One of these things is not like the others:

[girlyswot]

Track


Bristol


Willow


Piper


Elvendork


Trig


Sarah Palin's children's names are in fact, rhyming slang:

Track (and field): well-heeled, rich
Bristol (City): titty, tits
(Weeping) Willow: pillow
(Pied) Piper: hyper
Trig(onometry): geometry

Okay, I made two of those up. But still, it would probably be foolish for any of these children to emigrate to the UK.

Comments

[nundu-art.livejournal.com]

A bit odd, yes, but not unheard of. There is an actor called Piper Laurie (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001453/).

I assume 'bristol' is naming slang for a woman's chest area? How did that come about? ^o^

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

In my list I explained it: Bristol City = titty. Tit is very common slang for breast in the UK.

Isn't Piper Laurie Australian?

[nundu-art.livejournal.com]

Nope, she was born in Detroit, Michigan.

'Titty' was common enough when I was a child, but only by giggly children just beginning to experiment with such scandalous language. 'Boob' is the more common term here in the US nowadays.

I thought rhyming slang was just a cockney thing. It's all over?

And why would it be called 'Bristol City'? Is there anything else (geographically, that is! ;P) called Bristol, like a county? Am I over analyising this?

[girlyswot.livejournal.com]

Bristol City is a football team. There are some rhyming slang expressions that have fallen into general use. Most people would know what you meant if you talked about 'a pair of Bristols'.

[nundu-art.livejournal.com]

Bristol City is a football team ahh, that makes sense now. Just curious about the rhyming slang. Of course here in the US (particularly in the south) we have our own, unique language. For instance, you'd probably have to hear it said to begin to understand what 'mawmernem' meant. (spelling is not formalized and would change according the to regional dialect ;))

[rhetoretician.livejournal.com]

Many important people were born in Detroit.

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

Yes I'd heard of Piper Laurie. It was calling a child Bristol I was refering to (although Track and Trig are odd too). Piper I'd heard of and I can understand Willow but not the other three.

[nundu-art.livejournal.com]

To folks in the US, Bristol is just the name of a number of cities and towns, nothing more, nothing less. Americans like unusual names. Using the name of a city as a child's name is not nearly as weird as a lot of other names. (we have a child at camp this week named 'Princess') I remember vowing in primary school that I would never name my children 'Cathy' or 'Debbie', as there were 3 or 4 of each in every class! I suspect the baby boomer generation as a whole felt that way and went for more unusual names. As those children had children the names became even more diverse.

Remember, we are people divided by a common language. In my mother's time a fair few girls were named 'Fannie', which to US folks is just an old fashioned girls name, even today. There is a mortgage lending program called 'Fannie-Mae', to which no one in the US blinks an eye.

Here in the US, 'Bristol' is just as innocent a name as 'Fannie'. A girl named Fannie in the UK wouldn't survive a day in nursery school!

[tdu000.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have made the association Ros did. I'd have just thought "Why on earth would anyone call their child after the name of a city?" I did just the opposite to you. I gave my daughter a very common name that has been popular for several hundred years and, yes, there are several in her class (it's popular here in Australia as well as in the UK). I used to work in pathology labs where we saw a lot of names without ever seeing the patients the name belonged to. In all of the places I worked we used to have a good laugh at the names people had (and three, possibly four of Mrs Palin's children would come under that category) and I promised I would never give a child of mine a name anyone could find amusing! I also have a surname that is used as a first name in the US (and has caught on here too) and I just can't see why anyone would want it as a first name!