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When I was in school in England the most common first names for boys are exactly the first names that were given in the article namely John, Peter, James and Wi
by teleforce 2y ago
When I was in school in England the most common first names for boys are exactly the first names that were given in the article namely John, Peter, James and Williams. The first three are from the Bible names and the last one is not from the Bible but from the name of Williams the Conquerer or Guillaume in French. The other most popular ones are Andrew, Philip, Matthew and Thomas. Fun facts, most of English people have middle names but it always abbreviated (e.g John F. Peterson) and apparently it's considered very rude to call someone by their middle name.
Later I've found that the typical English popular first names are mostly from the Bible, or to be exact the disciples of Jesus. In the Quran however, the names of Jesus disciples are not given but just called as Ḥawāriyyūn or the helpers/disciples. Similarly the names for friends or sahabat of Muhammad are not provided in the Quran. The ones that went to established the Rashidun Caliphates are very popular among Muslim for examples Omar/Umar, Osman/Usman and Ali. These three names are equivalent to the top three given in the article namely John, Peter and James.
- physicsguy 2y agoIt's funny picking a year on FreeBMD and seeing what names were popular then. At the moment old fashioned names are really popular - I met a little toddler called Margot last week! But I have to think that names like Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon, etc. might take quite a few generations before they come back into fashion. In the Victorian era names were pretty creative and different! Lots of ones that haven't come through as 'classics'. My great grandmother's name was Rosina for e.g.
- teleforce 2y ago>names like Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon, etc. might take quite a few generations before they come back into fashion. Sylvia, Lisa, Karen, Sharon might make a comeback but not Karen due to the recent negative connotation and has been considered to be a pejorative term [1]. Similarly most of the Jesus disciples names become common place, the name Judas is avoided like a plague, since it's considered to be a pejorative term equivalent to traitor based on what he did to Jesus. [1] Karen (slang): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_(slang)
- physicsguy 2y agoI'm familiar with the pejorative but I reckon that'll die out, plus it's more an American thing that hasn't had that much crossover here in the UK.