Hard times are hitting economies around the world, and hard choices have to be made. Even in my baby-name bubble I recognize that tracking the rise and fall of Nevaeh doesn't make any top-10 list of national priorities. Still, it was a shock to learn to that UK Office of National Statistics has decided to stop reporting on popular baby names as a cost-cutting measure.
The announcement of the year's most popular baby names has quickly become a tradition around the globe. It's a happy tradition: a rare moment when our government tell us something just because it's fun and interesting. It's also a unique barometer of our changing national mores. As an American, I learn something new about my country with every new name list. Similarly, looking at the England & Wales stats each year taught me a lot about how our countries are the same, and how we differ. I'll sorely miss watching names like Alfie and Poppy climb toward the top 10.
There's no substitute for true national statistics. They capture the full range of the nation's tastes, while private listmakers -- web sites or newspapers that poll their readerships -- systematically ignore large swaths of the population. As the UK experience demonstrates, we shouldn't take the government data for granted.
The United States first started tracking popular baby names in 1996. As I understand the story, a Social Security Administration actuary by the name of Michael Shackleford compiled the first name popularity lists, simply because he could. After a couple of years Shackleford left the SSA to dedicate his mathematical skills to the gambling industry (see wizardofodds.com). By that time, though, the name stats were so popular that the other actuaries had to continue Mike's pet project. Eventually the SSA realized they could use this popular feature as a showpiece to lure in parents and educate them about other family programs. Thus the current name stats website was born.
The SSA's approach to name data keeps evolving. They've gradually tweaked and expanded the figures they make available, which are now the the world's best. Last year they tried to jazz things up, making the data release a Parade Magazine "exclusive" and adding some freaky talking babies to their website. This year, who knows?
On behalf of the name-loving public, let me beg the SSA to keep doing what it does so well. (No, dearest actuaries, that does not mean more talking babies. Please, no.) Baby name statistics deliver a lot of cultural bang for the buck. We love them, and we love you for providing them. See you in May, SSA! I hope.
In Memoriam: UK Baby Name Statistics
01/07/2009, 10:39AM
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Comments
Second that! SSA, don't let us down! Name stats don't bring in money but they help with morale and that's important too:)
This is horrifying! My husband wakes me almost every morning with the phrase, "Do you want to hear today's bad macro-economic news?" I had no idea it was coming to this, however! Maybe we could take up a collection. :),
I am in wholehearted agreement. Tracking names is a way to look at trends in our country that are social and positive. It helps us see how much we share and how we affect each other. I hope SSA continues this project. Personally, I'm looking forward to May!
I agree with everyone else. I hope the SSA continues to compile the lists. They are such a great window into what the US was and is. Fascinating stuff!
It's too bad the UK felt this was a reasonable cost-cutting measure. There must have been something else that could have gone instead!
I wonder how much money it really saves the UK. I presume they still have to gather the data. It's just a matter of reporting it. :(
On a different topic, ever since the scrolling problem, I also cannot access this web site on my Blackberry. It says "Request Entity Too Large." Very sad for me!
How tragic! Baby names are one of those uncontroversial things that just about everyone likes (or at least be neutral about it). I don't know of anyone who's anti-baby names. Just people who think that the money could be used better elsewhere, that the popularity lists are a luxury
A little bit of luxury is necessary, I think. Like being too poor to pay all of the bills but but being willing to pay $10 for a library card. Or, more likely, like "comfort" snacks like hard candy and bubble gum in the 72-hour kit. It provides no nutritional value, but it does a world of good in reliving your stress.
I have to wonder how getting rid of the national rankings would affect actual naming practices. I know that there are a lot of people who deliberately avoid everything in the top 100s, no matter how much they like a name. I'd think that without the popularity rankings, people would be more likely touse well-liked names and less inclined to use creative spellings. Basically, the name pool would no only shrink, but each region would become more distinctive.
It's pathetic. I'm wondering to whom I can complain.
