[Opinions] Re: Theodore vs Abraham
in reply to a message by Pie
I'm responding to both you and Ninor. As stated above, my grandson is named Abraham and his mother was brought up with no religious training by both her atheist father and atheist myself, and is herself an atheist. As far as Abraham's father goes, I don't know that he's an atheist, but he is definitely not a religious person, does not attend church, never talks about religion, and liked to call the very very large church nearby "The Repentagon." They never worried that the use of the name would lead to the assumption that they are religious and I don't think it ever has. I normally don't argue with people's impressions of names, but in this case I have some personal experience so I thought it might be actually useful to the OP.
Replies
LOL @ the Repentagon! great. Yup I would expect Abraham to have a very different feel in the US - for starters, you've got Lincoln as a namesake, so it's probably had much more use. Here there are no well-known namesakes & it's unusual enough that I've never met or heard of one of any age. 59 boys were given the name last year - looking at the data, the majority of those were of African parentage (generally very religious) or Jewish. So it's a name we don't see very often except on religious folks, hence the association.