The Baby Name Wizard

Each year, a handful of familiar, long-popular names drop off the top-1000 name charts for the first time. Practically speaking, that means that they represent less than one baby out of 20,000 -- or to put it another way, that if you met a baby Elbert you'd be surprised. (Elbert made the charts for more than a century straight, by the way, including 45 years in the top 200. How quickly we forget.)

Many familiar names have been off the charts for years: Harvey, Susie, Herman, Louise. But the newly fallen names represent the turning point of current fashion, and deserve a moment of quiet memorium:

BOYS
Sammy
Perry
Earl

GIRLS
Carol
Colleen
Donna
Katharine (Note spelling. This is a rare example of a variant spelling carrying high social status; think patricians like actress Katharine Hepburn and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.)
Stacey
Yvette

The most telling names, to me, are the ones with tall and recent popularity peaks: Colleen, Donna and Stacey. Together, they suggest that the '60s naming era is heading toward its style nadir.

Here's a top-10 name list. What strikes you about it?

What leaps out at me is that the boys and girls look very different. The boys clearly represent a heavily Latino population. Almost half of the boys' names are exclusively Latino, and several of the others (Daniel, Anthony, David) are cross-cultural names especially favored by Latino families. The girls? Well, they look at lot like a cross section of the United States.

So, any guesses where those lists come from?

They're the top 10 baby names of 2007 for the state of Arizona. Arizona's population is about 30% Latino, twice the national average. Among young families, the percentage is probably higher. And as the name lists above show, American Latino families still lean toward traditional Spanish names for boys...but not for girls. The boys' names Angel, José, Luis, Jesús, Carlos, Diego, Juan, Miguel, Alejandro, Jorge, Victor, and Francisco are all more popular in Arizona than the top distinctly Spanish girl's name, Maria -- and even Maria is used cross-culturally.

(A quick aside: all of this makes it tremendously difficult to come up with style-matching "sibling" suggestions for the Baby Name Wizard book. There is no crop of timeless Spanish girls' names to match with José, Juan, Carlos and friends.)

So what are little Latinas named? The top-10 list does give us some clues. Ashley is #5 in Arizona compared to #13 nationally. Ashley is an English surname, popularized by a Welsh/English fashion designer and an Anglo soap opera star. Its sound and spelling are virtually impossible in Spanish. Yet Ashley is one of the top names for girls in the same communities where José and Luis lead for boys. In fact, for a number of years now the "Ashley rate" has been a pretty good indicator of any state's Latino population.

Such different approaches to boys' and girls' names used to be the widespread norm. If you look back at the decades before World War I, the top 10 boys' names in America were reliably the pure English standards. The girls' lists, though, were studded with the trendy names of the moment: Bessie, Mildred, Ethel. My grandmother was one of those Ethels, and her brothers, predictably, were Charles, George and Richard.

Over the past century, the naming gap between boys and girls has been slowly closing. Today trendy new boys' names like Jayden (in all its spellings) are more popular than any traditional name. But that's for the country as a big, diverse whole. You still see echoes of Ethel, Charles, George and Richard in families named Ashley, Carlos, Jorge and Ricardo.

There's a difference, of course. Charles, George and Richard were traditional English names, chosen by my immigrant great-grandparents who were not native English speakers. Today, not only do many immigrants choose names from their native cultures, but their American-born children and grandchildren often choose them too. You shouldn't assume that a Carlos is the son of immigrants today, any more than you would have assumed a Charles was the son of native English speakers a century ago. That's just one of countless cultural changes that separate my great-grandparents' generation from today's Arizona parents. Yet the boy/girl name gap is one tradition that lives on.

When I tallied up the hottest rising baby names of the year, it looked like a small-screen triumph. Tv star names led the charge, including two reality tv champions: Jordin (Sparks, of "American Idol") and Jaslene (Gonzalez, of "America's Next Top Model"). It's not the first time reality shows have launched hot baby names. Two years ago, the #1 fastest-rising name was straight from realityville. Let's roll back the clock...

