Children's names called out in public

[Pink Gregory]

what's your best?

Just had 'River', which is alright really but it's not a name said well in anger or frustration.  No consonants, you see.

India and Sahara as part of the same family takes some beating, and this was in a fairly downmarket branch of Lidl.  The obvious joke is 'ha ha Waitrose', but the signifiers are much different, in my experience, more wide brim hats worn indoors kinda thing.

[Icehaven]

I was walking along a cliff path once and some child was getting too close to the edge as at the exact moment it's mother was walking right past me she screeched "LORENZO!!!" at the top of her voice at a volume that nearly made the entire cliff crumble into the sea taking me, her and her precious little Lorenzo with it.

[gabrielconroy]

I was once playing football in Battersea Park, about 20 years ago, when a little dog appeared and seized the ball in its slathering fangs.

A man came running up, shouting TARQUIN! LET GO OF THAT BALL TARQUIN!! And whoever was it but Will Self himself?

[buttgammon]

My fiancée has heard 'Ronaldo!' and 'Come here Shakira!' in the local shop.

In a couple of years teaching at a posh university, I've met some young adults with spectacularly stupid names, including every misspelled and mispronounced variant of any medieval Irish name you can think of. There's also some more common ones that sounded weird at first but which I've become desensitised to because the place is full of them - especially rugby twats called Hugo.

[Pink Gregory]

should also bend the rules towards posh teenagers shouting "Oscar, where's my Monster?  FUCK OFF FREDDY" in front of Hereford Cathedral.

[buttgammon]

Oscar is another one. Almost every class I've ever taught has had either an Oscar or a Hugo, and sometimes both. It puts my own fairly middle-class upbringing and education into perspective.

[Cleveland Steamer]

In a train station, middle aged woman shouting at a six year old kid: "Douglas! DOUGLAS!" Followed by a pack of teenagers laughing and mincing around screeching "DOUGLAS!" at each other. Who calls a child Douglas four forks ache.

[Kankurette]

Fans of this cartoon

[Blumf]

At some point those old lady names must make a comeback. Ethel, Doreen, Mabel. Has anybody noticed an up-tick in them yet?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

fenton, fenton

oh jesus christ

[BlodwynPig]

Turpin
Rachmaninov
Royce

[buttgammon]

At some point those old lady names must make a comeback. Ethel, Doreen, Mabel. Has anybody noticed an up-tick in them yet?

There is the singer Mabel (Neneh Cherry's daughter, I think).

[checkoutgirl]

"Sennen" in the zoo the other day. Irish male name. The level of irritation this name causes shall be left entirely up to you.

[madhair60]

i never hear children's names shouted. only silence.

[Cuellar]

Heard some stupid cunt shout "Ben! Ben! Where have you gone, Ben?" in Uniqlo the other day.

[jobotic]

Not a funny name but a friend of mine, who went to Oxford in the nineties told me about his incredibly posh neighbour shouting at her son, who was about 5 years old and crying, "For God's sake Joe, I don't need this mindfuck right now!".

[dontpaintyourteeth]

"YOU MUST STOP THIS, ABRAHAM"

[Sebastian Cobb]

At some point those old lady names must make a comeback. Ethel, Doreen, Mabel. Has anybody noticed an up-tick in them yet?

I think they did about 10 years ago when Victorian names were the middle-class rage, vaguely aware of an acquaintance calling their daughter Beatrix.

I liked the idea that the names would slowly move forward in time so we would end up with a load of Alan's and Barry's again.

I met an Ingrid at a party about 10 years ago when we would've both been late 20's.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Can't help myself, I love sneering at people's crap names for their kids. Downloaded a spreadsheet of every single kids' name registered in the UK between 1996 and 2021. Here are some nice names

• Malakye
• Jacobe
• Sefton
• Xavery
• Destany
• Mavrick
• Jarryd
• Skarlet

Tricky game though, got to be careful not be laughing in a racist way. It's ok to be classist obviously. I wonder if registry office people ever say 'are you sure that's how to spell that?'

edit: took a name out because I was laughing at it in a racist way

[dontpaintyourteeth]

knew someone that called their kid "pheobe"

[thenoise]

Phoenix (girl). Naturally, her dogs and horses are all called things like 'Lucy' and 'Sarah'.

[Blumf]

knew someone that called their kid "pheobe"

That one where the condom split

[Cuellar]

Knew third hand of someone who was called Jocasta, famous for being shagged by her own son.

