Laura Wattenberg
- Name
Laura Wattenberg
- About Me
I'm the creator of BabyNameWizard.com and author of The Baby Name Wizard, the in-depth "field guide to baby names." I've spent the past decade studying the names we give our children -- to help parents find their perfect names, and to understand what name trends tell us about our society. If you've come to this page looking for a way to contact me, please use the "contact" link at the very bottom of the page. Thanks!
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Mark wrote: "I disagree that the sound is primary, at least not for traditional and biblical names. The tradition is written -- is "Leah" to be pronounced "LEE-ah" ("Liː-ə" in IPA, modern) or "LAY-ah" ("Leɪ-ə" in IPA, from the Hebrew)?" On the other hand, there are thousands of woman named Leigha, Liya, etc. specifically to get around the ambiguous pronunciation. And biblical names are an interesting case since of course they're all transcriptions, and the transcriptions can change from one translation/edition to another. But in general, regarding traditional names, I think it's key to remember that English orthography used to be far more malleable than it is today. (The many spellings of Shakespeare are a famous example.) English records through the 17th Century are packed with names like Wylliam, written elsewhere as William. Back then the sound was quite explicitly primary.
Charly wrote: "Minerva (McGonagall), Harry (Potter), and Hermione could all be tie-ins with Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody." Ah, Alastor! Now there's another interesting wrinkle. While it CAN be used as an alternate spelling of Alastair, it's actually an ancient Greek epithet of Zeus meaning "avenger," which fits into Rowling's pattern of Greek & Latin charactonyms.
Great discussion of the dilemmas of Alistair! Many names have a similar problem of "multiple realities." E.g. should I match a Scottish name with other names that have a similar usage pattern in Scotland? In which case a good sister for Skye might be Eilidh...even though Skye is 9000% more popular in the U.S. and isn't heard as Scottish here at all? For that matter, should I match Antoine as French or African-American? Does it matter, in matching, that Misha is a male name in Russia? Etc. Hmm...this makes me think that offering up a few of my toughest "unmatchables" would be a good future name challenge! But I can't expect anyone to solve the ultimate unmatchable: Barack.
The trick with Alistair is that it's very Scottish, but to most Americans the impression is more "Masterpiece Theatre" -- a general aura of British elegance. Here's the current working version: Evander, Colin, Magnus, Dashiell, Gareth, Graeme, Lachlan, Finlay Beatrix, Imogen, Ailsa, Iona, Penelope, Georgina, Annabel, Finola
Wow, you guys are GOOD! One response actually has an amazing 5 out of 6 right. (And every single name has been guessed right at least once.) The two that are proving the toughest are #4 and #6, both traditional and "normal" names. #4 in particular makes me wonder whether there's a realm of names so "normal" they almost blend into the background rather than leaping to mind. I'll definitely run another batch of these by you soon. I think the most interesting cases are names like #3, where the various siblings approach the name from different angles. I've come to imagine a multidimensional name space where two names may be close in origin, distant in current popularity, etc. etc. You can't expect, to find, say, 8 names that match Ariel in sound, biblical, Shakespearean & Disney usage as well as androgyny and popularity history! So the challenge is to compose a SET that reflects all of those dimensions, and gives options to parents who like the name for different reasons.
Angela Dawn wrote: "Those names appeared at least 5 times in the US Social Security statistics in 2010?" All of them reached the 5 level at least once in the past decade. Most are very rare (I obviously chose them for effect.) But Kden, for instance, has been given to a dozen or more boys each of the past 5 years, and there were 50 girls named Jlynn last year. At this point, there's no way of tracking the number of Kay'Las etc. BTW, a Twitter follower yesterday pointed to a news article mentioning a fine specimen of the "punctuation makes the letter speak its name" category: R'Riel.
Interesting that the discussion has turned to accent marks, umlauts, etc. To me, diacritical marks are totally different from punctuation. But I suppose that a diacritic used decoratively, in a way that doesn't affect the punctuation or just plain doesn't make sense as a diacritic, could be a lot like a decorative apostrophe. Reminds me of one of my earliest Baby Name Wizard columns: http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2005/2/h%C3%A4agen-dazs-names
Re: Jjesus -- D'Juan, Jajuan etc. in various spellings are pretty common names. I assume this name is along the same lines, so J'Jesus with a Spanish pronunciation of Jesus.
Shani, the Marvel Comics Jebediah actually appeared years after the Simpsons character. (Remember, The Simpsons premiered way back in the '80s!) There's also an Australian rock band called Jebediah, but they were deliberately named after the Simpsons character. The name Jedidiah -- d's, no b -- is a traditional biblical name, perhaps that's what you remember hearing?
I appreciate all of the comments! This was a tricky year, since the biggest name stories tended to be so abstract. "Mark Zuckerberg" would have been the selection, except that particular name wasn't enough of the focus of the story. (BTW, I intended that runner-up to encompass the nominations for Anonymous, too -- somehow that didn't make it into the column, sorry!) Pippa was a much talked-about name, but didn't point to much in the way of broader trends. So it kept coming back to Siri. I'll post an expanded version of the Siri piece later today, which might give a better sense of the reasoning behind the choice. P.S. I guess that Lego series is the latest attempt in the Belville vein? Clearly Lego is still having trouble connecting with girls, which is hard for me to imagine. My two girls are into Lego in a big way. They recently borrowed my phone to use its camera, and I later discovered a little photoessay...they recreated every illustration in Edward Gorey's book "The Raging Tide: Or, the Black Doll's Imbroglio" out of Lego. Can't do THAT with Belville!
lucubratrix, congratulations and thanks for the story about your mother! It's a great point that a relative's first knee-jerk reaction to a name can change in a hurry.
