That’s quite a clunky title, so allow me to explain.
Over the past 400 years, baby name fashions in the US have diverted considerably from the mother country, which means that in the US, you get a lot of very common first names that in England are either almost unheard of (in a lot of cases we would even struggle to know the gender) or are heavily associated with being “chavvy”, so it can be quite easy to tell a Brit apart from an American just by looking at their first name.
Names that are thought of as being typically American:
– Names that were traditionally surnames but became used as first names as well, especially but not exclusively of former Presidents from the 18th/19th Century. E.g. Taylor, Madison, Tyler, Brandon.
– Names that in the UK would only really be associated with people of particular Celtic heritage. E.g. Ethan, Kyle, Aidan.
– A lot of names ending with -y or -den. E.g. Casey, Corey, Cody, Lindsey.
– Slightly more obscure Hebrew-sounding names from the Old Testament, especially in the 19th century. E.g. Ezra, Elijah
– Some nicknames, e.g. Chuck.
– Names that are typically one gender on one side of the Atlantic and the other on the other side. E.g. Ashley and Rhys are typically boy’s names in the UK but girl’s names in the US.
Names that are supposedly much more common in the UK than the US (although as a Brit myself it’s harder to determine objectively which ones would sound weird to Americans):
– Certain names of Celtic origin, e.g. Callum, Gareth, Maeve
– If you see a British character in a bad American sitcom, there’s a good chance it’s called Nigel, which was a popular boys name in the UK until around the 60s.
– Gemma is supposedly quite uncommon in the US
3 comments
Yes, people from former french african colonies with french names often have first names that sounds really outdated from a French perspective. They are often the kind of names you’d expect a french bourgeois from the 19th century to have, or names that have a strong religious connotation. I couldn’t really give you an exemple from the top of my head but you get the idea.
Not colonies, not even the same language, but a Russian name that kind of became popular in the west is Nikita. There was a TV series about a _female_ spy named Nikita in the 1990s/2000s which probably prompted the popularity.
But the problem is that Nikita is an exclusively _male_ name in Russia. Think: Nikita Khrushchev.
It’s confusing to see that name being used for girls/women.
In Spain several languages/nationalities exist, and many have unique and distinguishable names. Mainly the Basque country (Basque names: Aitor, Olatz, Eneko) and Galicia (Celtic names: Alda, Iria, Bran) have the more unique forms apart from also common Gothic/Germanic and Christian names; other languages are just variations of the same (Jaume vs Jaime).