Like their age, personality, ethnic identity and so on? I know a name is just a label and all, but naming is strongly related to class, race, and especially generation. This is just in light fun.
What kind of a person do you imagine when you hear these names:
*Brian
*Christopher
*Sarah
*Megan
*Tiffany
*Daniel
*Cheryl
*Nicholas
*Candice
*Brett
*Skyler
*Alex (of either sex)
*Brian - Middle-Age WASP male
*Christopher - Middle-Age WASP male
*Sarah - Late 20s/early 30s WASP female
*Megan - mid-20s WASP female
*Tiffany - Late-20s/early 30s WASP female
*Daniel - grade school WASP male
*Cheryl - mid-20s British female
*Nicholas - mid-30s WASP male
*Candice - late-20s White or Coloured South African female
*Brett - Balding ex-pro wrestler
*Skyler - teenage WASP female (Californian)
*Alex (of either sex)
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Basically, a WASP’s nest with some few exceptions.
They all sound white, middle to upper class and except for Candice and Cheryl under 30… Sarah and Daniel sound Jewish, Tiffany sounds like a twit, Brett sounds like a jock, Skyler sounds spoiled.
To any Tiffanys and Skylers out there, I absolutely don’t mean you are twits or are spoiled, I’m just talking the stereotypical things that come to *my *mind when I hear those names. My own name sounds like that of a bimbo, if it makes you feel any better :o
*Brian – A boring blends-into-the-background kinda guy
*Christopher – Since he’s insisting on being called Christopher he’s an uppity a-hole
*Sarah – The friend-zoned girl that never seems to get hers
*Megan – Since she’s spelling her name without that godawful H in it she’s a cool girl
*Tiffany – President of her sorority and pretty liberal between her legs
*Daniel – Jehova’s Witness
*Cheryl – Everyone’s aunt since everyone has an Aunt Cheryl
*Nicholas – Foreign exchange student from Europe
*Candice – Token black friend who is also a girl
*Brett – A plumber if he’s older, dumb jock if he’s younger
*Skyler – Hipster girl name. She’s 5 right now from a WASPY stuck-up family
*Alex (of either sex) – If it’s a guy he has kind of a short man syndrome so he’s loud and wants to be noticed. If it’s a girl she’s a hot tomboy who wears basketball shorts to class and likes to play intramural sports (she’s a decent three point shooter and a good second baseman)
I imagine my British perspective will give a different view to some of these:
*Brian is middle-aged, white, working class, slightly overweight and works in a drab office in middle-management or is a self-employed builder driving a white van.
*Christopher, unlike his namesake Chris, is a public (transaltion, posh private) school educated 36 year old who wears pink shirts with his pinstriped suits and works in a City bank. ‘Chris’ on the other hand, his less well-off cousin, is a web developer.
*Sarah is a 40 year old white, middle class woman who’s taking time off from her job in a PR agency to raise her two small children.
*Megan is a 30 year old Welsh woman who dreams of leaving her civil service job in Swansea to work in Sarah’s PR agency.
*Tiffany’s father is a working class bloke ‘done good’, turning his market stall into a chain of pound shops (dollar stores). He furnishes his favourite daughter with a Range Rover and a large expense account, which she spends on hair extensions and holidays in Ibiza.
*Daniel ‘Call me Dan’ works in recruitment and fancies himself a magnificent salesman with the gift of the gab.
*Cheryl dreams of winning Britain’s Got Talent, except she doesn’t have any. So she’s a 55 year old singer on cruiseliners.
*Nicholas is an upper middle-class 25 year old and is training to be a solicitor
*Candice is our only black citizen in this list. She came to the UK from St Kitts in the Caribbean in 1960 and is retired. She lives in a respectable working class suburb of South London and knows all her neighbours.
*Brett is the 2 year old son of Tiffany
*Skyler is Tiffany’s sister
*Alex (of either sex) is a fashion conscious, 40 year old architect of measured opinions and steady character. Of either sex.
It’s interesting that three people so far think of Candice as black.
Some day the nursing homes are going to be full of Tiffanys, Bretts, Candys, Skylers, and Alexes 
- ‘let’s go visit dear old Aunt Ruth and Uncle Carl’ will be replaced by ‘let’s bring Aunt Candy some cookies and Cousin Brett wants a Sports Illustrated magazine’.
I thought so, too, since the only two Candices I know are white and in their early/mid-40’s.
I only make out two. I definitely don’t think of that as a Black name. None of those names were what I’d think of as a typically Black name.
You mentioned in your first reply that you thought white or colored.
If you really wanted to do a crazy experiment, have the same names, but on a few of them make them spelled differently than we think (Bryan, Candyce, etc.) and see how many people associate the different spellings with being black
These were all names that were pretty common when I was growing up, so I think of them mostly as they would be in their formative years. They’d all (except for the second to last-- I’ve never met anyone called that) be about 40-55 now. ETA: they’d all be white, except some would be Jewish, as noted. None would necessarily be WASPy.
