The Baby Name Wizard

Every generation marvels at the pace of change around it. It's not just that the world is different, it's that it's changing faster. Our parents said it, and now so do we. Is it just a trick of perspective as we get older? Or is our culture actually accelerating?

When it comes to names, I'd say it's a reality: the pace of change is changing. I've taken a rough measure of change by tracking the "novelty rate": the pace of previously uncommon names becoming popular. For each decade, I logged the number of names in the top 1000 for boys and girls which had not made the list in the prior two decades. This novelty rate more than doubled from the 1920s to the 1990s (with a spike in the 1970s, which I'll discuss in a moment):

As you might expect, the styles of novelty changed along with the rate. Here's a closeup of the biggest new names of each decade -- the ones that jumped from obscurity to the top 250. (The higher the name on the chart, the more popular it was.)

Through the '40s, the most common kind of novelty was the use of pet forms like Bobby, Ronnie and Cathy as given names. Starting in the '50s, we start to see more variant spellings (Katelyn, Kaitlin, Kaitlyn) and surname and gender crossovers (Kelly, Lindsay, Taylor). And in the '70s, we see the emergence of distinctly African-American names. This, in fact, is the core of the overall novelty spike in the '70s. In the wake of the Black Power movement, black and white names diverged significantly for the first time and over 100 of the novel names of the '70s were chosen largely by African-American parents.

The names of our decade are still being chosen, but a peek at the 2003 list suggests there's plenty more change ahead. Creative spellings in particular are exploding -- try 10 new variants of Jaden for boys and girls. And ethnic diversity is increasing, with names like Pranav and Hamza making the list for several years running. So don't worry, it's not just you slowing down. The culture really is speeding up.

A reader pointed me to this commentary from NPR's "All Things Considered" on "names with backbone." The commentator begins by noting an odd phenomenon. Reading the obituaries he sees the same names "over and over again," names like Opal, Ethel and Hazel. He describes those names as an entire generation like "The Boy Named Sue" -- parents choosing unstylish names in order to toughen up their kids. In parallel, he suggests that baby boomers who gave their kids stylish names were coddling them. Here's an excerpt:

"There was a time when moms and dads didn't worry about whether their children were popular. They were more concerned about whether their kids had enough to eat. Parents wanted sturdy, rugged children so they gave them sturdy, rugged names. But as times got better, parenting had less to do with feeding children and more to do with nurturing their self esteem."

Names like Opal and Hazel will come back, he claims, "when we decide we've spent too much time sheltering our children, and we want them to grow up resilient and ready to fend for themselves, just like the boy name Sue."

At this point you might stop to wonder: how could an entire generation have be given the same unpopular names, "over and over again"?

Fashion is a subtle, pervasive force that shapes our impressions of the world. The commentator, who like most of us lives in the present, hears names like Opal as sturdy and unfashionable. He hears this so surely and vividly that he applies it to the motivations of parents 100 years ago. They chose names that sound sturdy and rugged, thus they wanted their children to lead sturdy, rugged lives. Right?

Travel back in time with me for an exercise of the imagination: let's try to hear Opal as the parents of a century ago heard it.

In the 1880s America was a largely agricultural country, and names like Mary and Margaret, John and George still dominated America's nurseries. But a new wind was blowing. Cities were growing, waves of immigration were transforming the country, and a new generation of names grew with it. From 1890 to 1920, as modern America was born, the new names parents chose were paved with gold.

For boys, parents chose glittering dreams of aristocracy. Alongside John and George, we saw boys named with the surnames of the upper crust -- Milton, Sidney, Whitney. Germanic names were also popular for both sexes, their dense continental sound as rich as velvet. And for girls we had names like jewels, delicate symbols of nature's beauty. The botanicals: Lily, Rose, Hazel, Myrtle. The gems: Amber, Ruby, Jewel, Opal. They were an gossamer vision of femininity, ready to be put on a pedestal. Talk about "nurturing their self esteem." Just hear the grandparents of the time grumbling: "Opal? What kind of fancy-pants name is that?"

Back to the present now. Can you imagine saying that parents chose names like Amber, Lily and Jewel because they wanted their daughters to be "sturdy"? Yet the only thing that separates those names from Opal, Hazel and Myrtle is our 21st-century fashion sense. In reality, all those names were wildly trendy creations that zoomed into style and then zoomed back out again -- the Tiffanys of the 1900s.

It's a peculiar conceit, imagining that the past was immune to fashion. It fits with much of America's mythology, an image of a rough-hewn, no-nonsense land built with our own hands. But there's another American mythology that fits better when talking about name trends: the land of opportunity. Names like Opal weren't sturdy and rugged, they were they stuff dreams are made of. And every generation bestows its dreams on its children in the form of names.

