The Baby Name Wizard

Once upon a time -- not so very long ago -- parents were super conservative with boys' names. Even as trendy girls' names began to rise and fall, you could count on the classic English kingly names to rule the boys' chart. Compare the top 5 boys and girls of 1947:

GIRLS
Linda
Mary
Patricia
Barbara
Sandra

BOYS
James
Robert
John
William
Richard

The girls' list is recognizably American Baby Boom. As for the boys...well, check out the top 5 boys' names in London in the year 1260, per Douglas Galbi:

John
William
Robert
Richard
Thomas

How many styles can say they've held steady for 7 centuries? In the space of the past two generations, though, that rock-solid name base has started to melt away. Parents no longer feel bound by age-old tradition in naming their sons. As tradition gives way, something has to take its place, and that something turns out to be pure fashion.

My shorthand for the power of boys' name fashion has been names rhyming with Aidan (Jaden, Kayden, Braidyn, etc.). When I started tracking "The Age of Aidans" in 2003, 28 Aidan rhymes Aidan ranked among the top 1,000 American boys' names. That number rapidly climbed, and has been holding steady around 40-41.

In 2011 the Aidans showed their first small decline to 37. Don't expect revolution, though; this change looks like a very gradual evolution. As the -den names have slid, names ending in -ton have risen to keep pace.

In fact, the pure rhyming names are just the tip of the iceberg. I first charted the extraordinary rise of -n names for boys back in 2007. Here's the historical view again, 5 years later:

American Boys Born, By Last Letter of Name, Year 1900

American Boys Born, By Last Letter of Name, Year 1950

American Boys Born, By Last Letter of Name, Year 2011

The takeaway message seems to be: The more things change, the more they sound the same.

Then and Now:

Ja- is the most popular opening for today's boys' names, by a wide margin. Ja- favorites include the #1 name Jacob, plus multiple popular spellings of Jayden and Jackson. Put them all together...then compare to what a name like James used to be.

Image and Reality:

Together, the top-5 names Isabella, Sophia and Olivia represent our image of the elegant, ladylike names of the Victorian era. But bubbly little cuties like Minnie, Nellie and Bessie were really the order of the day.

X-ploding:

An X, at the start, end, or anywhere in-between, is enough to propel almost any boy's name today.

(In case you're wondering, the graphs above were created with the Expert version of the NameVoyager, one of the specialized name tools available to Baby Name Wizard Expert subscribers. This site relies on subscriber support; if you like what we do, I hope you'll consider subscribing to Expert for the extra tools -- plus NO ADS! Thanks.) 

Fast-rising and fast-falling names are not just two sides of the same coin. They have fundamentally different characters.

Names tend to rise in a burst of glory, and fall in a slow, quiet drift. The hottest names may shoot up by 500%, but the fastest fallers seldom lose more than a quarter of their popularity in a year. In terms of storytelling, too, the drama tends to be on the rising side. (Check out this year's hottest names for boys and girls.) The falling names list often feels more wistful than dramatic, with a nostalgia for past glory days.

The fastest-falling names of 2011:

Some thoughts:

Brisa: OK, this one's a stumper. Brisa is Spanish for breeze, and with the wildly trendy "bree" sound should be a strong option for non-Spanish speakers, too. It was especially popular in 2009 & 2010, but tumbled in 2011. Why? Readers, can you help? UPDATE: Many thanks to reader Hwar, who tracked the brief rise of Brisa to the 2009 telenovela Verano de Amor. I missed it in my annual telenovela name sweep because the Brisa in question wasn't one of the lead characters, but rather a baby born in the show!

Isabella: That big fall is just from #1 to #2, in a year without a lot of "Twilight" action. In fact, Isabella is still more popular at #2 today than Emma was at #1 a few years ago.

Tyler, Joshua, Alexis, Makayla, Brianna et al: A whole generation of names is starting to turn the corner. For the next edition of the Baby Name Wizard book, I'm creating a new demographic category -- the sound of the 1990s & 2000s.

Miley: Here's my rule of thumb on negative publicity and baby names. A celebrity's press will seldom seldom torpedo their name...unless it was that celebrity who inspired the name's publicity to begin with. The sharp drop in Mileys can be directly attributed to the shifting public image of Miley Cyrus, given that alternate spellings like Mylee barely fell at all.

Braden & Jaden: Is the end of the Age of Aidans nigh? Maybe, but it's not as dramatic as it seems. Both of those names are settling in on "y" spellings (Brayden, Jayden) as standard.

Brett: Quarterback Brett Favre retired in 2011. It appears he took his name with him.