In the previous thread Keren wrote:
"Another friend of mine was also given Gitel as a shem kodesh - she is called Katie - and she hebraicized it to Tova. Which seemed a shame to me."
I want to point out that naming is (or at least can be) a political act. We touched on this a while ago when the topic of names in Northern Ireland was raised. Another obvious example is the switch to names with ties to Africa by many African-Americans in the wake of the civil rights movement of the sixties.
Keren's example of a switch from Gitel to Tova illustrates IMO the concerted rejection of Yiddish and shtetl culture by Ashkenazic Jews in the wake of the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel. This was certainly the case in Israel itself where many (most?) Ashkenazic Israelis changed both their given and surnames to Hebrew equivalents and where the traditional Hebrew names were abandoned as literally too ghetto, to be replaced by pre-Abrahamic biblical names like Nimrod and Yuval, previously deemed unacceptable. Today even those names have been replaced by simple word names, generally referring to some aspect of nature, which are not biblical or otherwise traditional in any way.
This rejection of Yiddish and the culture which produced it spread to the United States. The pronunciation of Hebrew changed from the traditional pronunciation used by Yiddish-speaking Jews to the Israeli pronunciation, highly influenced by the pronunciations used by the Sephardim (Jews from the Muslim world). Hebrew schools switched from learning to read biblical Hebrew to modern Israeli conversational Hebrew (at least mine did), and Yiddish names were Hebraicized. My sister's name is Yiddish--Sheine Liebe (pretty love), and the Hebrew school insisted on calling her Yaffa (Hebrew for pretty or beautiful). I personally found this profoundly disrespectful to the memory of our great-grandmother for whom she was named. Great-grandma's name was NOT Yaffa. And it is the business of parents--not schools--to name children.
There are, it seems to me, two reasons for the repudiation of Yiddish names and shtetl culture in both Israel and the US (and perhaps in Europe as well, although I don't have any data for Europe). One is support for the State of Israel. American Jewry is almost united in wholehearted support for Israel. It takes a lot of courage for an American Jew to say anything critical of Israel and its policies (one exception--Reform rabbis routinely criticize the stranglehold of the ultra Orthodox rabbinate on issues like marriage and conversion). Few do, no matter what they may or may not think privately. It is much easier for Israelis to criticize the policies of their home country than it is for American Jews.
The other is abject shame and humiliation over the death of six million, passive victims, in the gas chambers, rather than by fighting. One way that shame has been countered is by replacing Yiddish with Hebrew (and in many cases this is accompanied by great pride in Israel's military achievement--Jews among the world's most successful belligerents, who knew?). IMO the shame and opprobrium belong entirely to one madman, his coterie of henchmen, and those Europeans who enabled his depredations. Who could expect poor unarmed villagers to stand against the Nazi war machine when the armies of France, the Netherlands, and Poland couldn't, and the mighty Russian army needed the help of their old ally Father Winter? It should also be said that where possible Jews did fight--with some limited success--against the Nazis. There was the famous battle of the Warsaw ghetto, for example. In my own family two of my father's first cousins were rounded up with the rest of their shtetl and sent to Auschwitz. One brother died at Auschwitz. The other managed to escape, joined the partisans fighting in the forest, survived the war and emigrated to Argentina where a third brother lived. The current film Defiance apparently tells a similar story.
My own political statement: I am proud, not ashamed, of the Yiddish-speaking shtetl culture of my forebears, I continue to pronounce Hebrew as they did and as they taught me, and I call my sister Sheine Liebe :-). (Actually she prefers Suzanne, a change which her non-Jewish husband instigated).
Now for the national statistics people in the UK....How much can it possibly cost to run the data through the computer, come up with a list, and stick it on a website for us sociologically inclined NEs to analyze? Could this possibly be a political decision? Do the current name choices reveal things about changing UK demographics and social conditions they would rather not call attention to? Just asking....