I was recently asked about media influences on names, and I offered some examples of tv-launched hits like Samantha and Xander. Then someone suggested, "I bet I know a name that was totally sunk by a movie character. How about Damien from The Omen?"

Ah, The Omen. What could be a less attractive association for parents than learning that your child is the devil's own son? Yet Damien, a name that was virtually unknown before the film came out in 1976, has been a rising hit ever since. And it's not alone.

As a rule of thumb, evil characters don't inspire hit names. Star Wars begat thousands of little Lukes but no little Vaders. If the evil comes wrapped in a cute little package, though, it's a whole different story. Three of the biggest horror hits of the '60s and 70s, The Exorcist, The Omen and Rosemary's Baby, served up the spectacle of demonic children. The boys of The Omen and Rosemary, Damien and Adrian, were the literal spawn of Satan, while Regan, the girl of The Exorcist, was possessed during an ill-advised Ouija board session. Aside from demonic tendencies, these three kids had something else in common: their names soared in popularity after the movies came out. Together, the three names quadrupled in usage from the '60s to the '70s, and have tripled again since then.

No, America's parents aren't trying to raise a generation of demons. More likely, the same characteristics that made those names sound sinister a generation ago make them sound stylish today. Elegant and a bit mysterious, they're a clear step apart from the mundane world of Dick and Jane, and that's just how parents want it. The movie associations do matter though. They make the names at once more mysterious and more familar. The evidence is clear in Damien, a French spelling of Damian which was seldom seen before The Omen. Today, Damien and Damian are both top-200 American names.

So what kind of name would make a cinematic baby seem sinister today? To have the same chilling effect in a new film, I think you'd have to reverse course and choose a gentle, unassuming name. Adrian no longer sounds like an eerie choice for Rosemary's baby...but Rosemary would be just about right.

Today, an American girl is more likely to be named Gianna than Johanna. The very foreignness of a name can be part of its appeal: Nadia is exotic, Nancy too "ordinary."

The same phenomemon is well known to makers of consumer products. American companies adopt foreign-sounding names to build their brand images. The specific faux-nationality depends on the image they want to convey. (Check out the French accent of any U.S. cosmetics or hair-care aisle.) And that image can be more important than any authentic foreign connection.

Take Häagen-Dazs. The ice-cream maker, founded in Brooklyn, NY, was a pioneer in pure distilled foreignness, unencumbered by meaning. Vaguely Scandinavian in form, Häagen-Dazs is actually just artful gibberish. Few parents would go that far, coining a whole new name with fake foreign roots. But parents do take liberties with spellings and variants of common names to link them to other cultures. A case in point: Megan.

Several popular variants of Megan incorporate traditional Irish-style spellings. Meaghan, for instance, echoes Irish Gaelic classics like Eoghan and Fearghal. It's a particular favorite of families of Irish descent in the U.S., Australia and Canada. Yet it's not an Irish name.

Megan is Welsh, a traditional pet form of Margaret. Meaghan (and Meghann, etc.) appear to be modern creations, rare in Ireland and the U.K. In fact, to an Irish speaker, the extra "h" in the middle transforms the name entirely. G is prounced like the familiar hard g in Megan; gh softens to a gutteral cousin of y or w. So Meaghan would be...umm...something along the lines of "Ma-hwyn." (The rules of Gaelic pronunciation frankly overwhelm me, so if I've mangled that, be gentle!)

Yet across the ocean from Ireland, parents are choosing the name Meaghan to reflect their Irish heritage. As a quick demonstration, I ran Google searches for Meaghan paired with five of America's most common distinctively Irish surnames (Sullivan, Murphy, Kelly, Kennedy and Ryan) and totaled the results. Then I ran the same search using the English surnames closest in frequency to those names. The result: Irish surnames yield 11 times as many Meaghans. Clearly, this name is chosen to reflect parents' Irish roots -- even though the name itself has none.

Is this irrational, inventing a new name in the name of tradition? Not necessarily. Just as Häagen-Dazs achieves its goal by "signalling" Scandinavian, Meaghan successfully "signals" Irish. Parents are drawn to the name for its Celtic roots, but want to move it into their specific ethnic territory. The result may not be Irish, but it is Irish-American -- clearly and authentically.

In a recent post, I described an "international style" of smooth, classic names popular from Stockholm to Sydney. Yet this is just one style stream -- each country has its own currents that set it apart. From Manon in France to Femke in the Netherlands, local favorites still hold strong.

Even nations that share a common language have their own homegrown name styles. I've collected some of the uniquely trendy names of four English-speaking countries to show a little local color.

Australia
Scottish traditions run deep in Australia: you're more likely to meet an Angus in Sydney than Glasgow. For girls, T is a hot letter.