I can’t say that I’d associate any of those names with being black. Not that black people all have ethnics sounding names, but spelling these differently would still make me think of white people, only now I’d say they’re all under the age of 25.
It sounds so to me, probably because it’s certainly not a British name, but sounds ‘english language’. Hence english speaking Caribbean. Could also be American, but for the purposes of the game I was imagining native or naturalised British people.
*Brian
Mid thirties. Under-appreciated IT worker. Quiet but with simmering anger and a burning hatred of his co-workers. White.
*Christopher
Red-braces-wearing Yuppie stereotype. About Fifty. Irish ancestry. Boss of the rest. And he knows it. Bastard. Proud of his really weak network account password.
*Sarah
Straight-laced, efficient office manager. Also underappreciated like Brian. Unlike Brian, she does not hide a firearm in her desk and spend most nights drinking alone and watching Death Wish Three.
*Megan
*Tiffany
*Daniel
Cheryl’s goldfish, who live in a tank on her desk. This tank is a major bone of contention in the office. Brian only allows it as he has a vague memory of Murdock having a pet racoon in his cell in the A-Team. Tiffany annoys the others by singing, ‘I Think We’re alone now’ all the time.
*Cheryl
Black transsexual former Special Ops commando. She watches the rest with the calm detachment of a shark. Also in charge of stationary.
*Nicholas
White film star famous for accepting roles in rubbish films. Lost and coked out of his mind.
*Candice
Nicholas’s ‘companion’. He pays her to leave. Candice is Hispanic and has a prominent Adam’s apple.
*Brett
Murder victim. Encased in concrete in the basement. White, obviously, as he is called, ‘Brett’. He leaves three children and an unassuming wife. Buried beside him are documents proving that the US government reneged on locating soldiers missing in action in Vietnam. His cat misses him but would never admit it. Cats are nasty.
*Skyler
What Christopher calls his tumour. A lazy reference to Braking Bad. Ironically, it will not be the thing that kills him.
*Alex (of either sex)
Sabre-toothed bat who lives in the crawl space between the steel frame and the polystyrene ceiling tiles. Alex has seen it all and cares for nothing. A laconic, bitter creature, Alex derives pleasure from watching others fail. He of cause thrives in a modern office environment.
Daniel, Christopher, Nicholas- If they don’t go by Dan, Chris, and Nick, they’re pretentious silver-spoon born pricks.
Brian- one of the most generic non-Biblical names out there. A serial killer or a beloved hero could easily be named Brian. Bryan, on the other hand, fits in with the don’t call me Chris it’s Christopher crowd’s attitude.
Candice- her mother is a Murphy Brown-watching feminist snob.
sigh 
Now I’m feeling my age. “Cheryl” to me suggests a cute, bubbly young blonde: Cheryl Ladd, Cheryl Tiegs, and the two Cheryls I knew in school. You had to go and remind me that they (and I) are all well over 50 now.
*Brian: Boring white guy
*Christopher: Boring white guy
*Sarah: Boring white girl
*Megan: Boring white girl
*Tiffany: Boring, upperclass white girl who likes to wear pearls
*Daniel: Nondescript bland middle-aged dad
*Cheryl: Bespectacled homely, slightly nerdly college girl
*Nicholas: Older guy, probably former military, but not crazy and likes old cars
*Candice: Overbearing, possibly overweight white woman who is aggressive in business and at least a middle manager
*Brett: A skater punk
*Skyler: Stripper
*Alex (of either sex): Male: Middle-aged son of hippies. Female: Young daughter of hippies
What kind of a person do you imagine when you hear these names:
*Brian : As generic a name as can be, nothing specific.
*Christopher: since it isn’t Chris he is a 20s Eurotrash Hipster, or American who desperately wants to be Eurotrash and wears leather pants to clubs
*Sarah: Slightly naive ex Catholic school mom of 4.
*Megan: 14 year old girl who is pretty cool and hates her idiot parents with good reason
*Tiffany: ex slut/sorority bitch now in her 40s, deluding herself that for-profit college classes she is taking will change her life
*Daniel : Peter-principled Middle manager who goes by Daniel rather than Dan because he thinks it makes him sound more important.
*Cheryl: Nice 50 year old lady who hangs around 35 year old chicks and acts like them
*Nicholas: 8 year old special snowflake who has never been out of the house without supervision.
*Candice: Barfly, kinda sad, average looking, but nice
*Brett: See Nicholas
*Skyler: insufferable 10 year old who demands everybody cater to what she wants, and her parents encouraging it as a sign of maturity.
*Alex (of either sex) Drinks a bit too much, talks about sex a lot, but mostly it’s just talk. Dependable as a friend though.
There are a few young Cheryls, but most of them seem to be Asian. In the UK it was a popular name as late as the early '90s though, so some of them are still fairly young.