Laura, I still can hardly believe the UK is not going to issue a report on the top baby names in England and Wales in 2008 and just went searching for an official ONS statement. Apparently NEs in the UK were startled by this news too.
http://boards.babycentre.co.uk/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webta...
On 15 Dec. a new discussion was started on Baby Centre UK:
>Anyone else bursting with excitement... as the Office of National Statistics should be releasing the top baby names for 2008 very soon. Or am I the only one who can't wait?!"
>I'm hoping they are out as early as Friday, and fingers crossed they send the top 2000 immediately too!
>[22 Dec.] 'twill almost certainly be tomorrow now!
>I hope for their sake it is tomorrow or they shall be receiving a very angry e-mail from me!
>I know lol, tomorrow will be the last opportunity for them to publish before the Christmas holidays. I've just sent them a reminder email for the top 2000 so that we don't have to wait for those.
>[23rd] My goodness, they have still not been updated. How odd!
and then the bad news and first responses to it:
>[1 Jan.]
The Office for National Statistics is not publishing its annual survey of the country's most popular names for babies because of cost-cutting, so Mandrake is especially indebted this year to the tireless Susan Cole, who has diligently compiled these authoritative lists for 39 years.
On the Telegraph website yesterday evening.
>We're thinking (see sn site) of getting a petition together as there is so much interest in these results, it really doesn't seem acceptable not to have any results for England and Wales published and to only have the bounty ones available for reference.
>...cost cutting..pah!
>that's OUTRAGEOUS! Yes - lets get a petition together. If Scotland can produce their lists, then England & Wales can blooming well produce theirs. Some expectant parents look to this data, and the data from a website won't be accurate, so only the OFFICIAL data will do.
I'm off to send an e-mail right now.
And then here it is, the official statement and explanation:
>Definitely need some kind of petition. I've just received a reply to an email asking for clarification and it's the same standard couple of paragraphs they're sending to everybody:
Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has no firm plans for releasing this information for 2008. In previous years data was produced using information from the NHS Central Register (NHSCR). Following the Independence of ONS in April 2008, the
NHSCR moved from ONS to the Information Centre for Health and Social Care. NHSCR have decided not to continue to publish this output.
ONS could use the births and deaths registration system to produce the most
popular names (subject to agreement from the General Register Office (GRO)). However this source has not been used before. It would take time and resources to ensure that the output was produced to high statistical standards.
>There are murmurs about this on other name boards too, especially regarding the inaccuracy of the website results, which although interesting for what they are I'd only view as an indicator of trends rather than anything very accurate. I'm quite sure we could post any petition on most of these boards too. It isn't acceptable to just not release any results really.
It sounds like the loss of the 2008 UK baby names report has more to do with reorganization than cost-cutting per se and that the fate of the report was sealed back in April, before the recent economic downturn.
That said, can we in the USA rest easy that this couldn't happen to our annual baby names report?
Probably not... (but maybe we shouldn't say that out loud...)
Baby name books and websites have evolved based on SSA baby name data. Parents have chosen their babies' names based on those stats (too popular; not popular enough; not all that uncommon after all...) Hopefully, the SSA will always make them available, year after year. But this UK loss reminds us that there's no guarantee for us either.
Amanda, I share your unhappiness that UK baby name stats for 2008 are not available, but I think it's disrespectful to our UK members to refer to their government as an "outfit".
As for "Naming trends are a great insight into the cultural trends of a society."
We may like to believe that, but has this ever been substantiated?
New babies alert:
@ustynn M@r1e
J@ck R0m@n ("JR"), brother to J0hn ("JP") and G1@nn@ (!!)
Patricia wrote:
"As for "Naming trends are a great insight into the cultural trends of a society."
We may like to believe that, but has this ever been substantiated?"
I think it has! Scholars in many fields -- psychology, sociology, economics, even population biology -- have taken advantage of modern name data as a unique window on social change, biases, and processes of cultural transmission. Researchers particularly value given names as one of the few domains of taste and choice free of commercial pressure.
