What's in a name?

[JasonEvans]

So, I happened across this article in The Atlantic on the most popular baby names for 2017...



What fascinated me was this fact...

another trend in the government’s data sticks out: Today’s most popular names aren’t nearly as popular as the top names of yesteryear. Emma and Liam were at the top of 2017’s list, but they were assigned to relatively few babies: to roughly 1 percent of baby girls and to 0.95 percent of baby boys, respectively, based on social-security data. By comparison, the most popular names six decades ago—Mary and Michael—were much more common, given to roughly 3 percent of girls and 4.2 percent of boys.

I don't know if it is more diversity in society or what, but the fact that there are just a lot more names out there is kinda interesting to me.

[Reilly]

I liked this on "elite popularity": https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-el...-50-baby-names

[bjornolf]

There’s also all the “new” spellings of old names. I think that messes with these lists too.

My name used to be a top one, but you never see it anymore. Joseph has pretty much fallen off the map in the last few decades.

[Native]

My name used to be a top one, but you never see it anymore. Joseph has pretty much fallen off the map in the last few decades.

My name (Michael) fell off the charts after a 37-year run of pure dominance. Sigh...

ETA: And if you discount the one year in which David somehow bribed somebody at the Social Security Administration (1960) that run goes another 7 years back to 1954.

[Reddevil]

My name (Michael) fell off the charts after a 37-year run of pure dominance. Sigh...

ETA: And if you discount the one year in which David somehow bribed somebody at the Social Security Administration (1960) that run goes another 7 years back to 1954.

I hear ya. Back in the 70's when I was in school, it was very common for there to be three Marks in any given class. Now, I rarely see it.

Looking at the list above, Evelyn was my grandmother's name. It has come full circle so the classics will be back too after we are gone and people name their kids after us.

[cato]

I hear ya. Back in the 70's when I was in school, it was very common for there to be three Marks in any given class. Now, I rarely see it.

Looking at the list above, Evelyn was my grandmother's name. It has come full circle so the classics will be back too after we are gone and people name their kids after us.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I am counting on a grandkid being named after me, and being there to enjoy it!

Never mind that my kids rarely do what I am counting on, although the surprises are often better.

[Rich]

Looking at the list above, Evelyn was my grandmother's name. It has come full circle so the classics will be back too after we are gone and people name their kids after us.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I am counting on a grandkid being named after me, and being there to enjoy it!

Perhaps Reddevil is Jewish, as am I, where we do not name a child after a living being. I'm not sure if that's actually a religious thing or a tradition thing, but I haven't ever heard of Jews naming children after living relatives.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

Perhaps Reddevil is Jewish, as am I, where we do not name a child after a living being. I'm not sure if that's actually a religious thing or a tradition thing, but I haven't ever heard of Jews naming children after living relatives.

That is correct. Jews only name children after those who are deceased - that is why there are no Jewish Juniors (in case you were wondering whether MBIII was Jewish). We took the tradition to be the same first letter as the name of a deceased relative, which I believe is what many others do. Living in a heavily Jewish area, I have noticed that there are a lot of little kids now with names from their great-grandparents generation. We wanted to honor people who we cared a lot about but whose names we didn't particularly like so largely used the first letter approach.

I agree with the poster above that alternate spellings have diversified the pool of names, as has the adoption of names that traditionally belonged to one gender for the other gender.

[JNort]

Well society has also changed from people wanting to "fit in" or just be "normal" to being different or trying to stand out more. Being apart of the crowd is no longer the cool thing, the cool thing now is to standout as much as possible and flaunt your differences. Names are just another part of standing out. I bet most of the people making these kids names now are millennials.

[cato]

Well society has also changed from people wanting to "fit in" or just be "normal" to being different or trying to stand out more. Being apart of the crowd is no longer the cool thing, the cool thing now is to standout as much as possible and flaunt your differences. Names are just another part of standing out. I bet most of the people making these kids names now are millennials.

I will line up to blame millenials for those few things that the boomers didn’t break, but us GenXers put a lot of these names on the map.

Not me, of course. My kids are safely in the 40-50 range. Nice promise, but unlikely to be one and done.

[luburch]

Well society has also changed from people wanting to "fit in" or just be "normal" to being different or trying to stand out more. Being apart of the crowd is no longer the cool thing, the cool thing now is to standout as much as possible and flaunt your differences. Names are just another part of standing out. I bet most of the people making these kids names now are millennials.

Oh, now we are adding names to the long list of things millennials have ruined?

[JNort]

Oh, now we are adding names to the long list of things millennials have ruined?

Not what I meant but I assume this was in jest.

[gus]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I am counting on a grandkid being named after me, and being there to enjoy it!

Dips()&t Knight has a nice ring to it.