It's 2005. MTV has just wrapped up the first season of "Laguna Beach," trailing a pack of attractive high school students through their sun-drenched seaside lives. Most of them -- being "real," rather than soap characters -- have familiar, ordinary names. But then there's one. Talan Torriero wasn't even a focal point of the show, but his previously obscure first name becomes a star. 446 young Talans are born in 2005, making Talan the #1 hottest name in America.

Fast forward. By season three of "Laguna Beach," Torriero is nowhere to be found. Out of sight, out of mind...at least where baby-naming parents are concerned. In a perfect U-turn, Talan was last year's #1 fastest-falling baby name.

Two other reality tv names made the top 10 falling list: Trista ("The Bachelorette") and Sheyla ("Cantando por un sueño"). This baby name evidence suggests that reality shows really do deliver the proverbial 15 minutes of fame. The reality spotlight shines brightly, but once it dims most of its "stars" are quickly forgotton.

The rest of the falling five:

#2: Akeelah
With the movie Akeelah and the Bee out of theaters, the name dropped out of nurseries. This name looks like a good bet to enter the rolls of one-hit wonders, names that appeared for a single year, never to be heard from again.

#3: Betsy
The real story here isn't the disappearance of Betsy in 2007. It's the appearance of Betsy in 2006 -- the only time in over a decade that this classic made the charts. Any ideas why, Baby Name Nation?

#4: Sherlyn
Names of Spanish-language tv stars are a mercurial niche, and none more so than Sherlyn. Track the up-and-down prominence of Mexican actress Sherlyn through six years of baby naming:

#5: Nathalia
Nathalia appeared suddenly in 2006 then disappeared just as suddenly the following year. The full story, though, is a little more complicated. The spike wasn't specific to that spelling -- names like Natalia and Natalya rose too. In fact, the entire Natalie family of names has experienced a volatile surge in the past half-dozen years. Contemplate the NATAL- names in the NameVoyager. (Yes, you can now link to specific search results in the NameVoyager! We're full of good tricks here at babynamewizard.com.) 2005 & 2006 were particular peak years, presumably encouraged by intense media coverage of the disappearance of teenager Natalee Holloway. As usual, publicity -- even of a tragic event -- makes a name rise. For a close parallel, see the name Laci in 2003.

Three years ago, I looked at American baby names and declared that we had entered "The Age of Aidans":

Looking at the most popular American baby names of 2004, one name leaps out at me....or rather, one sound. A whopping 33 different names rhyming with Aidan made the boys' top 1000 list. (And that doesn't even count the near misses, like Dayton-Payton-Layton-Clayton-Treyton.) That number is up from 28 Aidan-esque names in 2003, and just one 20 years ago.

It turns out that wave is still rising. The number of Aidan-rhymes on the boys' list reached 40 last year, accounting for more than 4% of all boys born. And even the formidable -aidan bloc is just a small part of a larger phenomenon: little Daytons, Casons, Kians, Landyns, etc. Almost a third of all boys born now receive a name ending in -n. Meanwhile the traditional, classic English boys' names are all plummeting because parents want their kids' names to be "distinctive." But how distinctive is Jaidyn in a class with Aydin, Bradyn, Kaeden, Raiden and Zayden? (Yes, those are all top-1000 names.)

What you have here is a story of two competing impulses. American parents love the idea of unusual names, but our tastes are still as much like our neighbors' as ever. The inevitable result is hundreds of tiny variations on a theme. We carve out tiny niches of uniqueness -- "that's Jaidyn, not Jadyn" -- and end up sounding more alike than ever.