Comments from another UK baby name blog about non-publication of 2008 baby name stats:
>If costs need to be cut in public spending, I'd rather it was done by not doing the ONS baby name top 100, than taking any money from hospitals, emergency services, flood defence, schooling
>It isn't just about the top 100 baby names. Onomastics is a serious business and not just of interest to expectant parents. The ONS provide more than the top 100, they also provide the top 2000, plus associated figures and percentages. They also study changing social trends in nomenclature and contrast over the decades etc etc. It is as worthy a topic for publication as for e.g. How we spend our time survey, or household chores and gender etc etc. I think non-publication this year has as much (if not more) to do with the necessitation of using alternative data source and associated extra time and resources than just a matter of cutting public funding. The Scottish stats have been published and as a pp has said the English and Welsh stats should be made available also.
>I understand totally. I use ONS social stats for my job, in which I make decisions on how to spend significant sums of public funding. I fully understand the social and political need for these kind of stats, the importance of recording them, trend analysis etc. What I was saying was that, possibly, in the current economic climate, the top 100 baby names for 2008 may not necessarily be priority public expenditure. I work in the public sector in an area that has suffered chronic underfunding over the last decade, with catastrophic results and prioritisation of public expenditure is very close to my heart.
>As I understand it, it would appear that the data source is one that ONS no longer has access to and that it is for the Dept of Health to decide whether or not to produce the stats. Whilst i like to use the list for inspiration, I guess there are other priorities in DoH at the moment.
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/baby_names/664662-National-Statistic-on-name...
Thanks, Laura, for your feedback on my question (#11)!
It is being suggested in the UK that the "Bounty List" will have to be substituted for the unavailable official list of 2008 UK baby names. The Telegraph website offered the Bounty list to its disappointed (devastated?) NE readers on 29 Dec.:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/4014651/Top-girls-and-boys-names-in-20...
Apparently Bounty gives some free baby supplies to each new mother, who is encouraged to return some sort of card that asks for her baby's name and other data. (I'm hoping UK posters can explain this better). But the Bounty list is far from complete as these mothers reported in another Mumsnet discussion:
>Only the Bounty lists have been released unfortunately and I'd only view those as an interesting indicator of trends rather than anything very accurate.
>I think the two lists (nso) and bounty differ so wildly for these reasons
1) Bounty list completely misses ALL home births (not sure what percentage that would be though)
2) Bounty certainly go to nhs hospitals, but I'm not sure about hospitals like The Portland, I can't imagine it somehow, could be wrong though
3) it assumes that everybody registers the SAME name they provide to the Bounty rep within 12 hours of the birth. I'm sure a LOT of people change their minds.
4) You're not obliged to give the bounty rep details, with dc2 I didn't. I just took the bag to pick out the children's allowance part.
>I didn't give bounty my details. I took the pack though.
>I didn't give Bounty any personal details - IIRC the midwife guy who discharged me just gave me the bag and said there might be something useful once I'd waded through the marketing bumf hmm. Plus I can't be the only one who had not decided on my baby's name at that point?
If the SSA annual baby names list was not available for the USA, what could we use as a substitute? I think some (only a few?) states put out their own stats, but it seems we could no more get the complete picture than our friends in the UK can.
A differing opinion about the Bounty lists:
This year, there aren’t official separate figures available for England and Wales... So the Bounty baby counting stats have been used instead. They are most likely to cover the whole UK, but given the disproportionate size of England and Wales in comparison with Scotland and Northern Ireland, it’s likely to be still quite accurate.
BBC went with the Bounty results too:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7804633.stm
I suspect loads of people don't bother with the Bounty list because a) who wants to be sending back forms when you've just had a baby and b) you don't neccessarily want to give your details to people who will then (I assume) sell them on to people who want to sell you stuff. Anyway it's a flawed, self-selecting survey. Can't be compared to the ONS stats. I wonder if it's worth approaching the Department of Health?
