Erin O’Toole is the new leader of the Conservative Party, wins on third ballot (Canada)

Global News ^ | Amanda Connolly

[SunkenCiv]

:^) Oh, it gets much weirder than that, and not just in Ireland. ;^)

[Impy]

Yes, I mentioned that.

See post 11

If they’re Irish, I get it.

But see post 13 Cape Verde!!

[BillyBoy]

I also knew an Erin in HS, perky redhead who looked like Claire Daines. Definitely female. I'm sure male Erin's exist but I've never met one. Not sure it's a "Canadian thing" , more likely it's a coincidence the Canadian parliament elected two of 'em. There are probably Americans named Nigel somewhere too, but good luck finding one.

. Someone from the UK told me once that British people find it hilarious that "Randy" is a common name for American males. To them, it would be like naming your son 'Horny Robinson"

[SunkenCiv]

Irish-American genealogy's a lot of fun. Every danged female is named Bridget, so none of the maiden names can be tracked down. :^)

[fieldmarshaldj]

“I also knew an Erin in HS, perky redhead who looked like Claire Danes.”

I’d have been all over that. =8-0>

Actually, one of the first girls online I went after in the late ‘90s was named Erin. Of course, not that many people would post their pics, so I didn’t explicitly know what she looked like. She then publicly revealed she weighed a deuce and a half and I went skulking off. :-( She might’ve been lying, but it did the trick.

[BillyBoy]

>> Irish-American genealogy's a lot of fun. Every danged female is named Bridget, so none of the maiden names can be tracked down. <<

After hearing how Kim Yo-Jong is "filling in" for Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, I wonder how the heck they figure out who ANYBODY is in that country, let alone what family they are related to. If a teacher took attendance in a North Korea school and read off the name "Kim Jong?" about 35 kids in the classroom would simultaneously raise their hand and answer "Here!"

Seriously, it seems like out of a population of 25 million, about 24 million have the words "Kim" and "Jong" in their names.

[Impy]

China has a limited number of “approved” names.

Roughly 40% of Vietnamese are surnamed “Nguyen”

Japan is the exception in East Asia with lots of names. They even allow names you can’t write with standard characters anymore, those people have trouble typing their name on the computer.

[AuH2ORepublican]

Two of the greatest American athletes of the last two decades of the 20th century had names that, by all rights, should have made us blush or maybe laugh, but we found them perfectly nornal: Magic Johnson and Randy Johnson.

I grew up watching Magic play, and it wasn’t until a friend of mine referred to him as “Enchanted Penis” in the 1991 NBA Finals that I realized that he had a very funny name indeed. And then a few months later Magic announced that he had caught HIV from sleeping around (I remember that in his press conference he took like five seconds to enunciate “heterosexual sex”; nowadays he would have been accused of homophobia). So his johnson’s magic didn’t extend to protecting him from what theretofore was akin to a death sentence; what could only be explained by magic is that he actually was cured of HIV like 15 years later and he’s still around today.

With resoect to Nigel, yes, that’s as British a name as one can find. Another very British name is Basil; how many Americans with the first name Basil have you met? So it is fitting that the two British actors who played those two quintessential British literary characters—Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson—in 14 movies from 1939 to 1946 were named Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

[BillyBoy]

>> I grew up watching Magic play, and it wasn’t until a friend of mine referred to him as “Enchanted Penis” in the 1991 NBA Finals that I realized that he had a very funny name indeed. <<

Well to be fair, it wasn’t like his name on his birth certificate was “Magic”. It was an nickname he got because of his awesome basketball skills. His real name is Earvin Johnson. That seems to be a variation of the far more common name Irvin.

>> Another very British name is Basil; how many Americans with the first name Basil have you met? <<

Eh, its much more Greek than “British”, although you are right that a lot of British guys have that name. I haven’t met any American Basil’s but people from my church probably know a few, since its a very slavic church and they like naming kids after St. Basil and St. Cyril and so on.

There are a handful of famous Americans named Basil:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Bennett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_W._Duke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_O%27Connor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Wolverton

I would say far more British-y than Basil are names like “Gareth” and “Rupert”

[AuH2ORepublican]

I am well aware that Magic Johnson’s given first name is Earvin, and that Magic is a nickname. Also, Randy Johnson’s given name is Randall. My anecdote was about how when we hear names often enough they become normal to us and we don’t notice what someone from the outside (particularly from across the Pond) would notice about them.

I have never heard of those American Basils that you listed, and it would take a lot more than that to remove the name’s iconic status in Britain that it receives thanks to Basil Fawlty. Gareth is a Welsh name, and it’s more of a regional name in Britain. And maybe you’re right about Rupert (alternate spelling Ruppert) being common in Britain but rarely used in America, but I’ve never thought of it as an almost exclusively British name because growing the father of one of my sister’s best friends was named Rupert and the Mariners, Padres, Tigers and Angels (I may have missed a team or two) had an American outfielder named Ruppert Jones.