BOYS
Angus
Hamish
Lachlan

GIRLS
Tahlia
Taylah
Tegan

England
Cute names that harken back to P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie and Tuppy are soaring.

BOYS
Alfie
Harvey
Louie

GIRLS
Evie
Maisie
Poppy

Ireland
80 years ago, English names dominated the landscape. Today, the old Gaelic names are roaring back.

BOYS
Darragh
Eoin
Oisin

GIRLS
Aoife
Niamh
Caoimhe

United States
U.S. parents have been makeover artists, converting place names, surnames and common words into first names at a furious pace.

BOYS
Chase
Dakota
Landon

GIRLS
Autumn
Savannah
Sierra

Site visitors often suggest that I combine names in the NameVoyager. The rationale is straightforward: a parent who types in "Katelynn" should also be aware of the popularity of Katelyn, Katelin, Kaitlyn, Caitlin, et al. Combining variants of a name would give them a better overview.

All it takes is determining where one "species" of name ends and another begins. But that, as biologists can tell you, is no small matter.

A few weeks ago there was a news story that the fabled Preble's Meadow jumping mouse, which can jump a foot and a half into the air, was losing its "endangered species" status. Why? It turns out it wasn't a species. After a careful review, scientists concluded they couldn't really tell it apart from other garden-variety jumping mice. The decision, though, was not unanimous -- and they have DNA to work with.

I sympathize. Back when I was building my research tools for The Baby Name Wizard, I tried to assign a core name species to each name variant in my database. After one frustrating week, I abandoned the idea. Try it yourself: how many different names are in this list?

Emily Emilie Emilee Emely Emmalee Amelie Emilia Amelia Aemilia Amalia

Hmm...let's say we just combine variants that sound identical. So that's 4 core names: Emily, Amelie, Amelia, Amalia. Or maybe 5, with Emilia. 6 at the outside (Emma-Lee?)

But if we're going by sound, are Devin and Devon the same? Some Devons are DEV-in, yet some are de-VON. And how about Caitlin and Katelynn? One is an old Irish Gaelic form of Katherine, the other a modern American compound name...how can they be called the same species? Plus they may be pronounced the same in the U.S., but in Ireland they sound quite different.

Let's try nicknames instead. Lump all the Bills in with the Williams, who are probably called Bill anyway. Unless they're called Billy or Will. So add those in too...but wait a second. Try typing Will into the NameVoyager, then hitting return. Now try Billy. The curves are completely different. Billy is a lot more like Jimmy and Tommy than it is like Will. If you lump them together, you miss the whole trend.

And that, in the end, is the real problem with dividing up species of names. The variations matter. Just ask any parent who named her daughter Michaela whether Makayla is the same name. Or try calling one of today's little Williams "Billy." It's often the variation rather than the root which ties a name to its time and place. From the nickname explosion of the mid-century to today's kreative spellings, the trends are in the details. So for the NameVoyager, I'm taking them one by one.

I write from an American perspective, but name trends don't stop at the border. More than ever before, a cohesive international style is emerging, with a set of names you're equally likely to encounter in Berlin, Paris and New York.

The international style favors smooth classics with a faintly antique flavor and no clear ethnicity -- think Anna for girls, Alexander for boys. The style is especially popular in Central and Northern Europe and in affluent English-speaking areas. Jet-setting American parents will be glad to find that the names travel well. They may also be interested to hear that Europe tends to be a few years ahead in the name curve. Greek names like Chloe and Elias, for instance, spread through Europe before catching the ears of American parents.

So for a new angle on up-and-coming names, I've made a roundup of half a dozen international-styled countries: Australia, England, France, Germany, Ireland and Sweden. My targets were names that rank in top 20 in at least two different countries, but haven't cracked the American top 100 in the past decade.

GIRLS
Amelia
Charlotte
Clara

BOYS
Hugo
Louis
Oliver
Philip
Simon

and some prospects that didn't quite make the cut:
Eloise, Georgia, Holly, Louisa, Mathilda
Elliot, Felix, Jasper, Marcus, Martin

(The fine print: I eliminated names that were close variants of American favorites, and combined spellings like Louis/Lewis.)

Many of these names are already climbing, especially in stylish urban neighborhoods...but the world clearly stands ready to welcome a few more Simons and Claras.

My NameVoyager is designed to give you a sense of names as history. In certain cases you can see the stamp of a single individual -- type in Shirley to see the huge impact of Shirley Temple in the '30s. At the opposite extreme, you expect fo find names sunk by a negative personal association. So one of the most examined names in the Voyager is Adolph.

A few representative user posts:

"It's also funny to note the fortunes of names with political implications. Adolph appears to have been a somewhat popular name during the early part of the century, then plummets off the list in the 40's."