Feel free to call our givernment an outfit - a bit flattering in my opinion (and I voted for them!).
Miriam, you'll be happy to know that I've seen a mini revival of Yiddish names among north Londoners - not just the Charedi as one would expect, but among trendy lefties as well. Some maybe mking a political anti-Zionist point, but I hope it is more about embracing the lost past. And I love the name Sheine. We did consider Feivel had our daughter been a son, but were put off by the cartoon mouse.
Worth noting that this isn't entirely accurate - UK baby name lists have never been published and the ones being discontinued are those for England and Wales.
In Scotland, the lists are published by the General Register Office (based on registration information) and have been published as normal and are available online at: http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/publications-and-data/popular-....
They're more comprehensive than most countries' lists as well, with a list of all names not just a top 100.
Re: the Afflecks' new baby, a rather amusing article:
http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/01/07/ben-affleck-and-jennifer-garner-must-...
I compared the 2008 Bounty list (couldn't find their 2007 list) with the government list for England and Wales in 2007 to get an idea of the accuracy of the former. I expected that there wouldn't be a lot of change as to which names ranked in the top 10, and that proved true.
Boys' names -- same 10 names in each list, with Jack #1 for both.
Girls' names -- same 8 names in the top 8, with all ranking the same except Bounty 2008 reverses the rank of Olivia (from #3 to #1) and Grace (from #1 to #3)
Looking at the girls' names ranked 9-20, all are the same except on the Bounty list Summer and Ava replace Isabella and Isabelle.
As for the boys' names ranked 11-20, again there are only two differences: Benjamin and Mohammed aren't on the Bounty 2008 top 11-20, while Ryan and Liam are.
In fact Mohammed (#17 on ONS 2008 list) is missing from Bounty's entire top 100, which does call into question the completeness of the responses Bounty receives.
Other than that, the Bounty list looks pretty reliable -- and maybe better than no list at all?
Well, it looks as if my comments were too offensive to leave up. I guess I should have figured they would be to somebody in today's PC world.
Patricia from the UK, for the record, Merriam-Webster simply defines the word "outfit" as a group that works together as a team. I have no idea how that's offensive. Anyway, I didn't mean to hurt anyone's feelings
Correction to my previous post (#22):
"In fact Mohammed (#17 on ONS 2008 list)..." should be Mohammed (#17 on the ONS 2007 list)
Amanda -- fyi, your comment was deleted not because it was "un-PC" but because it was political, and this is not a political forum.
Patricia -- this comment was spot-on about the weaknesses of private lists: "In fact Mohammed (#17 on ONS 2008 list) is missing from Bounty's entire top 100, which does call into question the completeness of the responses Bounty receives."
Similarly, in the U.S. BabyCenter announces the "Top 100 Names of the Year" each year. Their boys' list never includes ANY Spanish names, while the real top 100 has plenty of them.
Regarding that MTV article linked above, does Ascot and Violet rhyme with a Jersey accent?!
Violet was named after Jennifer's grandmother, and Anne is after Jennifer's middle name. So I'm thinking more family names are on the horizon.
Sorry to go off-topic so early, but I had to share some names from a dream I recently had. A friend has twin girls named An4st4si4 (nn An4) and Lili4n (nn L1ly). In my dream, though, the first was named either Anoushka or Ankoko, and the second was named Bresia.
Here are Arizona's 2008 top 20 names as reported by the Arizona Department of Health Services with the 2007 list for comparison.