A quick note on Thanos & Cannon -- these names, like many others, can definitely come from varied sources and impulses. E.g. some girls given the old and traditional names Tiffany and Mercedes are named for the brands, some arent. However, the baby name Thanos did not reach measurable levels in the U.S. until it became a comic book and video game villain, and regional usage of the name Cannon correlates strongly with the use of other gun-related names like Gunner, Colt, Remington and Gauge, so I thought it was reasonable to include them in this context.
LOL on the Gax nominations! My kids would certainly be delighted. (For those who don't see the name's appeal: http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2009/7/a-non-excerpt-from-baby-name-wizard-2)
Emilyrae, your comments about feminism not pinning women down to any one choice reminded me of the person who objected most strongly when I decided to change my name: my husband's grandmother. She was dismayed that I would do such a thing, saying with disappointment "But I thought Laura was a feminist!!" She was speaking, of course, from the perspective of a woman who married around 1940 and automatically took her own husband's name. For her, feminism meant bucking that expectation. Meanwhile I was acting as a woman who felt literally zero pressure to change names. I was in graduate school at the time, and sticking with your birth surname was so normal in my cohort that I was a bit of an outlier. Since then I've seen personal friends opt for just about every imaginable family surname configuration. I know families with new, blended names; families where the sons get dad's surname, the daughters mom's; families where all the kids get mom's surname; families where everybody, dad included, has mom's family surname. I know that my experience is atypical, which is probably why my little manifesto comes off as unrealistically sanguine to some readers. I've had enough glimpses of a "living surname" culture that it feels a little more achievable to me.
Thank you to everyone for the insightful comments! There are a lot of issues here, but I particularly want to respond to the people who felt I was ignoring the ongoing patriarchal reality of the surname divide. I definitely understand where you're coming from, but I wasn't ignoring it per se. I was trying to say that BOTH of the so-called 2 options are part of that patriarchal tradition -- and we shouldn't have to wait until it's standard for everyone to hew to the male tradition to rethink the whole thing! The emotional aspect of a name change is highly individual. (For instance, as many of you noted, some names are easier to feel attached to than others!) But I believe that the changed nature of modern marriage can actually make name changes more relevant today, not less, for many couples. For a baby-naming analogy, consider parents who have known since their 2nd trimester that they're having a boy, and will be heading into the hospital for a planned c-section scheduled weeks in advance. Those parents are often extra-secretive about names -- because they need to have SOMETHING to announce, right? Now consider a pair of newlyweds who have been living together for years. They get married, go on a quick trip, then head home to a life that is, on a day-to-day basis, utterly unchanged. For them, a new name can be a symbolic, exciting, even fun way to "feel truly married" and convey to the world that they've entered a new phase of their lives. Instead of doing away with that rite of passage, I'd like to see it more creatively open to men and women alike.
On George R. R. Martin -- I had to impose a 2 names per series rule for my list, SOLELY because of "A Song of Ice and Fire." Arya, Daenerys and Sansa all received multiple votes in my sources as strong and interesting female characters. Even Cersei got a vote. (Not Catelyn, though. Mothers never get the appreciation they deserve, eh?)
Linnaeus wrote: "I got one: Katniss." That IS a good example! Using bits and roots of familiarly feminine names gives you extra room to play with the overall sound. Similarly, she was able to use a masculine -a ending for Peeta without any confusion because it echoes Peter. Hmm...sounds like a special Hunger Games name column might be in order when the movie comes out!
Always happy to get methodology questions! As I tried to indicate in the post, I used popularity data as my positive sentiment meter. IMO actually choosing a name is about as honest a statement of approval as you can make, and discussions of "favorite names" naturally correlate highly with usage stats. In particular, I used U.S. popularity rank for the past decade. On the negative side I set an ultra-low threshold for negative mentions, declining to a zero threshold for names outside the top 20. While the names may seem a little dated as a group, they all ranked in the top 100 for the past decade. The "dated" feel reflects the negative sentiment that modern/trendy/creative names tend to attract.
Karyn wrote: "I'm not the betting type, but I would wager that Olivia, Sophie and Emily topped the charts for girls :)" Typo corrected, thanks! And Rebecca wrote: "Imogen is also Welsh" I'm pretty certain Imogen is English, straight from Shakepeare...or rather, from Shakespeare's typesetters. It's believed that the Shakespearean Imogen was a mis-printing of the Gaelic name Innogen that stuck.
Kristen wrote: "I think we might have seen a much bigger leap if both "Barack" and "Obama" weren't almost unusable names in the U.S." I tried to address that a bit with the "Clinton" comment...recent "usable" names like Carter, Reagan and Clinton received nothing like the huge boost the ungainly Roosevelt got when Theodore Roosevelt took office.