Val's day

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

It being Valentine’s Day and all, I feel the time has come to muse on Val Longstreet, and AF names in general. I was taken aback to learn Val’s full name was Valentine, partly because it’s comically incongruous with her character, and partly because I’ve never met or even heard of a real person called Valentine. I’d assumed her name was Valerie (rare but not unheard of). Was (or is) there a particular time and/or demographic in the UK where 'Valentine' was a reasonably common name?

The names of ongoing characters were an aspect of her books that AF couldn't shift to suit the different timeframes of her books, which must make for some interesting clashes in fashion. Being Australian, I don't know that much about what names would have been popular in schools like Kingscote in the eras when the books are set, but I'd guess, for example, that having two Margarets in a small class of girls might have been likely at the time of Autumn Term, but would have been unlikely by Attic Term.

It's also interesting to look at which names seem dated and which don't. 'Nicola', 'Rebecca', 'Karen' and 'Jenny' are as current as ever, at least to my Australian eye, but 'Erica', 'Lois', 'Virginia' and 'Barbara' seem of an earlier generation. I also suspect (again, without much knowledge of the context in posh UK circles at the time) that by Attic Term, AF chose names for new minor characters (e.g. the 'infants' in Ann's dorm) which were fashionable at the time when the novel was set. Then there's ones like 'Thalia', 'Pomona' and 'Unity', where I suspect AF was deliberately picking offbeat names.

Any thoughts from people who know more than me about UK naming fashions through the ages?

Comments

[elizahonig.livejournal.com]

My name reference books are at home but I've combed them and the U.S. Social Security website names tables pretty thoroughly in the past and here's what I remember. Lois is definitely a dated name--1920s and 30s babies, I'd say. Virginia was not, I think, ever that popular in England. It may have been more popular in America--I certainly knew Virginias growing up. Margaret has a much more steady popularity in Scotland than elsewhere, though it's a basic classic name that doesn't "date" like Lois might. Ditto Barbara--a classic name but currently not at all popular (even less so than Margaret, which is making a slight comeback). Jenny--wasn't that popular in Scotland before it hit elsewhere? Maybe a Scots theme here.

Nicola was a 1950s name, more English than anywhere else, and was then overtaken by Nicole. So Tim is right in finding it odd in the late 1940s. Erica was very popular when I was growing up in the USA, so early 1960s babies--not at all before that.

Valerie had a period of being fashionable, perhaps 1940s- 1950s, but Valentine not. I have a friend who named her son Sebastian Valentine because he was born on Valentine's Day. I'm sure he'll never forgive her.

I've always liked Rowan for a girls name too. My grandfather's name was Owen and I considered naming one of my girls Rowan and claiming it was for him, but it didn't sound good with my last name.

When I was a kid at least, the old-money Americans also gave their girls odder names than ordinary people did. My posh summer camp was populated by girls named Philippa, Timothea, India, Elliot, Ainley, etc., while my neighborhood school had girls named Kim, Betsy, Patty, and Jan. Boys of all classes always have more conservative names.

Karen is the really odd one. Maybe it was a trendy name for babies by 1948 and AF used it for an 18-year-old, which would have been unusual in reality. Sort of like calling a fictional teenager "Madison" would be today in America--nobody over age 10 is really called that.