Boys
2008
Anthony
Angel
Daniel
Michael
Jacob
Alexander
Ethan
Jose
Joshua
David
Andrew
Jesus
Christopher
Aiden
Joseph
Gabriel
Adrian
Luis
Matthew
Jayden
2007
Angel
Jose
Anthony
Daniel
Jacob
David
Luis
Ethan
Michael
Christopher
Joshua
Alexander
Jesus
Andrew
Gabriel
Joseph
Jonathan
Noah
Christian
Logan
Girls
2008
Isabella
Sophia
Emma
Emily
Mia
Abigail
Madison
Samantha
Ava
Elizabeth
Ashley
Olivia
Alexis
Natalie
Chloe
Alyssa
Brianna
Camila
Hailey
Victoria
2007
Isabella
Emily
Mia
Sophia
Ashley
Emma
Madison
Ava
Elizabeth
Samantha
Abigail
Natalie
Alyssa
Olivia
Hannah
Alexis
Hailey
Nevaeh
Brianna
Chloe
How the 2008 Arizona names stack up against the national list remains to be seen of course. I note that Spanish names reflecting Arizona's Hispanic heritage occur on the boys' list, but the girls' list does not have Spanish names that are not also mainstream (I am thinking here of Isabella which is certainly Spanish but also very popular among non-Hispanics). Is Camila with one l a specifically Spanish variant? I don't know much about Arizona's Hispanic culture being a new resident, but I wonder why Angel is so popular as compared, say, to Juan which isn't in the top 20. What's up with Anthony? Is that top of the charts elsewhere in the US? What about Adrian? That is not a Spanish name in that form. Are the Aiden lovers picking up on Adrian for its similar sound? Is Adrian popular elsewhere?
Miriam -- In 2007, Anthony was the #8 boy name in NYC and was #5 for Hispanic boys.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/popular-new-york-baby-names...
See the list at the end of the article.
I think that the AZ lists definitely reflect the Latino influence there, but a couple of clarifications.
Isabella is not Spanish. The Spanish form of that name is Isabel, though I would imagine that many Latino parents in the US are using the Isabella variant since it fits in well with both languages/cultures. I'm guessing that Sophia would also be popular among the same parents for the same reasons.
Yes, Camila with one L is the proper Spanish spelling since with 2 Ls it would be pronounced "Ca-mee-ya" instead of "Ca-mee-la".
Adrian is, in fact, a Spanish name, though in Spanish it would be written Adrián.
My guess on Ángel being more popular than Juan is for the same reason(s) that Jayden is more popular than John.
I have read that Mohammed and its variant spellings is actually #1 in the UK this year. Still trying to find where I read that (and without official statistics I don't know how it could be substantiated), but based on this 2007 article I bet it's true:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23428641-details/Mohammed+now+second+most+popular+boys'+name+in+Britain/article.do
Miriam may have a point as to why they decided to scrap official statistics this year. I wonder if it will become bi-annual, or every 5 or 10 years?
Laura, that's horrifying that Babycenter omits Hispanic names entirely from its statistics! They are supposedly based on their readership and most searched names, but still, that is very misleading. I recently looked up the name Diego on the SSA, and was surprised to learn that it is #58!
http://youcantcallitit.com/
Perhaps this link will work:
http://thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23428641-details/Mohammed+now+second+most+popular+boys'+name+in+Britain/article.do
Copy and paste, I suppose!
One last go:
http://thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23428641-details/Mohammed+now+second+most+popular+boys'+name+in+Britain/article.do/
New baby names in my circle of friends:
Grady Weslyn
Cooper Patrick
Gavin Michael
Parker David
Reagan Dawn
Mason Levi
Wow a lot of my friends were busy last spring huh.
Bad baby names in my circle:
Brai1yn He1en, which reminds me too much of Helen Keller.
Nin@ Maria, which would be fine, except that her brother is Christopher, and the parents used to live in Columbus.
New Zealand's top baby names for 2008 (Jack and Sophie lead the lists):
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/department-of-internal-affairs/news/article.cf...
NZ government Top 100 Boys/Girls' Names, 2004-2008:
http://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/Services-Births-Deaths-and...
Miriam--I am also surprised by how high Angel is on the list, because the only Angel I know is about 13. I know multiple Joses and Luises, I would've guessed that either of those would be higher than Angel. Maybe it's more popular in the Phx metro area though, and that's why I haven't noticed the trend?
