While browsing through a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine, I came across an article about the current generation of picture books and their bratty protagonists.  It was illustrated by an image from a book called Finn Throws a Fit.  Aha, I thought, so juvenile authors are on top of current naming trends.  This impelled me to go running (figuratively) to my local Borders to seek further evidence.

One difference I noticed immediately was that there were more little human protagonists and fewer of the porcine (excluding Olivia), feline, canine, bovine, etc persuasion than there were in the past, and there were, as the article pointed out, a lot more angry children populating the pages, and a lot more preoccupation with poop and farts.

 In terms of names, I was surprised to see that there was a book title containing almost every currently popular choice—almost as many as there are on the personalized pencils in the airport—a big upswing from the past.  Here are some titles all released since the turn of the century–and they’re just the tip of the iceberg!:

Girls

AVA and the Magic Tutu

CHLOE’S Snowy Day

CLEMENTINE

CONSTANCE and the Great Escape

ELIZA and the Dragonfly

HARRIET, You’ll Drive Me Wild

ISABEL’S Car Wash

My Name is Not ISABELLA

IVY and Bean

JUNIE B., First Grader

The Adventures of LAILA and MAYA

LILLY’s Big Day

Let’s Find LUCY

MAISY series

MERCY Watson series

Fancy NANCY series

OLIVIA

RUBY’S FALLING LEAVES

Silly SOPHIA

When SOPHIE Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry

TALLULAH in the Kitchen

I, TRIXIE

Goodnight, my sweet VIOLET

WILLA and the Wind, WILLA the Wonderful

WILLOW

ZOE’s Tale, ZOE’s Hats, ZOE and CHLOE on the Prowl

BOYS

AIDAN’S First Full Moon Circle

BARNABY Bear

BRAYDEN, BRAYDEN, Who Do You See?

COOPER‘S Lesson

DEWEY! There’s a Cat in the Library

DEXTER Gets Dressed

JAYDEN’s Rescue

JULIUS, The Baby of the World

KYLE’s First Crush

LIAM Goes Poo in the Toilet

MILO series

MILTON’s Secret

OLIVER Who Would Not Sleep

OSCAR: The Big Adventure of a Little Sock Monkey

OTIS

OWEN

PHINEAS & Ferb series

Flat STANLEY series

WALTER the Farting Dog series

Looking through the birth announcements in the Scottish newspapers of the last few months-a site which also sometimes include the regions just below the Scottish border and the Isle of Man–a couple of prominent trends jump out.

First of all it’s the nickname names, which right now seem to be even more prevalent in Scotland than in England, for both girls and boys, with a plethora of Ellies and Evies, Alfies and Archies.  Here is a list of  recent ones, with some of the middle names attached to them (separated by slashes):

girls

CHARLEE

CHARLI

ELLIE May

EMMIE

EVIE May/Rose/Elizabeth/Harriet

(Alexa) GEORGIE

GRACIE May

IZZY Henderson

JOSIE Mo

LIBBY May

LOTTIE Aoife (pron. EE-fa) (more…)

We’re honored to have Michael Shackleford, the inventor of the Social Security baby name popularity list, as today’s nameberry guest blogger.  Shackleford played a pivotal role in the history of American baby naming by constructing the first national count of the Top 1000 names.  Shackleford, who can now be found at the Wizard of Odds, talks about the hows and whys behind his ground-breaking work.

The most frequent question I get about my baby name popularity lists is why I started making them.  To give some context to why, my name is Michael, and I was born in 1965.  At that time, and for every year from 1961 to 1998, Michael was the most popular boys name in the United States.  When I was in elementary school, there were always one or two other Michaels in the same class.  When the teacher called on “Michael,” we all had to ask, “Which one?”  At my first job, in a fast food place at Knott’s Berry Farm, there was a big board with everybody’s name and daily cash register errors.  When I was hired, there was already a Mike Smiley on the list.  So I had to become Mike Sh.  After that, everybody would whisper, “We better be quiet, Mike Shhhhh is here.”  To this day, every time somebody calls out “Mike” in public, I have to turn around and investigate.  Usually, I’m not the intended recipient and end up looking like I came in second place in a popularity contest, when the other Michael is warmly identified.  Over the years it has become very annoying.

In 1992, I took a job with the Office of the Actuary at the Social Security Administration headquarters in Baltimore.  My main duty was to estimate the effect to the trust funds given a hypothetical change in Social Security law.  I used samplings of Social Security records, calculating the monthly payment under the current law and the proposed changes, took the difference, and adjusted for the sample size.  I had lots of interesting data at my fingertips to make such calculations.  One of the more interesting files was a 1% sampling of Social Security card applications.

Five years later, in 1997, my wife was expecting our first child.  Naturally, after my negative experiences as one of many Michaels, I was not about to give my child a popular name, but I no longer had any idea what the popular names were.  Keeping up to date was not easy at the time, especially for girl names, which go up and down in popularity much faster than boy names.  It was only my intent to stay out of the top 25 or so.  Many people incorrectly assume I take the extreme position of advocating a name nobody has heard of.  No, a normal name is fine with me, just as it is not too trendy or conformist.

To determine what the most popular names were at the time, I wrote a simple program to sort the Social Security card data first by year of birth, then by gender, and then by first name.  It takes a while to go through a tape of millions of records, but after about an hour the results came in.  What I got back was a huge document of first name popularity lists dating back to the 1880’s.  I believe my eyes at that moment were the first to ever see an accurate nationwide sampling of given names.

(more…)

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the favorite girls' names on a Nameberry Message Board thread--led by the lovely Beatrix, Penelope and Clementine--and now it's time to look over at the boys' side.

The most striking result is the strong showing for the good old traditional, timeless classics, with many votes for William, Henry, Charles, James, Edward, Joseph, George, and Thomas, and a resurgence of interest in Theodore (#2!--perhaps because of the popularity of nickname Theo), Frederick, and Peter.  Does this mean that parents are still (or once again) looking at safer, more conservative choices for their sons than their daughters?  Is it somehow a reflection of the cloudy economic climate?

Some smaller trends noted: a preponderance of names starting with the vowel E–Elliot (in its various spellings), Edward, Emmett, Everett, Ethan, Ezra, Elias; and the characteristic nameberry love of some quirkier choices, several not found in the Top 500 of the Social Security list–Gideon, Amos, Emmett, Dexter, Atticus, Asa, Harvey, Callum and Cullen–and some not even on the list at all–Dashiell, Archer, Malachy, Laszlo, Ambrose.  It takes time for the rest of the world to catch up!