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

[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!