I couldn't find a release of PA's 2008 names, but I did find some interesting comments on the Babycenter 2008 list.
http://www.jnj.com/connect/news/product/20081211_100000
For the Arizona/mid-western residents:
Is the pronunciation of Angel that you are seeing overwhelmingly On-hel?
I know this is the intended Spanish pronuncation but I have known two Angels, both pronounced Ayn-jell, one of them of Puerto Rican discent, the other African-American.
My twin grandsons have a kindergarten friend named Angelo, whose older brother is Antonio and younger brother, Xavier. The brothers are African American, but their names taken together sound Latino to me.
Emily and Ethan are the (preliminary) top baby names for 2008 in Manitoba:
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/manitoba/2009/01/06/7928351-sun.html
Jack and Mia were the top 2008 baby names in New South Wales, Australia, in 2008:
http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/births/popularBabyNames.htm
Aybee--I only know the one Angel, but it's pronounced On-hel. I would guess that most of the little Arizonan Angels are pronounced that way though, since growing up in school all the Angels I knew pronounced it the Spanish way.
And further thoughts on Miriam's list--
I feel that most of the Hispanic families I know in Arizona tend to give their sons much more traditionally Spanish names than their daughters. For example, I knew one sibset that included Jose, Pearl, and Diamond.
Also, several of the names on the AZ girl list do sound "Hispanic" to me, based on the people I know with those names. The two Nevaehs I know are both Hispanic, and I only know one non-Hispanic Alexis. I'm not sure if that's just a coincidence in terms of the people I know, or if by and large names like Alexis are becoming 'traditional' among Hispanic people.
I guess a comparable name from an earlier generation could be Martha, because I know 3 or 4 Marthas in their 30s, who are all Hispanic, so the name tends to be associated with the Spanish-speaking community for me, even though obviously its heritage as a Biblical name pre-dates those associations.
Hi, all.
I have some preliminary feedback from Mailee's mom about the names we suggested for the new baby on the way.
She likes Cai except that she isn't sure about one syllable names.
Kemo makes her think of chemo, and Keiko turns out to be her dh's mn.
She's going to run the list by her husband tonight and report back.
She did really appreciate it, and she's also open to suggestions for another girl.
Requirements: Hawaiian nice but not required; no M's; needs to work with a consonant heavy S ln-sort of a lispy sounding ln if that makes sense.
I don't have much to add about statistics, except to admit a little chagrin that my older son apparently has the most popular name in much of the English speaking world!
Remember Lisa Bonet from "The Crosby Show"? She recently had a baby boy, her third child, and named him Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa. (I had to copy and paste to get it right!) According to this article, Lisa now goes by the name Lilakoi Moon. Her older children are named Zoe (20) and Lola (20 months). It looks like Lisa/Lilakoi Moon has an excellent chance of 'winning' most unique celebrity baby name of 2009!
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/01/08/2009-01-08_lisa_b...
Patricia-On a related note, does anyone remember Sondra's twins names from the Cosby Show? The hubby's name was Elvin. They had b/g twins with strange (to me) names. When we were talking last thread about the CPK names I thought of this. At that time I remembered the girl's name (which I have now forgotten), but never remembered the boy's name.
Sondra's twins were Nelson and Winnie!
I almost NEVER watch TV, but caught a bit of a Cosby Show episode the other day, and it was with the twins. What a coincidence!
I must say Lisa / Lilakoi Moon's baby's name is a stunner.
I am on tenterhooks awaiting the name of Jennifer Garner's new baby girl. How lovely that this site is anonymous! So, does anyone else have thoughts on the name? I think that they will not do another flower, but will remain in the classic realm...perhaps, Penelope?
I remember Nelson and Winnie, Sondra's twins on the Cosby Show. I always assumed they were named in honor of the Mandelas.
You beat me to it Prairie Dawn. They were named for the Mandelas. I loved that show.
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