<p>I have a problem with this study. Who decides what names are “popular” – and when? When I was born and when I was naming my own kids around 1990, to name a kid “Owen” would have been considered an act of cruelty. I now know several little boys in our small community with that name, and my own teen-age daughter thinks Owen is a very cute name. So is it is popular name or an unpopular one? Ditto for Grace, Harry, Oliver, Ava, Ellie …</p>
<p>Within my generation, I always felt sorry for the multitude of “Debbie’s”, since there were so many of them and the name sounded so little girlish; I had trouble imagining a lawyer or doctor or U.S. President named Debbie. Grandma Debbie sounded kind of ridiculous, too. But people have no control over what their parents named them, and we all do get used to – and even come to like – names we previously thought were horrid.</p>
<p>For the disease – Parkinson? For the weapon – Magnum?</p>
<p>If my D had been a S, I wanted to name him Henry and I was surprised at how many people thought he would be doomed. </p>
<p>I was a huge Dylan Thomas fan in college and his wife was named Caitlin. I didn’t know anyone named Caitlin in the early 70s and I thought that would be the unusual name I would use years later. Who could have guessed that by the time I was ready to have kids, every other girl in the country would be named some version of Caitlin. I felt robbed.</p>
<p>One of my friends worked as a social worker after graduating college. She told me about a woman that she worked with tha named each of her children after the emotion she was feeling at the time she conceived.
There was a Desire ( not Desiree ) Passion, Ecstasy…can’t remember the others…I asked her if the names changes as the relationship wore thin…Ennui , Indifference.
Also a friend who works in Labor and Delivery share some favorites
One recent name was Lemon Jello…:)</p>
<p>Well, partly this is because we are using a wider variety of names. The most popular names don’t dominate the list as much as they used to.</p>
<p>If you look at those graphs, you’ll see that the number one boy’s name in 2007, Jacob, was given to 5600 of every million boy babies, and the number one girl’s name in the same year, Emily, was given to 4500 of every million.</p>
<p>In contrast, in the first decade of the 20th century, 32,000 of every million babies were given the number one boy’s name, John, and 26,000 of every million were given the number one girl’s name, Mary. </p>
<p>Or you can look at the trend for Michael. It was the number 2 boy’s name in the 1950s, and it’s the number 2 boy’s name now. But in the 1950s, 22,000 of every million boys were given this name; today it’s 5000 of every million.</p>
<p>And what about the recent popularity of giving kids “place” names. I read in the paper today about one celebrity whose kids are named Sierra and Sienna. There are many more, and usually it is hard to tell the gender from just the name. I guess that is also true of lots of the unique names these days.</p>
<p>H & I named our kids after older relatives, but we wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t love the names. They are both in the current top 15 most popular names, and neither one would look out of place in the business world.</p>
<p>It does not surprise me at all that people would make assumptions in advance about a person and their family based on a name. People make assumptions about other people based on all sorts of things.</p>
<p>I had a close call with regards to names. Had my cousin not been before me, my first name would have been Nanny - not Nan, but Nanny. That was my great grandmother’s name. I feel my life might have been different had I been named Nanny.</p>
<p>I had a friend in college whose name was her grandmother or great-grandmother’s name: Nel</p>
<p>Not Nell. Nel. We all thought it was a great name.</p>
<p>Names like Siobhan can be a bit of a challenge but I like ethnic names so much more than “made up” names. As far as baby names go, I sure think that less creativity is better. I just looked up my son’s name, which we all think is somewhat unusual. His birth year, his name was more common than the names Paul, Alan, Peter or Jeffrey, names I consider to be very typical, very usual names. </p>
<p>It’s fun to look at the names that are in the 400-500 range of the baby name lists and see names that appear so seldom now: Gerald and Frederick, Rodney and Roger. Where did all they go? Will they come back?</p>
<p>While camping as a child (the 70’s) with my siblings we met a hippie mom. She asked our names, which are all unusual…but in a good way. After complimenting us on our very beautiful names she introduced her toddler, in a spacey, hippie way…"This is Tree…like the tree that grows tall and strong (as she pointed to the tall Redwood behind her), then she introduced her dog…“This is Poo”…to which we all waited for her to say “like the poo on the ground”. At least the child wasn’t Poo, but sheez…let’s think about the long-term repercussions of weirdo names like ‘Tree’</p>
<p>I saw the move Parenthood the other day - a great movie BTW - and Joaquin Phoenix was in it, except he was calling himself Leaf Phoenix back then because he was tired of everyone mispronouncing his name. I guess it also fit in well with brother River’s name too.</p>
<p>Both of our girls have Chinese names. Number of strokes in their Chinese characters are compatible to number of strokes in my Chinese characters. Then we spelled the first part of their names similar to an Irish name(hubby is Irish) Is that complicated enough? What does say about our education or their futures?</p>
<p>Both of my girls were C-section babies, and they were born at the most optimal time and date calculated by my father.</p>
<p>I volunteer at an inner-city school and almost ALL the first names are made up. No two are alike. Well, except for a set of twins, who have the same first and last names, but different middle names. After 5 years, I’m finally catching on as to what names sound female and what names sound male.</p>
<p>My older son is named after the town in England that his grandmother came from. And then … to make it work, he is also named after an ancestor of mine, which also used part of the place name. Together, that’s the first and middle names – or a double first name as you prefer. Ethnically, he’s 3/4 English (although I consider myself <em>new</em> England, not English) and 1/4 eastern European. We let the eastern Europe part be represented by the last name!</p>