"Check out Adolph. It had a fairly precipitous drop in about 1940.. wonder why."

The odd part is, Adolph does not show a precipitous drop in the 1940s. Our intuition tells us it should, but in fact the name was already disappearing before then. The use of Adolph in America dropped 80% from 1900 to 1930, then slowly trickled off into oblivion by the late '60s. This is not to say that war with Germany played no part in the name's demise...but rather that we're looking at the wrong war.

In the 1890s and 1900s, German names were wildly popular with American parents. (Irish names play the same role today, so think of Gertrude as the Caitlin of her day.) With the dawn of the First World War, that generation of German hit names melted away. Try loading up the NameVoyager and typing Adolph. Then try Gertrude and Otto, and see how remarkably similar the patterns look. By and large, the more distinctly German the name, the faster it plummeted. The spelling Adolf disappeared completely during WWI along with names like Ernst and Ludwig.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Adolph took so long to vanish from our shores. It's hard to imagine an American family circa 1950 naming a son Adolph, yet a good number did. The name was still close enough to its popularity peak that many parents still had Grandpa Adolphs, or other positive personal associations with the name. Half a century later, Adolph is virtually taboo and will doubtless remain that way...even as Otto prepares for a comeback.

Headlines from around the world, January 13, 2005:

"Webhead couple names baby Yahoo"
-Reuters, U.S.

"Yahoo! It's a boy"
-The Sun, U.K.

"Internet couple name baby Yahoo"
-Daily Times, Pakistan

Oops. Smaller headlines, January 24, 2005:

"Boohoo! Yahoo baby story was a fake"
-Reuters, U.S.

"Reporter fired for Yahoo baby hoax"
- MSNBC, U.S.

In case you missed it, the name heard 'round the world was supposedly selected by a Romanian couple who met online. It was actually a middle name: Lucian Yahoo Dragoman. (For my money, Lucian Dragoman is already a heck of a name on its own.) It was reported by the Bucharest paper Libertatea, and somehow became the biggest news story out of Romania in many moons.

Alas, it has been revealed that the reporter invented the whole story, and the newspaper, faced with an international embarassment, sacked him. My favorite part of the saga is this quote from the newspaper's editor:

"If it were real, it would have been a good story indeed."

Indeed! Perhaps American newspapers should lay off the ritual hand-wringing and self-flagellation when their reporters are caught fibbing, and just take the upbeat Romanian attitude: "Wouldn't it be way cool if it were true?"

But I digress.

When the story first broke, it spread like wildfire. Reports of little Yahoo spent days in the "most popular" and "most e-mailed" lists of news web sites. The boring, deflating retraction stories that followed never got any traction. It's fair to assume that thousands of people heard the initial story and never learned it was a fake. And there we have it: a brand new urban legend name, destined for a long life of telling and retelling.

But will it remain just a legend? I have to believe that somewhere out there is a real couple who really did meet on Yahoo Personals, and upon reading the news story--or even the retraction--said "Why not?" After all, it sounds great with Lucian.

Have you seen the headlines? Or maybe you heard the news on tv, or the radio: The Top 100 Baby Names of 2004!

One small problem: that information just isn't available. The Social Security Administration doesn't release its official figures until Spring '05. So what are hundreds of media outlets reporting on?

A Babycenter.com press release.

Give credit to the clever folks at Babycenter.com, a parenting web site owned by Johnson & Johnson. They looked at their many users, ready to answer polls and post birth announcements, and created an annual "BabyCenter Baby Names List." Then they sent out a press release announcing their top names.

What's wrong with this? Not a thing, and The Baby Name Wizard would doubtless do the same if she could get away with it. The problem is the press, large and small, happily reported these lists as "the most popular baby names in America in 2004." Despite the clear-cut, in-your-face evidence that Babycenter's lists are not a snapshot of America's babies. Listen up, reporters:

There are no Spanish names on the list.

In 2003, America's real top 100 boys' names included:
Alejandro, Antonio, Carlos, Diego, Jesus, José, Juan, Luis, and Miguel.
Not a one made Babycenter's list, in 2003 or 2004.

Whatever Babycenter is reporting on, it isn't America's babies. Their press release gives no clue where the names came from or how they were gathered. At best, they're names chosen by a self-selected sample of the kind of people who like Babycenter. (And I count myself among those, by the way.) We know it's a radically skewed sample, excluding Latino parents among others. At worst, we don't know that the babies they're reporting on even exist, since anyone can post to a public web site...any number of times.

It's a small problem in the grand scheme of things. But here at Baby Name Wizard Central, where name data is our bread and butter, we shed a silent tear for the parents basing their name choices on what they think is real data, because the news told them so.