. No lastname. Just Chad.

[witch]

The Americans have changed the sex of so many names now, that it is impossible to tell what sex anyone is from a name. I cite Glenn, Daryl, Ashley, Reece, Jordan, and Morgan just for a start

[LosOjos]

I have to admit I was taken aback the first time I met a man named Carol - it was such a popular girl's name once but I don't think it's been a popular boy's name in anybody's living memory, so I was shocked to find that it was actually a boy's name originally...

[witch]

As was Marion. Hilary is both.

 

I wonder if @AMLightfoot 's problem with her name is because people are no longer bothering with the slight change in lettering between the male and female version of her name?

I know a female Leslie which should be Lesley and another who spells her name Francis when the usual female spelling is Frances

Edited July 8, 2013 by witch

[AMLinington]

The Americans have changed the sex of so many names now, that it is impossible to tell what sex anyone is from a name. I cite Glenn, Daryl, Ashley, Reece, Jordan, and Morgan just for a start

 

The thing is, names evolve in society - how often do you hear of someone named Boudicca? Or Gaius, or Abrecan? These were probably popular names once but as society evolved so have names. Gaius or Romulus or Lentulus were Roman names but I only see them in TV shows now. I can't imagine for a second a medieval person called 'Jordan' although 'Morgan' was a medieval female name - Morgan Le Fay anyone?

 

Geraint is popular in Wales but you don't see it in England unless the person is of welsh origin. @X-13 makes an interesting point about names being an arbitrary collection of characters assigned meanings but I do think that the popularity of names is linked to reputation and vice versa - if the reputation of a name is sullied by the actions of a celebrity, then the use of that name will decline - 'Jordan' for example - many people may think twice about using the name 'Jordan' for either boys or girls because of the 'celebrity' association with Katie Price - this is an example of how 'reputation' affects name use. I wouldn't call my child 'Myra' for example - not because it is an ugly name, but because of the notoriety of someone once called it.