Looking for a hot baby name? Look for a hot babe -- preferably one who sings. The top five fastest rising baby names of 2007 were all inspired by attractive female celebrities, the top four of them singers. According the the official Baby Name Wizard Hotness Formula, the hottest rising names in America are:

#1: Miley
Unranked last year, Miley made an extraordinary debut at #278. It's no secret why: 2007 was the Year of Miley, as young Miley Cyrus and her Hannah Montana alter ego swept the nation. The outpouring of namesakes won't surprise regular readers of this blog, who made Miley their top pick as a hot name in the Baby Name Pool. Take a bow, gentle readers! That's two years in a row you've hit the bullseye on the #1 hottest name.

#2: Kingston
Celebrity baby names attract a lot of attention, but not so many namesakes. (It's usually the celebs themselves who do that.) Kingston is an exception. Singer Gwen Stefani's son was born in 2006 and squeaked onto the name charts that year, but in his first full year in the world his name truly took hold. The ingredients of Kingston's appeal: a place name, ending in the uber-popular letter n, with the ultimate power nickname of King. If Stefani would just have a few more kids, she might give Angelina Jolie a run for her money as America's queen of baby name style.

#3: Mylee
...and Mylie ranked #24 on the hot list. You get the picture.

#4: Jordin
At age 17, Jordin Sparks became the youngest ever champion of American Idol. A big part of her appeal was being just plain nice. It must have been easy for expectant parents to say "yeah, I'd like a daughter like that!" But there's another secret to her name's appeal. Sparks established her name as a feminine spelling of the androgynous Jordan. In fact, while the young singer sent Jordin soaring, Jordan-with-an-a declined as a girl's name--and rose for boys. Ah, the power of reality tv. Which brings us to #5:

#5. Jaslene
Ladies and gentlemen, another champion! Jaslene Gonzalez was the popular winner of America's Next Top Model, and has been gracing billboards and magazine covers ever since. As the first Puerto Rican winner of the contest, she surely inspired many Puerto Rican namesakes. But watch out, Jaslenes. Unusual names sparked by reality tv may rise fast, but they fall fast too...as you'll see when I introduce the top falling names of the year.

The Social Security Administration has announced the most popular American baby names of 2007. TKTK:

For comparison, the 2006 leaders:

2006

In just a few days, news outlets across the country will report on the ultimate expression of our nation's tastes: the most popular names for babies. The number one names for boys and girls will begin a year's reign as a symbol of what we have in common, the sound of the times. But are they really the signifiers they're made out to be?

In past generations, being a number one name meant a great deal. Back in 1880, the first year for which Social Security Administration statistics are available, the #1 name John accounted for 8% of all boys born. For perspective, that was 13 times as many boys as the #20 name, Joe. But the #1 name of 2006, Jacob, accounted for a mere 1% of boys -- just 1.6 times that year's #20 name, John (how the mighty have fallen). In other words, being #1 used to mean you were king of the hill, but now you're just one of the pack.

In the graph below the top blue line shows the percentage of newborn American boys bearing a #1 name, taken at 5 year intervals through 2005. The orange line shows the frequency of use of the #20 name, and the gray reference line indicates the level of the most recent #1.

Yes, the 20th most popular name of 1965 was bigger than today's big cheese.

So should we stop paying attention to the announcement of the top names? Of course not. (What self-respecting Name Wizard is going to tell you to stop paying attention to names?) I think we should pay more attention -- looking beyond whatever name happens to land in the top slot. The whole sweep of names, and the way they're changing, is every bit as compelling as the war of attrition to be #1. I'm rolling up my sleeves...join me for "name week."

Welcome, everybody! I hope you like the new digs--it feels good to have my own place again. Right now I'm still hanging wallpaper and checking the plumbing, but fancy new additions are in the works. One instant upgrade: look in the lefthand menu and you'll find, at long last, an option to search the blog archive. Three years into this blog, it's interesting to discover what themes and names come up again and again. The name Ashton has been mentioned in six posts, Nevaeh in nine, Madison a whopping 20. But the single most-mentioned name is one I scarcely remember talking about at all. That's how it goes with the classic, understated king of English names: John.