[Opinions] Re: Which of the names that were popular when your parents were born do you like?
in reply to a message by Anneza
I'm curious what names were like there before US influence.
Replies
Difficult question! South Africa today has 11 official languages, only two of which are originally European: English, and Afrikaans, our version of Dutch. And we've never kept statistics of birth names for any of them. So, guesswork prevails. South Africa became part of the British empire at the beginning of the 20th century, and culturally that was what we were mostly exposed to. Not much Dutch, French or German influence, though there were always people who originated from those places and, sometimes, retained some naming customs. As for the USA, it's a long, long way from there to here by sea, and air travel only took off - pun intended - after 1950. Even then, the dollar was so expensive that we got very few imports from the States: books in particular. As kids, South Africans grew up with Enid Blyton characters rather than Nancy Drew. And our then government resisted foreign influences and therefore we only got TV in the early 1970s. Films, yes, but nothing much else. Afrikaans parents used to be very traditional in their naming: first son named after paternal grandfather, second son after maternal granddad and so on. This has largely faded out of use, and they are using modern names, imaginative (!) spellings, nns as full names etc. English speakers are now exposed to TV, the internet, you name it, so American fashions also happen here. Sudden outbreaks of girls named Lisa and Emma and boys named Jason and Justin, for instance. So, before 1980 you'd be safe to use UK statistics as guidelines to what was also happening here among English-speaking namers. From then on, the US influence has increased, though in the absence of stats it's a matter of guesswork. I hope that helps!