The Baby Name Wizard

Psst...over here. Yeah, you. Are you looking for some -- shhh -- hot celebrity baby name gossip?

It's ok, step out into the open. Sometimes we all want to indulge in the lighter side of names. That's what NameCandy.com is for.

You might have spotted NameCandy already as the home base of the Ask the Name Lady advice column. She finally has some company. The Celebrity Names Blog covers the names in the news every day -- tv and movie characters, famous babies, new breakthrough star names. The Celebrity Baby Names Lookup is the place to look up a name and find out which celebrities have chosen it for their kids, pictures included.

I hope that NameCandy.com will be a fun counterpart to BabyNameWizard.com -- kind of a saucy little cousin, like Samantha's cousin Serena on "Bewitched," but without the miniskirts. (But maybe I just like to think that because it casts me as Samantha. Delusions of grandeur?)

All of us "serious" name enthusiasts will understand if you add a daily dose of NameCandy to your lunchtime routine. Hey, it's not even fattening.

A friend of a friend approached with an interesting challenge. She's attempting to break into the romance novel business. Could I offer any advice on picking a suitable pen name?

Pseudonyms have a long literary tradition, but they're especially common in genre fiction. Some authors adopt a pen name to protect their real identities, especially if their writing is on the steamy side. A string of bodice rippers doesn't fit in with every resume. Others choose pen names to spruce up a name they consider undesirable for the marketplace -- one that's hard to spell, for instance, or a masculine identity in a feminine genre. Still others establish separate identities for separate sub-genres. It's not unusual to find romance novelists with half a dozen different pen names to suit different occasions. In each case, the fiction writer is in the intriguing position of creating him/herself as a kind of character for the reader.

When romance authors choose names for their heroines, they aim for maximum romantic effect within the context of the genre. Recent Harlequin Regency offerings have paired the lovely likes of Christiana Daventry and Cressida Bramley with irrestible gents like Philemon Brittle and Valerian Inglemoore. (No, historical accuracy in naming is not a priority. Real Regency England names were hopelessly conservative, with vast numbers of Johns and Marys.) If you prefer your romances Old West style you can cosy up with couples like Maggie Grace and Garret Daines, or Kate Wells and Sam Pickett.

You might expect author pen names to follow the same genre pattern. In fact, romance author name styles hold steady across sub-genres. Here are some of the most common first names of current Harlequin authors from a variety of series:

Ann
Carol
Diane
Elizabeth
Joanna
Julia
Kathryn
Linda
Margaret
Michelle
Patricia
Sandra
Sharon
Susan

Nary a Cressida Bramley in the bunch. Interesting, eh? In fact, the list of first names is so strikingly normal that one might conclude they're all real. Some doubtless are, but a peek at the surnames says surely not all. I compiled a list of 60 recent Harlequin authors and almost all had British isles surnames of one or two syllables. That's hardly a representative sample of Sharons and Sandras. Checking lists of known romance author pseudonyms, the pattern held. Typical pen names were Paula, Eileen and Deborah, with short British-styled last names.

Why no Cressidas? The goal of a romance author name isn't to be romantic. It's to be warm, approachable, and above all trustworthy. You're putting your fantasies in the author's hands, and you want a cozy confidante. If she sounds too fake, or haughty, or judgmental, you back away. Yes, the author has to sound believable even when the book itself is called something like The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl.

Right now the typical romance author name is from the "Mid-Century America" style category in the Baby Name Wizard book. If you're just starting out in your romance career, you might inch a tad younger with a "Timeless" or "New Classic" name. Stephanie perhaps, or Rebecca? And don't forget that snappy British-sounding surname. Believability is good, but you can only take it so far.

Being in the name business, I have a lot of facts and figures rattling around in my brain. So when something doesn't fit, my name sensors go off. "This here name factoid smells fishy," I'll murmur, then I'll pull on my trenchcoat and start combing the dark alleys of data in search of the truth. Or at least I'll make a spreadsheet. Close enough.

This morning, the Factoid that Didn't Fit went by the name of Menachem. I encountered that name at #986 in the Social Security Administration's ranking of the top names of the decade, 2000-2008. The problem? I knew Menachem didn't appear in my NameVoyager.

The NameVoyager includes the top 1000 names for boys and girls from each decade, plus year-by-year figures starting with 2003 to get a close reading of current trends. If Menachem wasn't there, that means it could not have cracked the top 1000 for any individual year from 2003 on. Could it still rank among the top 1000 for the decade, as the SSA showed? It was possible, certainly, but unlikely. I double checked against my original data from those years; nope, no Menachem. Then I checked the SSA's full data on their website...and there it was. Menachem made the top 1000 for boys every year starting in 2003. The data had changed.

OK, to be honest, I know the data changes. The government releases each year's name popularity data in May of the following year, covering all SSN applications received through the end of February. Over the ensuing months more applications trickle in, and they eventually update their name rankings to reflect this. (I keep the original May data in the NameVoyager to assure comparable year-to-year samples.) By and large, name rankings change very little through this process. Menachem, though, seemed to be different. Late filings boost the name measurably year after year. Why?

My first thought was that it could be a seasonal name. Any name that's given most often in November & December would show up heavily in late filings. I checked birth records for Menachems, and no dice. The name is given pretty steadily across the course of the year.

What else, then? Well, Menachem is a name chosen overwhelmingly by Orthodox and other highly observant Jews. What about other names that fit that description? I dug out my original May data for the names Chaim, Chaya, Chana, Moshe and Yehuda from 2005-2007 and compared to the currently available data which includes late filings. In every single case, the name's rank rose with the late data.

The clues seem to point to this conclusion: on average, Orthodox Jews file SSA applications for newborns later than the rest of the population.

Weird, huh? I can dream up plenty of possible explanations, from the religious (e.g. the timing of naming ceremonies) to the bureaucratic (e.g. a slow processing center in Brooklyn). Perhaps one of you can up with a better answer? Regardless of the reason, though, the result is that Jewish baby names are being slightly but consistently undercounted every year.

By the way, the SSA currently says that Menachem didn't crack the top 1000 in 2008. Check back at those figures a year from now and see if they're singing a different tune.