Never heard it shouted though, so erase this post from your minds please.

[Theoretical Dentist]

At some point those old lady names must make a comeback. Ethel, Doreen, Mabel. Has anybody noticed an up-tick in them yet?

Looking at the data for England and Wales from 1996 to 2021, of those three names specifically, there has definitely been an uptick in the popularity of Ethel and Mabel, but Doreen remains very uncommon and if anything has declined slightly in recent years. I was surprised how popular Mabel is – since 2019 it's been in the to hundred names for girls and in 2021 it was more popular (in ranking terms at least) than at any time since some point around 1920.

Here are the full figures for those names from 1996 to 2021. The numbers in brackets are the rankings (for girls). For years where there's no figure there may have been up to two babies born with that name, but they're redacted from the data.

							Ethel							Doreen							Mabel
1996							-							5 (2683)							17 (1112)
1997							-							-							13 (1365)
1998							-							8 (1979)							21 (995)
1999							-							-							17 (1160)
2000							4 (3247)							-							15 (1250)
2001							-							3 (3998)							20 (1025)
2002							-							-							43 (656)
2003							3 (4373)							4 (4594)							45 (637)
2004							4 (3725)							-							48 (626)
2005							5 (3382)							5 (3382)							46 (668)
2006							4 (4157)							4 (4157)							91 (440)
2007							3 (5201)							-							69 (534)
2008							3 (5545)							4 (4524)							118 (370)
2009							4 (4564)							7 (3031)							87 (471)
2010							3 (5707)							3 (5707)							117 (386)
2011							7 (3185)							4 (4764)							132 (360)
2012							8 (2969)							3 (5875)							155 (312)
2013							10 (2460)							-							179 (265)
2014							5 (3514)							3 (5691)							205 (245)
2015							22 (1452)							-							243 (216)
2016							16 (1834)							-							250 (210)
2017							31 (1105)							4 (4763)							345 (162)
2018							31 (1111)							4 (4684)							491 (106)
2019							22 (1389)							3 (5581)							531 (98)
2020							17 (1687)							-							768 (68)
2021							28 (1195)							-							885 (58)

To compare these names for their heydays we need to look at the historical data which only has ranks, only includes names in the top 100 for each year, and only gives shapshots every ten years from 1904 to 1994:

							Ethel							Doreen							Mabel
1904							(13)							-							(24)
1914							(19)							(78)							(34)
1924							(38)							(15)							(64)
1934							(91)							(8)							-
1944							-							(38)							-
1954							-							(90)							-
1964							-							-							-
1974							-							-							-
1984							-							-							-
1994							-							-							-

So there's been a really big decline for Doreen, which was the eighth most popular name for girls born in 1934 but is nowhere now. I can think of two prominent Doreens in recent years – Doreen Lawrence and the presumably fictional Doreen who's having her Soreen – but they don't seem to have had much effect. Ethel has become more popular in recent years but is still nowhere near its peak. And Mabel is making the biggest comeback – it's was less common than Ethel in the early 20th century but has been much more common since 1996 (and presumably earlier), and probably last saw its current popularity some time between 1924. Both Ethel and Mabel were already in decline between 1904 and 1914 so probably had their peaks in the late 19th century, whereas Doreen had a fairly short but extreme burst of popularity peaking in 1934.

[imitationleather]

Read a news story today about how kids are now being called Banksy.

[Dr Trouser]

"YOU MUST STOP THIS, ABRAHAM"

God being a capricious twat yet again

[Theoretical Dentist]

knew someone that called their kid "pheobe"

That's a somewhat popular spelling – in 2021 in England and Wales there were 19 girls called Pheobe registered, compared to 1678 called Phoebe. Other spellings that show up in the data are Phebee, Pheobie, Phoebie (which I assume would be pronounced the same), and Phebe and Phoibe (which may not be, I guess), but all of these are less common than Pheobe. (Source).

[dontpaintyourteeth]

fee-obby

[Theoretical Dentist]

Read a news story today about how kids are now being called Banksy.

Three boys called Banksy were registered in England and Wales in 2021, which is the only year it shows up in the data (although there could be up to two in any year without it being shown). It doesn't appear at all as a girls' name (although again it could be used for up to two girls a year), so maybe that indicates people are assuming the famous Banksy is a man, although theoretically their identity is unknown.

[imitationleather]

This is Banksy.